tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
The doublethink and hypocrisy of modern society is astounding.
When the mother (a single mother, as this is California) drops her son off with my friend (also single, of course), she includes several "Ritalin" capsules with instructions on how to dose her son with this depressant/behavior modification drug.
My friend ignores these Ritalins, which upsets the Mom greatly the next day when she realizes her son has not been given the tranks that are also known as "Mother's little helpers."
This, of course, is justified by the psychiatric profession's invention of dozens of bogus diseases, syndromes, and disorders for children. These are not caused by any organic pathology, of course, but are instead defined solely by the child belonging to the upper five percent of those exhibiting perfectly normal behaviors which annoy people who have money to hire psychiatrists. For kids, that's parents and teachers, and the afflicted population jumps to ten percent if you happen to be a kid unlucky enough to be under the care of Mormons. Refuse to go to a crappy public school and you are suffering from "School Phobia." Don't jump to follow the orders of the nearest adult, or disagree with an adult, and its "Oppositional-Defiant" Disorder. Not to mention the plethora of ADD/ADDH nonsense that is used to label any kid who is bored to tears by eight hours a day of political indoctrination from the NEA and AFT. Drugs for the poor, and therapy for the rich who can afford it, are of course the way the psychiatric profession offers to "cure" these invented maladies. And since every population of children will have an upper five percent (ten percent, for Mormons), a neverending supply of patients is assured.
This discipline sets him straight, but it's not something his New Age "supermom" would ever think of doing. Hence the kid throws temper tantrums, acts out, calls her "You fucking asshole" (remember, he's only 8 or so), and so on. So she cranks up his dose of Ritalin and he's zoned out for a while.
Actually, I think calling someone who force-feeds you a mind-numbing drug "A Fucking Asshole" is, to borrow one of Tim's favorite words, "Unremarkable." :) This Soviet-style "Medicalization of Dissent", while applied primarily to children today, historically has been done by the psychiatric profession on behalf of anyone who could write their name on a large check. It wasn't too long ago that they even had an official mental disorder whose symptoms were "an abnormal desire for freedom" on the part of a Black man. Slave owners must have been just as happy with that as Ritalin-dispensing parents and teachers are today.
The connection with the themes of our list is that this linguistic doublethink is what allows Big Brother's control of our communications and private files to be called by the relatively benign name of "escrow."
Indeed. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $