In More Cases, Combat Trauma Is Taking the Stand. is makes me feel so sad, and helpless and enraged. Vets come back kinda messed up? Some kill people? DUH. The arguments over how those convicted should be sentenced in light of their possible PTSD just highlight the broader insanity of the US criminal justice system, a costly bureaucratic punitive disaster that has little to do with the good of people unless upholding oppressive power systems is defined as a common good. Forget murderous vets, what good really comes of putting most perpetrators of violent crimes behind bars for awhile? What would be good would be a cultural shift to valuing human rights and prioritizing mental health, redefining the role of psychoanalysis as being relevant to everyone, not just gay commie academics. I'm scared of abuses of psychiatry, don't get me wrong, but universal health care that included mental health care, paired with a normalization of the latter, could help actually prevent people from getting killed, beaten, raped, etc.
In the particular case of vets--again, I do not have the words to express the disgust I feel at a government that knowingly sends its own citizens into a situation which will alter their psychological makeup in damaging ways and doesn't see fit to help re-integrate them into civilian life. DUH some of them snap and shoot people! DUH DUH DUH! This isn't new, this happened after Vietnam, must happen during every war. I'm glad some people want PTSD to be taken into account in sentencing. it should be. But there's more important work that must be done before vets get to that point.
"This cover image is a composite photo. Britney did not pose for the picture. That, sadly, is not her body"
UGH.
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