So these days, if you’re gay that’s OK. If you’re trans, that’s grand. There aren’t very many things that an individual can be that isn’t considered an automatic societal reject anymore. I don’t mean criminals, but just different types of people who, in the past, have been ostracized for who they are, not things they have done. I think most well-intentioned people think that is a good thing.

What I want to mention in this blog is mental illness. Nowadays, in most parts of the country and in the media, it’s not okay to call somebody a “fag”, “lezzy”, or “he-she”. These terms were ubiquitous when I was growing up and much into my adult life. If a public official gets caught saying stuff like that now, there is hell to pay. Nevertheless, it’s still okay to call people “crazy”, “nuts”, “psycho”, either seriously or jokingly. Nothing will happen to you and no affirmative action officers will bother you. A lot of times people will describe someone as “schizophrenic”, meaning that they seem to have two opposing personalities, when that has nothing to do with the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia.

And then you have the political side of it. You were wondering when I would get around to that. In the gun safety debate, the phrase “mental illness” gets tossed about a lot, mostly by the pro-gun side. It is done because they would rather talk about mental illness than gun safety. First of all, it would seem to me that anybody who commits a murder, especially a mass murder, probably isn’t in the best of mental health. It’s debatable whether they have a diagnosis of mental illness. In most cases, probably not. It’s analogous to the defense “not guilty by reason of insanity” or NGRI. For somebody to be found NGRI, the standard is that they didn’t realize that their actions were wrong. A pretty difficult standard to meet. And since John Hinckley was NGRI in President Reagan’s assassination attempt in 1981, it has become virtually impossible. So, it would appear that the vast majority of gun violence is committed by sane persons. At least legally speaking. And I would guess that there are few, if any, Republicans who want to see more people judged NGRI.

Most mentally ill are in more danger from others than they are to others. And that danger is most likely to be toward themselves. Check out this link: http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php Also this one, from a conservative viewpoint: http://thefederalist.com/2015/10/19/the-problem-with-blaming-mass-shootings-on-mental-illness/. Or a liberal viewpoint: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/mental-health-gun-laws-washington-post-poll. Add to that the fact that, if you include depression, which has been called “the common cold of mental illness”, there are a lot of present and former mentally ill in this country.

So in my view, anybody with a history of depression is an iffy candidate for gun ownership. And anyone with a history of paranoid schizophrenia should never have access to a firearm. Depressed people are at risk for suicide, and paranoid schizophrenics are at risk for homicide. But I would guess there are very few people whose depression would show up on a background check. If it did, I would say they would need psychiatric certification to own a gun. Paranoids should never, ever have access to a firearm. Absent those two categories, the mental illness argument is a smoke screen to allow politicians to slither out of passing any gun-safety seatbelt laws.

I have noticed a lot of fuss in the various media lately about a Netflix “documentary” called “The Making of a Murderer”. I don’t have Netflix, I have Amazon Prime. With me, it’s like HBO. Some benefits, but not worth the cost. I’ll just stick with what I have.

A lot of people are like sheep. Wave a stick at them and they go scampering down the road. Everything but everything I have read about the case points in the direction of guilt. Bringing up some prosecutorial misconduct doesn’t change the facts. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Just like President Nixon said about Charles Manson during his trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1970. Which leads me to the 2016 presidential elections. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are waving sticks at the sheep from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Even Bernie Sanders’ fellow Democratic politicians from Vermont can’t stand him. Even Barney Frank can’t stand him. That should tell us something about the likelihood of Sanders being able to get anything done once he gets elected president. As we have seen with Obama, a grassroots movement does not make a successful presidency. Obama did the best he could and had some successes, but without cooperation from Congress he was pretty well hamstrung. No wonder his hair has gone gray. I would have hung myself from the front balcony of the White House years ago. Not that the Republicans will welcome President Clinton with open arms. Far from it. But at least she is familiar with the corridors of power and knows what she has to do and is willing to make compromises. Sanders will stand at the West Wing podium with a giant chip on his shoulder, and will proceed to alienate everybody except his supporters, few of whom will be in a position to help him achieve his goals.

Some things seem so obvious to me. I sense an enormous amount of gullibility in the public arena. That gives me an idea. I might start a business selling artifacts from the tomb of King Tut. Who says they are real? I do. There must be some kind of conspiracy to make me look like a crook. I think I will make a documentary about how I was mishandled and railroaded. After that, I will run for President and build a wall around my house guarded 24/7 by my personal security force, and I’ll be inside drinking beer and watching TV.