Mark Crispin Miller: Why in the World Would Suicides Be Up in the U.S. Under Bush-Cheney?

[babylonsister]

Why in the World Would Suicides Be Up in the U.S. Under Bush-Cheney?
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2008-02-19 17:16. Media

By Mark Crispin Miller

snip//

What follows, before the Times piece, is a devastating comment on it from
Jonathan Simon, who posted it on nytimes.com (along with many others in the
same vein):

Let's see, what happened between 1999 and 2004 that would cause a spike in suicide among those born in the years when JFK was president, America was a functioning democracy oozing promise, and Rupert Murdoch did not yet own the New York Post? Could it possibly be the "election" of George W. Bush and the demise of the democracy and the America those 45-54 year olds thought they knew? Could it be the cruel and cynical hypocrisy of the mainstream media, "entertaining" us into submission, uncritically passing on (or making up) lies and covering the hard truths? Could it be the same perception of ignorant decline that caused David Walker to resign as the head of the Government Accountability Office, after likening our nation to near-endstage Rome?

Speaking as a 51-year-old who grew up believing in America (though fatally taking its democracy and immunity to disease for granted), I can tell you that I have contemplated suicide several times since November 2000 and it has had nothing to do with the "easy availability of prescription drugs" nor with any of the aspects of my personal life. It has everything to do with America's descent into corporate fascism and a dark age of swollen, fear-based empire. It has everything to do with grief and rage at our loss and at what terrible and cynical evil has been done and is further contemplated in our name. And it has everything to do with the unwillingness of such supposed guardians of the truth as the Times to fulfill their mission and sound the alarm.

We of middle age, who learned history before it was dumbed down to a cartoon, feel alone and abandoned, while the band plays on and the Good Ship Lollipop goes to the bottom. Those who believe that the only griefs are personal or romantic are wrong. I grieve my country and the world it is endeavoring to cast in its tired image. I am to a degree responsible for it and there are times when I feel that responsibility is more than I can bear.

I am still here because there is so much work to do and because all visions of the future, bright or dark, are illusions. I don't hope, as I did when still a child, for silly, unrealistic things like world peace, equality of opportunity, mass enlightenment. I don't hope for an idyllic future. I simply hope to make it better; I hope to restore honest, noncomputerized elections and live to see Americans not just willing but demanding to serve that one hour per lifetime needed for the citizens themselves to hand-count the votes in federal elections; I hope to restore the balance in the flow of information between the people and their government, currently so distorted that the Regime operates in virtual secrecy while the private lives of the public are laid bare in vast corporate and governmental databases for ready use, when push comes to shove, against those who would dare to dissent; I hope to see democracy restored to America and communication liberated from its corporate captors.

Yet there are days, months when even these most basic hopes seem beyond our reach and power--maddeningly so--and days, months when my outrage at this sinks into a chronic despair and depression. I can well understand how it all just grew too dark for many among that spiking percentage of our middle-aged cohort, delivered unwilling and unwitting into the nightmare that is George Bush's America.--Jonathan Simon

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/31163

[Aviation Pro]

1. Because the coddled, spoiled, self-absorbed baby boomers....

...have figured out that they are going to run out of money before they run out of life. Therefore, they take the usual coward's way out and commit suicide.

I am a member of this generation and I assure you that better than 50% of them are dumb fucks who voted for President Insane and Shitstain Shoots-Guy-In-Face.

[islandmkl]

2. for reference sake: what generation is "this generation", exactly?

[Aviation Pro]

3. The baby (reccch) boomers....

...sorry I just threw up in mouth a little.

[Patchuli]

5. You know we were not all spoiled and coddled

babyboomers. Please don't lump us all in the same pile as the morons who voted for the chimp.

[raccoon]

6. Self-delete, becuase I think that you're just trolling, trying to start a fuss. nt

[Aviation Pro]

7. No I'm not....

...the baby boom generation, my generation, has foisted the worst of the worst on our country. Again, the self-absorbed morons - as a collective - gave us President Insane for starters and a culture that is arrogantly stupid. Hopefully, President Obama - a baby boomer himself but closer to the Gen X crowd - will be able to right the ship and set the course straight again.

[mopinko]

4. if i didn't have the little tribe that is du, i don't know it i could

face it all. i come here to drive away the nagging fear. for myself, for my kids, for my country. i come here, and am comforted that i am not alone. and so i continue to walk past the open windows.

[disndat]

8. Not the spoiled

self-absorbed boomers, but the angry white, mostly macho men, backlash that brought us Reagan, and the Bushes.