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crazies | The Grumpy Pundit

Tag Archives: crazies

Running Amok

Posted by on July 21, 2012 No comments

Wouldn’t it be nice if, when someone commits an atrocity, instead of obsessing over the method they chose for their killing, or how they dressed, or where they chose to kill people, or what his social network and dating profile looked like, instead of looking at these frills and trappings, we looked at why so many people feel so alienated and lost that they choose to lash out at society this way?

Not that it would happen. If we looked at root causes we might find that we have to make real changes to solve the problem, rather than just blowing a lot of hot air to give the appearance of doing something.

And we’ll do anything, endure anything, to avoid that.

What We Don’t Know

Posted by on January 7, 2013 No comments

Dave Kupelian asks some interesting questions. I think he’s stretching a few things here and there, but the basic argument is valid.

Most of our mass killers have been on psychiatric medications, and we know very little about the side effects of those drugs. It is very possible–in fact, almost certain, given the way drugs work–that while they make many people better, they make some much worse. It is quite possible that we’re creating the homicidal outbursts that we fear so much.

Andrea Yates, in one of the most heartrending crimes in modern history, drowned all five of her children – aged 7 years down to 6 months – in a bathtub. Insisting inner voices commanded her to kill her children, she had become increasingly psychotic over the course of several years[….] In November 2005, more than four years after Yates drowned her children, Effexor manufacturer Wyeth Pharmaceuticals quietly added “homicidal ideation” to the drug’s list of “rare adverse events.”

That’s not even getting into the millions of children prescribed Ritalin and similar drugs, with almost no understanding of what effect those drugs have on developing minds. If lead in the environment can cause spikes in violent crime, what could actual mind-altering drugs do?