Introverts Unite

What was the best part of the party?

        Hannah

Slippin' Into Darkness

I don't know enough about things like cognition and the effects of legal and political stress on the mental state of someone like Donald Trump.

I think he's a fucking loon, but of course, I can't make any kind of clinical judgement. All I know is that based on what I've seen and heard, the guy has to be teetering on the brink. But then again, I think he's a guy who's been teetering on that brink pretty much his whole miserable life.

Here's the thing:

When each new thing pops up that further indicates what most of us have been observing, there's a feeling of "So what? We've known that for a while".

But there're lots of people who are still - deliberately or otherwise - oblivious to this menace. So we have to keep pushing it forward - telling people over and over that there's something desperately wrong with Donald Trump, and the fact that he's got some gear slippage in his brain pan may actually be the least of it, but it's one more really good reason to shit-can that creep before he burns the whole fuckin' place down.

“Meandering and confusing”: Trump showed cognitive decline in interviews, author says

"Do you remember when we spoke recently?" author Ramin Setoodeh asked Trump after he was interviewed. He didn't

Donald Trump demonstrated “severe memory issues” and gave several alarming false recollections in interviews for a book chronicling “The Apprentice,” author Ramin Setoodeh said.

Setoodeh interviewed the former president six times in “meandering and confusing” conversations for his book “Apprentice in Wonderland,” and says that Trump didn’t remember speaking with him afterward.

“My first sit-down interview was in May,” Setoodeh noted in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “We sat down again towards the end of the summer, and when I sat down, you know, there was a very blank expression on his face. So I asked, ‘Do you remember when we spoke recently,’ and he [Trump] said, ‘No, I have no memory of that.’”

Trump also appeared to forget that he was no longer in charge of foreign policy, leaving one interview early to “deal with” a conflict in Afghanistan.

“He [Trump] also seemed to think that he still had some foreign policy powers,” he noted. “There was one day where he told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan, even though he clearly didn’t,” he said, adding that Trump actually called the nation “the Afghanistan.”

In another instance, Trump purported that Joan Rivers — who passed away in 2014 — voted for him.

“He confidently told me, and declared, that Joan Rivers voted for him when he ran for president, and Joan Rivers died in 2014,” Setoodeh recalled. “She would not have been able to vote for Donald Trump.”

The “Apprentice in Wonderland” author said Trump was at his happiest during their conversations when discussions focused on “The Apprentice.”

“He would talk about what he did at the White House and he would become gloomy, and unhappy, and resentful.”

On conversations surrounding an alleged tape of Trump saying the N-word on the set, Trump claimed, unprovoked, that if he were to have said it, he wouldn’t have done so while mic’d, Setoodeh said.

78-year-old Trump, who has recently had a spate of public verbal flubs and mental slips, is set to debate 81-year-old Joe Biden on Jun 27.

Today I Learned

... a little about Prosopometamorphopsia.

And I'm gonna go out on my speculation limb and link it to certain effects of LSD.

I never had a bad trip - possibly because what I thought was acid, was just some speed with a little arsenic thrown in for color (how the fuck would I know? I was 19, and we were buying that shit for $35 per 100).

But anyway, I know people who reported some bad experiences, one of which was seeing people's faces melt, or watching their own faces melt when they made the mistake of looking in a mirror while tripping. Dumbass - I told you not to do that.

Like I said - speculation.

But still - your brain is a pretty powerful thing.

It can make you see things that aren't there, and it can make you not see things that are.

The Crack Up

I don't think you can live your life in a constant state of untruth and not suffer some emotional and intellectual damage.

And since it seems to be pretty widely understood that Trump's cheese is rapidly slipping off his cracker, it gets easier to understand why MAGA is trying so hard to project it onto Biden.

"Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia"

"Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack"

Since at least 2016, some of the world’s leading mental health professionals have been sounding the alarm that Donald Trump appears to be emotionally and psychologically unwell – and perhaps even a sociopath or a psychopath. Unfortunately, throughout Trump’s presidency, the COVID pandemic and his willfully negligent response to mass death and suffering, the Jan. 6 coup attempt and the attack on the Capitol by his MAGA forces, and now several years beyond, their warnings have repeatedly proven to be correct. Donald Trump only appears to be getting worse, not better, as he ages, and the pressures of his multiple criminal and civil trials and the 2024 presidential campaign grow heavier.

In a recent conversation with Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," the former faculty member at Johns Hopkins University told me that based on Trump's speech, memory, recall, and other behavior, he appears to be “hypomanic” and cognitively deteriorating at a rapid rate:

I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.

Almost as if on cue, in a series of speeches and interviews at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and elsewhere last week — which took place after my conversation with Dr. Gartner — Donald Trump again manifested these symptoms. So I spoke with Dr. Gartner again on Tuesday about Donald Trump’s recent behavior, what comes next if his apparent cognitive challenges and related maladies continue to worsen, the dilemma of having human sympathy and concern for a vile person like Donald Trump, and why so many medical professionals (and members of the news media, political class, and others with a public platform) are continuing to be silent about the corrupt ex-president’s very troubling and dangerous behavior.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

We spoke last week about how Donald Trump's apparent mental and emotional challenges and pathologies appear to be getting much worse. That conversation was widely read and circulated — including by the British and other foreign news media. Why do you think your warnings gained so much traction?

Most of us have known someone, possibly in our own families, who’s had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. The diagnostic signs are not subtle. My warnings and conclusions about Trump simply confirmed what many people had already observed and concluded for themselves but didn’t have the authority to assert. I was giving voice to what ordinary people see with their own eyes, and they were grateful for validation from a mental health professional.

Why do you think so many of your peers who also have expertise in psychology, the brain, aging, and related topics and subjects are remaining silent?

I've been reaching out to several colleagues who are real experts in this area. They were happy to share observations and diagnostic conclusions about Trump’s severe organic mental decline, privately, but even among colleagues who were once outspoken, there's a new high level of fear, not to mention exhaustion, that we didn’t see before. Each of these experts convinced me they weren’t being paranoid when they believed there was a good chance, they would lose their jobs if they went on the record, not to mention other forms of retaliation, especially for those who live in red states.

How are you processing the reality that if Trump wins, there is going to be retaliation against his critics and anyone else who has dared to oppose him and the MAGA movement and American fascists more broadly? Trump has repeatedly said this. Revenge and punishing “the enemies” of the regime are central to Project 2025 and Agenda 47, for example. They're going to get even; there's going to be score settling for the truth tellers.

Wow. That is a powerful way of putting it — yes, there is going to be score settling for the truth-tellers. We're really seeing in real time how a people can be beaten down. People who were enthusiastic members of "the resistance" against Trump and the MAGA movement are now saying, "I can't do it. I'm intimidated." The reality and potential for retaliation by Trump and his followers is extremely real. In 2016, what were my peers afraid of? The American Psychiatric Association? What was the worst that could have happened to us? We could have been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association. So what?! With Trump trying to come back to power, people are looking over their shoulders out of a reasonable fear of professional, social economic, and even criminal retaliation, as well as the threat of political violence from the right wing. We weren't making those risk assessments before.

Pathocracy is a term used to describe a government run by leaders with personality disorders.

Trump, who is a pathocrat, and what he symbolizes and has channeled and summoned, is impacting all of us.

It's taken a psychological toll on the population, both clinically and non-clinically. Exhaustion. Depression. Fear. Being detached and disengaged mentally and intellectually. The collective trauma of Trumpism has put many Americans in survival mode.

In our last conversation, you warned that Trump is suffering serious cognitive decline as shown by his speech, memory, and other behavior. Almost on cue, Trump manifests these symptoms at CPAC and at other events over the course of several days. Once you see this pattern of aberrant behavior you can't unsee or otherwise ignore it.

This weekend, Trump showed more evidence of his accelerating dementia. Trump named the wrong month for the primary, said that Putin would rather see Biden as president and he agreed with him, and that he made Israel the capital of Israel. But most important are the fundamental breakdowns in his ability to use language. Once you become aware of a symptom, you start to notice it, whereas before you might have overlooked it.

Trump manifested a number of phonemic paraphasias. He was trying to say evangelist, for example, but haltingly said "evangelish.” He was trying to say “three years later," but said, “three years, lady, lady, lady.” Trying to spit out the word “lately,” he sounded like a car with a bad battery struggling to turn over. When Trump can't find a word his whole demeanor changes. It’s almost like someone pulled the metaphorical plug. Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack, and when he starts to talk again, he slurs, speaks haltingly, and often looks confused. Trying to get the word out, he shifts to a non-word that is easier to pronounce. When people are losing their ability to use language they use non-words. They start with the stem of the real word, and then they improvise from there.

In my family we call sandwiches “slamichs” because that’s what my stepson called them when he was three. It was cute then. It’s not cute watching an adult man regress to the mental age of a three-year-old. It can make you even feel sorry for Trump in those moments when he appears so vulnerable, confused, and disoriented. I asked several highly specialized experts about Trump's use of language, and they told me that what Trump is doing in total, but especially the phonemic paraphasias, were almost certain evidence of brain damage. This is not minor, or within normal limits, like forgetting who the president of Germany is, for example, as Biden has been pilloried for. Trump is evidencing formal thought disorder, where his basic ability to use language is breaking down.

Trump is also showing signs of "semantic aphasia" where he is using words in the wrong way. For example, when Trump talked about "the oranges of the investigation." We saw an example of that this weekend, as well. Trump said, “We’re going to protect pro-God….” In mid-sentence, he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. The words he uses to complete the sentence don’t really make sense: “…context and content.”

Trump is bragging about passing the MOCA, a screening test for dementia, as if it made him MENSA, when it’s a test any kindergartener should pass. Specialists tell me a patient can be in steep diagnosable organic decline for an extended period before they fail the MOCA. Someone with an advanced degree from an Ivy League school, for example, has a lot of IQ points to give before they hit kindergarten level. If you pass the MOCA it certainly does not mean you’re cognitively equipped to be President of the United States. Trump can’t even name the current president of the United States. Seven times he’s said he’s running against Obama. That’s not a gaffe or joke. That’s hard clinical evidence of serious organic brain damage.

When this is happening to Trump, how is he feeling? Does he know what's happening?

One of the things that's most notable is Trump's lack of awareness when he makes these mistakes. He very rarely corrects himself or goes back, typical for someone with this kind of organic decline. Ironically, Trump boasted that “If I were cognitively impaired, I’d know it,” but actually he wouldn’t, and he doesn’t. Sometimes a patient with organic brain damage will have what we call a "catastrophic reaction," where they suddenly realize "Oh, my God, I can't think!" They'll then have an anxiety attack or begin weeping because their denial has been broken through and suddenly, they realize just how serious their condition is.

As for Trump's MAGA people and other supporters, in a healthy relationship, they would become concerned for Trump and realize that what appears to be his worsening cognition and other behavior actually makes him not qualified for the presidency and that he should seek help. Instead, the worse Trump's behavior becomes the more they seem to adore him. This is textbook collective pathology.

Trump’s hypomanic energy gives him power and makes him charismatic to his followers. Trump's behavior has a type of primal appeal to his followers. As I warned in our conversation last week, whatever personality disorder someone has, it gets dramatically worse as their cognitive functions decline. All of Trump's viciousness, hostility, and unpredictable and other pathological behavior is only going to get worse. In the end, Trump and the MAGA movement are a cult, and he is the leader.

Does Donald Trump deserve pity if he is indeed struggling with these types of challenges?

In psychology, we often try to use our reactions to understand the patient and to develop a diagnostic workup. Trump is someone who many people despise because he is evil. Yet, when Trump acts in what appears to be a demented way, our reflexive reaction is actually sympathy. He seems vulnerable. He seems confused. He reminds you of your relatives. In a way, such a reaction to Trump is a type of confirmation that something may be seriously wrong with him. You're reacting to him in such a protective way, you feel sorry for Trump, and you want to help him because he's a doddering old man. Trump is confused. Seeing Trump or anyone else in such a state brings forth our normal human empathy.

Is there a social taboo, especially among the news media, that is limiting our much-needed discussions of these types of health issues as seen with politicians and other leaders?

I don’t want to say the mainstream media is covering up Trump’s cognitive disability, but they certainly aren’t covering it like the 5-alarm fire it is. The media will show Trump being combative and saying something outrageous and his audience reacting to it — but they are consistently not showing the parts of Trump’s speeches and interviews where his eyes go blank, his jaw goes slack, he looks confused, and slurs words, uses non-words, can't finish a sentence, rambles, perseverates, confabulates and babbles incoherently. That’s what should make the 6 o’clock news. Doesn’t the media have a duty to warn the public that the man who wants the nuclear codes back (not including the ones he probably stole) is publicly displaying unimpeachable evidence of a broken and deteriorating brain?

The obvious comparison here is Ronald Reagan. I am no fan of Reagan and do not understand the worship of that man. We now have confirmation that towards the end of his presidency that he was basically senile. The United States and the world were very lucky that Reagan was surrounded, mostly, by very serious people who were institutionalists. By comparison, Donald Trump is surrounded by fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrats, corporatists, and other malign actors who are going to take advantage of the situation to get what they want. That possibility — if not outright certainty — should terrify any reasonable thinking person.

There will be no guardrails to Trump's absolute most primitive, impulsive, destructive, and insane actions. There will be no pushback from within his inner circle and regime. It is certainly very possible that a person in a state of cognitive decline is in a state where they are highly vulnerable to suggestions and being manipulated by others. I can easily imagine a scenario where Trump is a figurehead and there is a real power behind the throne pulling the strings.

What is the difference between someone being older and getting older, and someone being mentally and emotionally ill? Given how Biden is being unfairly maligned because of his age while Trump's obvious deficits, which are far more serious and dangerous, are being mostly ignored, that distinction needs to be emphasized — repeatedly.

They're not the same thing. I feel like older people should take offense to Trump's behavior being explained away by aging. There are natural things that happen with aging such as occasionally using the wrong word or calling someone the wrong name because they remind you of someone you worked with. President Biden is confusing names, not people. The Dementia Care Society says “mixing up people and generations” is a sign of dementia. Recently Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancey Pelosi, for example. He also mixed up the generations in his own family when he said his father was born in Germany, when it was his grandfather. Michael Wolff said Trump frequently didn’t recognize old friends. And most importantly Biden isn’t showing a fundamental breakdown in his ability to use language. The whataboutism narrative is that this is a race between two old men. True but one has an aging brain, and the other a dementing brain. If Trump were your relative, you would be reaching out to doctors in a state of alarm. If Joe Biden were you’re relative, you might have to remind him of things from time to time.

How do you think Trump is going to respond to the experts and other such voices who are publicly sharing their concerns about his apparent worsening cognitive and other intellectual and emotional challenges?

As I said earlier, Donald Trump is going to make theater and spectacle out of it. But Trump will keep betraying his denials through his behavior. He has other symptoms as well. These physical symptoms include a wide base to his gait, his leaning posture, and his loss of fine motor control. A dementia diagnosis is not limited to an interview. To reach a firm conclusion one needs observations, reports from informants and other people around the person in question, and an MRI for example to see exactly what is going on with Trump's brain. In my opinion, Trump is showing a level of symptoms where no real expert would think that there is not something seriously wrong with his mind and brain.

- More -

• Dr. John Gartner on a tale of two brains: "Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing"
• MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"

Some Poetry

"The number one hardest thing we have to do as humans in this world is be subjected to the evil, and remain good despite the bullshit we go through."

For me this doesn't land as "Men's Rights Now!" or any of the other crapola coming from the toxic snowflakes who can't admit they've had it pretty fuckin' good for a long fuckin' time, and want us to believe that somehow men are being unfairly attacked (and "oppressed"- WTAF?) by those horrible feminists, and their evil woke incantations.

None of that. This guy is trying to tell us there are good reasons for all this hyper-macho bullshit, and we can address it early if we can figure out how to look honestly at each other - and ourselves - as men, as friends, as fathers, and as partners.

TSleeveless - "Teach a Boy to Cry"

The Paradise Paradox

A new film shows the toll of Colorado’s high country mental health crisis — and one county’s successful response

Bode Miller is one of the producers behind “The Paradise Paradox,” rolling out across Colorado now

There’s a heartbreaking scene in a new documentary co-produced by Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller in which Grand County snowboarder Ben Lynch is driving down the highway sometime before taking his life while on a camping trip with his wife.

It looks cold up there in the mountains, a little gray. That’s the general vibe of the first half of “The Paradise Paradox.” By now, viewers understand the name.

A paradox exists in paradise: Too many people living in Colorado ski towns suffer with mental health problems, including a staggering number who’ve died by suicide in recent years, when it seemed like they should be having the time of their lives.

Ask for help

• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text. Chat online.
• Colorado Crisis Line. 1-844-493-8255. Text TALK to 38255.
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 1-800-273-8255. // Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio. 1-888-628-9454.
• Crisis Text Line. Text 741-741 to reach a counselor.
• The Trevor Project. An organization for LGBTQ young people. Call 1-866-488-7386. Text START to 678-678. Chat online.

This happens due to a confluence of forces: wealth gaps in mountain towns that grew into chasms during the COVID pandemic; lack of affordable housing; communities that rely on shredding during the day and partying at night for their happiness; and lack of adequate mental health services to help those dealing with any of these struggles cope.

Alterra Mountain Company is a sponsor of the film, and several of the places highlighted are resorts owned by the company. Winter Park/Mary Jane is one; that may be why Lynch, who was 32 when he died by suicide, is featured. But a major part of the movie — and what bookends it — is a story about Eagle County’s unbelievable success at tackling the mental health crisis that peaked with 17 suicides in 2017.

In a tale well-known by now, residents couldn’t accept one more child taking their life, so they created a task force to tackle the problem. They galvanized to pass ballot measure 1A, which taxed retail pot sales and directed all funds to mental health and substance abuse services. The money allowed the group to do a gap analysis, looking for failings in the county’s mental health care system, and devise a plan to fill them.

Then, in 2018, Vail Health committed $60 million over 10 years to push the effort forward. Not long after, Vail real estate developer Amanda Precourt — who struggled with mental health issues and is one of the film’s anchors — gave Vail Health a “generous gift” toward building an inpatient behavioral health facility in Edwards. When the 50,000-square-foot hospital opens in 2025, it will offer all of the mental health services the grassroots organizers wished for in 2017 and then some.

It’s a monumental success for a community that five years ago had no place locally to bring a child who was experiencing a mental health breakdown. But perhaps without intending to, the film overlooks some key factors in Colorado’s ongoing high country mental health crisis: Vail had help from Summit County in solving its problem and had the good fortune to get a windfall of money to improve its mental health services. The problem is tougher to solve in smaller counties, which are often less well-heeled or privy to government resources. “The Paradise Paradox” paints Eagle County as a town among ski resorts with the answers to solving ski country’s mental health issues, but there’s more to the story.

“It’s hard because there’s so much more wealth in Eagle County and because we’re in these zones with Mind Springs [Health] and what have you in Grand Junction,” Megan Ledin, executive director of the Grand Foundation in Fraser, said. (For years Mind Springs has been wracked with controversy over things like dangerous prescription practices, the quality and safety of the care it gives teenagers and children, and failure to serve the most vulnerable Coloradans, although Ledin didn’t mention these when discussing the organization.) The size and population of Grand County is another challenge, Ledin added, saying, “I wish we could have some sort of 72-hour facility, but with our demographics would a detox or holding facility in Grand County be sustainable?”

Services “are not about the money”

Chris Lindley, chief population health officer at Vail Health and executive director at Eagle Valley Behavioral Health, admits Eagle County benefitted from Vail Health “being a trailblazer” in the industry.

But more importantly, as a community, he said, “We all agreed we needed a plan. Then we all agreed to the plan. Then came the funding. And I would argue that if other communities do [the same], getting the resources becomes a lot easier. Yes, it might be easier in a resort community like Vail or Aspen or Steamboat. But these resources exist, not only from individuals. There’s a great amount of state grants available. Health care in general needs to take a much bigger role in behavioral health.”

Ledin agrees with Lindley’s last statement, but adds, “Behavioral health services are contingent on your population and needs of a community.” And when you look at the wealth in a place like Eagle County versus Grand County, the amount of money available to Eagle will likely be higher than to Grand.

That leaves Grand County having to do without certain services or providing smaller-scale versions with fewer resources. Ledin said when distributing money, the Grand Foundation “tries to look at what nonprofits aren’t meeting needs, usually because of a financial barrier, and then asks, ‘How can we support them to make things better?’” That’s work for a small foundation that started in 1996 through the sale of ski and golf passes and has since distributed $23 million in grants through multiple funding sources including donor advised and designated funds, and – coming – an endowment.

Two of the Grand Foundation’s notable mental health successes of late are a transportation service that takes mental health or substance abuse patients from Middle Park Health hospital in Granby to services in Grand Junction, and a “one-stop-shop” website that connects people experiencing a mental health crisis with appropriate services, Ledin said.

Called Building Hope Grand County, the website helps people evaluate the severity of a mental health crisis, offers a list of 43 local providers specializing in dozens of different fields and relays information on grants for various services, screening for different ailments and a list of providers — all of whom accept vouchers from the Grand County Rural Health Network in place of money — accepting patients.

The foundation also funds a mental health voucher program and a scholarship program, which help both patients and providers. The patients get help paying for appointments above and beyond the 12 granted in the voucher program and out-of-county providers are given office space at no cost to see patients in the county.

There’s a moment in “The Paradise Paradox” when Ledin is asked about her work and she breaks down crying. Later, in an interview with The Colorado Sun, she said it made her think of her daughter dealing with two years of serious depression while a college freshman during COVID. And of the 12 kids connected to Grand County who took their own lives between 2018 and present. Then there was the son of a good friend who dealt with substance abuse issues and overdosed on fentanyl, thinking it was sleeping pills. “But what can we do? We have a culture problem where it’s OK to drink and do drugs, and then the isolation comes in and depression, and it exacerbates the problem,” she said.

Lack of affordable housing contributes to mental health issues in Grand County as well, Ledin added. “Young kids come here thinking they’re going to ski, and then they have to work three to four jobs just to afford rent. So we also have housing assistance funds. We look at someone’s gross pay versus rent and if it exceeds 30% we’ll bridge it for a whole year.”

But some skiers and snowboarders still use drugs and alcohol to cope. “And when you get to extremes, or have an addictive personality, if the culture is that of drinking or drugs, someone with those tendencies may lean toward that,” she said. “We just want our people to know resources are out there. And if you don’t want to go down that path, there’s lots of other avenues.”

Ledin wishes Grand County could fund full-time behavioral health counselors in its schools like Eagle County has done. But there’s not enough money for that, at least not at the moment.

The “other avenues” are trying to do their part, however. Stephanie Pierce, founder of the nonprofit Tame Wellness in downtown Fraser, came to Grand County in search of a mountain lifestyle after years of heroin addiction. She found what she wanted, and decided to open Tame for others trying to kick their addictions.

Tame offers recovery planning, one-on-one consultations, medication-assisted substance abuse treatment, and year-round sober events and gatherings. On Monday night, Pierce was hosting a Halloween eve mini-pumpkin painting event.

She says you don’t have to be sober to participate in Tame events, but that she created them to give people attempting sobriety an escape from the many other non-sober options in Grand County. And Ledin says if you want to know how the Grand Foundation was able to start the Building Hope Grand County Fund, through which it has paid out $1 million to mental health and substance abuse services since its founding a year ago, take a look at Summit County’s Building Hope program, which was also a blueprint for Eagle County.

How Summit County guided Grand and Eagle counties

Like Eagle County’s and Grand County’s mental health programs, Summit County’s grew out of a rash of suicides. One of them was Patti Casey, a prominent community member who was highly involved in the Summit Foundation, a role model for the Grand Foundation. She had struggled with medication-resistant depression, but no one outside of her immediate family knew about it, said Kellyn Ender, executive director of Building Hope Summit. When she became one of 13 people who died by suicide in 2016, the county knew it needed to do more to address its mental health problem.

“The Summit Foundation was fortunate in that following Casey’s death, her family created a memorial fund in her honor,” Ender said. “One of the biggest focus areas was stigma reduction: They wanted to really promote talking about mental health, talking about how struggles are a part of our nature, they happen to everyone, and we should be able to talk about our mental health in the same way we talk about our physical health.”

Word about a new program called Building Hope Summit circulated in the community, and over 60 leaders came together to assess the county’s mental health needs. Among these were access to care, resource navigation and reducing financial barriers to therapy. In May 2019, the nonprofit was formed to fulfill these and increase the capacity of mental health care in the county. The foundation’s guiding principle: “We are our partners.” And their 2022 total income: $2,262,500, which Ender said “goes straight back into the community.”

Ledin says Building Hope Summit was instrumental in getting Building Hope Grand County off the ground.

And Lindley said Summit County and Pitkin County inspired Eagle County with “ideas and inspiration and models” of what their program could look like.

“Summit was our closest partner, because of what we’ve learned from them, particularly their amazing scholarship program,” he added. Eagle County also named its scholarship fund after a community member who died by suicide. They modeled their co-response model after Pitkin County’s “because it was incredible,” Lindley said. “So those two ideas, which are two of our mega successes, came from neighboring communities. We said they’re doing it, we can do it and we called them and asked how did you do it?”

But only Eagle County got the big prize: the 50,000-square-foot facility which will be named after Amanda Precourt and her father.

About the facility…

There’s a caveat to the facility, however.

Lindley said even though it’s coming, “it’s not where we want our patients to go. It’s not where we want any patients to go.”

Then he clarified that he and other providers hope the facility won’t be necessary.

“We’re building it, because right now, in our community, in our region, we have folks that need to be hospitalized who must go three hours in either direction for services,” he continued. “And this building will be centrally located in the Rocky Mountains and available to the whole region. That will cut down a lot of the concern about transportation. So Grand County, Lake County, Summit County should not build a facility.”

Instead, he said, these counties and others “will need some of the other things that they’re all working on and that we’ve built. It’s like all the handouts, so when someone gets out of an inpatient facility, they need to have outpatient behavioral health services. They need clinicians available to see patients for therapy. They need med management, so some psychiatry or psychiatric nurse practitioners that are available. And they need therapists in school, and really strong anti-stigma programs.”

For now, Grand County at least will have to make do with the resources it has, to help as many people as it can, while continually brainstorming new ways to spread the wealth.

A spokesperson for Podium Pictures said participants in the talks have included community mental health organizations, civic leaders, key stakeholders and the general public, and that anyone wanting to host a DIY screening can do so by signing up at this link.

The ultimate goal, organizers add, “is to not only raise awareness but to inspire actionable change, driving both local and national stakeholders to conceive, collaborate, and implement creative and effective solutions to the mental health challenges unveiled in the film.”

Today's "Conservative"

This shit keeps popping up:

"Dragging the libs" of course is a favorite pass-time for these clowns, but I get the feeling it's not just that. It seems also to be aimed at an audience of guys who may not be all that sure of themselves - their gender identity, or whatever. So if you crow about how you're so manly you always order a beer and a bowl of nails to snack on, it serves to keep "the betas" in line.

But here's the thing:

How the Myth of the Alpha Male Has Hijacked Modern Masculinity
In "Are Men Animals?" anthropologist Matthew Gutmann explores how modern ideas of masculinity repress and harm men.

What does it mean to be a man? More specifically, what does it mean to be a man in the U.S? In Spain? Among Native American communities? There are so many different factors — both cultural and otherwise — that are embedded in this question. But what does masculinity look like around the world and what similarities present themselves? And, more importantly, what does how we talk about it — and attempt to explain away behaviors using biology or speak of men in terms of Alpha and Beta — say about us?

In, Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short, anthropologist Matthew Gutmann, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who has spent 30 years exploring notions of masculinity across the United States, Latin America, and China, describes how the ways society can speak about men and explain away their behavior through bad science — such as when, during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, testosterone was associated with negative male behavior — limits men’s emotional expression and denies them agency and accountability over their actions. For Gutmann, using such terms and phrases as “testosterone,” “boys being boys,” and “just being a guy” is tantamount to when doctors 30 or 40 years ago would say that women can’t be leaders because their periods made them too unpredictable. In other words, he says, such talk paints men into a corner.

Fatherly spoke to Gutmann about why explaining away masculinity with biology doesn’t help anyone, why the term “alpha male” means nothing, and why men comparing themselves to wolves and chimpanzees is not only severely limiting — it’s also extremely misguided.

You’ve spent 30 years looking at masculinity around the world. What were some things you really wanted to address in this book? What was important to you about dispelling myths about masculinity?

There is a widespread tendency to say, well, boys will be boys. So in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court justice hearings, it was remarkable how many times I read the word ‘testosterone’ associated with male teenage behavior. As if other boys didn’t have testosterone as teenagers; as if testosterone surging through your blood, if you’re a teenage boy, accounts for sexual assault against women. That, to me, is very disturbing, when we assume that teenage boys almost can’t help themselves from assaulting.

Is there an extent to which being a masculine man is biological, or is more of a cultural definition?

I think that you find as much variation worldwide and historically, as you can imagine. There isn’t one way of being a man in any society. But certainly, science and biology have come to be very significant and influential ways of framing or thinking in general. It’s not just about men and masculinity.

What do you mean?

One-hundred years ago, you’d find scientists running all over the place saying, “Women can’t be leaders. There have never been women leaders in parliament, in congress, except for a few queens. That’s because of biology. Don’t you think if women could be political leaders, we would have seen some by now?”

That was a plausible argument. So it’s not a new way of looking at the world, to explain it through so-called science. But it’s bad science. And I think that it’s been too long unexamined with respect to men and masculinity today. The fact is, it’s very easy for people to fall into thinking, “This is the way men are, and this is the way women are.” But that’s not true anywhere.

Let’s talk about definitions of masculinity. Is it defined differently in the Western world than in other cultures?

It varies a lot within the United States, too, if you really get into it. Among Native American peoples in the plains, a long tradition of what’s sometimes called third-gender, berdache, two-spirit people, these kinds of things. And that’s in the United States. But that’s not the dominant way of thinking about men and masculinity, that you have people who were born male but would assume female roles and might have sex with other biological men and that kind of thing, but would not consider themselves gay. But you don’t hear about that stuff, usually, because it doesn’t fit into dominant ways of thinking.

In Southern Spain, there’s been a long stereotype that if a wife wants to have sex all the time with her husband, she’s trying to kill him off, because men are only born with so much sperm and when it runs out, they die. That’s exactly the flip side of what you would hear about in terms of men and sexual predation.

One-hundred years ago, in many farming communities in much of the world, where children weren’t going to school, men were taking their kids to the fields, particularly their young boys, but also, their daughters. They’re going to spend a lot more time with their children. This is a pattern that is impossible in the city, if you’re driving a bus or working in a factory, you can’t take your kid to work.

When did the dominant way of thinking about masculinity — being strong and silent, having sexual conquests, etc. — became really, really mainstream?

I think it’s always been around to some extent. But one of the things I would emphasize is that there may be dominant ideas but there’s always been pushback and a lot of confusion, debate, and argument over what it means to be a man. One-hundred and fifty years ago, people were arguing strenuously that women should vote; women should be leaders; men are not the only ones who can do this; that men can be great fathers. But that wasn’t dominant. So you find people pushing back.

The fact that young men in the United States, and 70 other countries in the world, when men turn 18 or so, they have to register for the draft or a possible draft, and young women do not have to do that, why do we go along with that, unquestioningly?

Why is that the way it is? Soldiers are not carrying spears or shields. It’s not an issue of upper body strength. It’s because people believe there’s something inherently violent, or potentially violent, about men that makes them more adaptable for war. And there’s no evidence that’s true.

There are violent men, but most men are not violent. You can even say most people who kill are men — that’s absolutely true and vital — but most men are not killers. And that’s just as important. And if it’s biological, you would expect to find ‘all men this’ and ‘all men that’ and you don’t. It’s cultural.

One thing that really intrigued me about your book was how you wrote about such species as chimpanzees and wolves. Is there an extent to which we’ve transposed human ideals of masculinity on to pack animals?

Right.

Can you walk that out for me?

When I was young, I would watch nature shows on TV: Animal Planet, Discovery Channel. When I would hear about the male zebra, or the male orangutan, I would pay more attention, because that’s the way males of those species behave. And, it began to sink in, that “men do this and women do that.” The problem is that there’s variation among male zebras. There’s variation among male orangutans. But even that pales in comparison among variation among human males.

What do you mean?

If you are a mallard duck, you’re going to behave within a fairly limited repertoire of behavior. If you’re a human male, the possibilities are not endless, but they are vast. That’s the big difference. It’s not that it doesn’t take a male and a female, in terms of gametes, to make offspring, and that that isn’t similar across animal species. It is. It’s not like there are no similarities.

But we trick ourselves into thinking that we have such narrow kinds of possibilities, as humans, if we constantly are comparing ourselves to the chimpanzees, or gorillas or other primates. But it’s very easy to do it. In biology textbooks, in classes at universities, you’re taught that females are choosy across species, and males want to have sex with all the females they can to procreate and spread their seed.

Right. And men need to do that too, or so the myth goes.

If you think about it for half a second, it’s nonsense. Human males are incredibly choosy about with whom they have sex, and most people in the 21st century, when they have sex, they’re not looking to have babies. They’re not looking to spread their seed. That’s not the point.

I read an article recently that said that there’s no real concept of an alpha wolf in the wild, but it exists in captivity. What does it mean that men have totally taken on this identity, as being the ‘alpha’ or the ‘alpha wolf’ or ‘alpha male’ when it doesn’t even really exist in nature? That that’s the gold standard of being a human man — being an ‘alpha’?

I think again, ultimately, it excuses men being in charge. It’s saying that there’s something biological: that men have a need to be in charge, and females have a need for men to be in charge, and the successful men are the alphas. It’s a problem on so many different levels.

One, it’s actually healthier, in many species, to be a beta male. You don’t have nearly the same levels of stress. It can be measured through cortisol levels. Beta males among chimps are a lot healthier, in many respects. They don’t have everyone attacking them. There are even some studies that say that they have more sex.

But beyond that, what’s curious is that you have other species — wolves, bonobos (the so-called pygmy chimpanzees) — where you have alpha female led troops to a much greater extent. Females have much more of a say in terms of who gets what, and what happens when, and all of that.

But we don’t generally, on nature shows, care nearly as much about those mammals, because they don’t coincide with the idea that men are in charge and should be.

Just even to the extent that you say that beta males are often happier and healthier, I laughed, because it reminds me a lot of human men who posture and exhibit idealized masculinity. They often have shorter lifespans, are more stressed out, and have all these negative health outcomes. So it’s like, what are we doing?

I think the language we use today has been too long unexamined about men. And that’s what I’m trying to do in the book, is call attention. Not because it’s exactly the same with respect to men and women when you use this language, but it’s also, potentially, more dangerous if we assume that, because men have certain kinds of hormones in higher levels than women, then anything happens automatically.

The fact is that women, for ovulation, need testosterone. But we don’t hear about that very much. We hear about levels of testosterone as if they correlated with anything in particular [in terms of male aggression] and it turns out they don’t.

Right. Women are too hormonal to be leaders. Men have too much testosterone to not be violent.

Hubert Humphrey, a presidential candidate, had a doctor who became quite famous. At one point he said, “You cannot have women leaders in charge of war, because they’re too unpredictable, biologically, and they’re likely to do anything crazy at any time.” There were people who pushed back hard against that idea, but it was much more plausible to a lot more people.

The fact is, whatever you think about Trump, tens of millions of women voted for him, and somehow, that needs to be explained.

Were they all just holding their noses about what they thought about his assaults on women and his desire to assault more women? Or, did they say, “Like it or not, that’s just the way guys are! He’s just a guy’s guy! And more guys would do it if they thought they could get away with it!”

That, to me, is the most dangerous kind of thinking around. It’s not just men who have that thinking. It’s women, too.

It’s funny. The sexist assumptions about women — that they can’t be leaders because of their hormones — are used to help limit their engagement with politics or their roles in leadership. And then, on the other hand, the really sexist misguided assumptions about men — that their testosterone makes them monsters or insatiable sex addicts or whatever — serves to give them a pass to do whatever. It’s like the same dynamic, but moving in opposite directions.

I agree. I’ve given talks on this subject and I’ve had women tell me, “I agree a lot with what you’re saying, but the fact is that men are more aggressive than women.” And I think we need to really, as the academics would say, ‘unpack’ that idea. What do we mean when we say men are more aggressive? I’ll start pointing in the room. Is this guy more aggressive than that woman? What about that guy over there? And all of the sudden, the argument falls apart, because if you’re actually talking about real people, it doesn’t necessarily apply at all. We all know that. Not all men are more aggressive than all women. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. But the phrase, ‘men are more aggressive than women,’ if you don’t challenge it, is very easy to make and people nod their head and say, “Yeah, that’s just the way it is.”

“Men want to have sex more than women.” “Yeah, right.”

25 years ago, people told me that men are more visually stimulated than women and that’s why men like porn and women don’t. I didn’t believe it was true, but I had no argument. Then, the internet became widely available and women started watching porn in the privacy of their own homes. The number of women watching porn went up dramatically when there was no longer the issue of having to do it so publicly.

This biological ‘fact’ of visual stimulation just disappeared as an argument, and you don’t find that anymore to nearly the same extent. Similarly, it’s very easy to make these general statements, but we need to look more carefully, because there’s tremendous variation. It’s because of that variation that there’s hope.

A Mental Health Issue

 

"Preventable failures in U.S. maternal health care result in far too many pregnancy-related deaths. Each year, approximately 700 parents die from pregnancy and childbirth complications. As such, the U.S. maternal mortality rate is more than double that of most other developed countries."

More than 4 in 5 pregnancy-related deaths are preventable in the US, and mental health is the leading cause

The Department of Health and Human Services declared maternal deaths a public health crisis in December 2020. Such calls to action by the U.S. Surgeon General are reserved for only the most serious of public health crises.

In October 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data gathered between 2017 and 2019 that further paints an alarming picture of maternal health in the U.S. The report concluded that a staggering 84% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.

However, these numbers don’t even reflect how widespread this problem could be. At present, only 39 states have dedicated committees in place to review maternal deaths and determine whether they were preventable; of those, 36 states were included in the latest CDC data.

I am a therapist and scholar specializing in mental health during the perinatal period, the time during pregnancy and postpartum. Research has long demonstrated significant mental health risks associated with pregnancy, childbirth and the year following childbirth. The CDC’s report now makes it clear that mental health conditions are an important factor in many of these preventable deaths.

A closer look at the numbers

The staggering number of preventable maternal deaths – 84% – from the CDC’s most recent report represents a 27% increase from the agency’s previous report, from 2008 to 2017. Of these pregnancy-related deaths, 22% occur during pregnancy, 13% during childbirth and 65% during the year following childbirth.

This raises the obvious question: Why are so many preventable pregnancy-related deaths occurring in the U.S., and why is the number rising?

For a pregnancy-related death to be categorized as preventable, a maternal mortality review committee must conclude there was some chance the death could have been avoided by at least one reasonable change related to the patient, community, provider, facility or systems of care.

The most commonly identified factors in these preventable deaths have been those directly related to the patient or their support networks, followed next by providers and systems of care. While patient factors may be most frequently identified, they are often dependent on providers and systems of care.

Take, for instance, the example of a new mother dying by suicide from a mental health condition, such as depression. Patient factors could include her lack of awareness about the warning signs of clinical depression, which she may have mistaken for difficulties with the transition to parenthood and perceived personal failures as a new parent.

As is often the case, these factors would have directly related to the inaction of health care providers, such as a failure to screen for mental health concerns, delays in diagnosis and ineffective treatment. This type of breakdown – which is common – would have been made worse by poor coordination of care between providers across the health care system.

This example illustrates the complexities of the failures and preventable outcomes in the maternal health care system.

The U.S. has a far higher rate of pregnancy-related deaths than other developed nations.

The role of mental health

In the CDC’s latest report, mental health conditions are the overall most frequent cause of pregnancy-related death. Approximately 23% of deaths are attributed to suicide, substance use disorder or are otherwise associated with a mental health condition. The next two leading causes are hemorrhage and cardiac conditions, which combined contribute to only slightly more deaths than mental health conditions, at about 14 and 13%, respectively.

Research has long shown that 1 in 5 women suffer from mental health conditions during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and that this is also a time of increased risk for suicide. Yet, mental illness – namely, depression – is the most underdiagnosed obstetric complication in America. Despite some promising reductions in U.S. suicide rates in the general population over the last decade, maternal suicide has tripled during this same time period.

As it relates to maternal substance use, this issue is also worsening. In recent years, almost all deaths from drug overdose during pregnancy and the postpartum period involved opioids. A review from 2007 to 2016 found that pregnancy-related deaths involving opioids more than doubled.

Many of these issues stem from the fact that up to 80% of women with maternal mental health concerns are undiagnosed or untreated.

Barriers to care

In 2021, the first national data set of its kind showed that less than 20% of prenatal and postpartum patients were screened for depression. Only half of those who screened positive received follow-up care.

Research has long demonstrated widespread barriers and gaps in maternal mental health care. Many health care providers do not screen for mental health concerns because they do not know where to refer a patient or how to treat the condition. In addition, only about 40% of new mothers even attend their postpartum visit to have the opportunity for detection. Non-attendance is more common among higher-risk populations of postpartum women, such as those who are socially and economically vulnerable and whose births are covered by Medicaid.

Medicaid covers around 4 in 10 births. Through Medicaid benefits, pregnant women are covered for care related to pregnancy, birth and associated complications, but only up to 60 days postpartum. Not until 2021 did the American Rescue Plan Act begin extending Medicaid coverage up to one year postpartum.

But as of November 2022, only 27 states have adopted the Medicaid extension. In the other states, new mothers lose postpartum coverage after just 60 days. This matters a great deal because low-income mothers are at a greater risk for postpartum depression, with reported rates as high as 40% to 60%.

In addition, the recent CDC report showed that 30% of preventable pregnancy-related deaths happened between 43 and 365 days postpartum – which is also the time frame suicide most commonly occurs. Continued Medicaid expansion would reduce the number of uninsured new parents and rates of maternal mortality.

Another challenging barrier to addressing maternal mental health is the criminalization of substance use during pregnancy. If seeking care exposes a pregnant person to the possibility of criminal or civil pentalties – including incarceration, involvement with child protective services and the prospect of separation from their baby – it will naturally dissuade them from seeking treatment.

At this time, 24 states consider substance use during pregnancy to be child abuse, and 25 states require health care professionals to report suspected prenatal drug use. Likewise, there are also tremendous barriers in the postpartum period for mothers seeking substance use treatment, due in part to the lack of family-centered options.

With all these barriers, many pregnant and new mothers may make the difficult decision to not engage in treatment during a critical window for intervention.

Looking ahead

While the information described above already paints a dire picture, the CDC data was collected prior to two major events: the COVID-19 pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade, which overturned nearly 50 years of abortion rights. Both of these events have exacerbated existing cracks in the health care system and, subsequently, worsened the maternal health in the U.S.

In my view, without radical changes to maternal health care in the U.S., starting with how mental health is treated throughout pregnancy and postpartum, it’s likely parents will continue to die from causes that could otherwise be prevented.

This Is The Good News?

I don't know how to access all of this, but I think there's something here to show me that when Ammosexuals are debating gun policy in USAmerica Inc, "mental health" is not the driver they want me to believe it is.

IOW, you don't have to be crazy to be totally preoccupied with "gun rights" - you just have be a willingly ignorant consumer of the GOP's conditioning.

Unfortunately, the downside is that 20,000 customers blow their brains out every year, which seems like a waste of perfectly good Russian mob money that's been so carefully laundered through the NRA - which in turn seems to run contrary to the clear-eyed pragmatic pronouncements of "conservatives"

So now I have to consider that maybe the death toll is part of a general plan to keep Americans on edge.

Like somebody sees advantage in creating uncertainty and stress and doubt.

Hmmm

But, I digress.

From a study by UCLA and CDC:

Most male suicides in U.S. show no link to mental health issues, study reveals

Use of firearms, alcohol consumption are common factors in these deaths, say UCLA and CDC researchers

A majority of American men who die by suicide don’t have any known history of mental health problems, according to new research by UCLA professor Mark Kaplan and colleagues.

“What’s striking about our study is the conspicuous absence of standard psychiatric markers of suicidality among a large number of males of all ages who die by suicide,” said Kaplan, a professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

For the study, published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Kaplan and his co-authors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked recent suicide deaths among U.S. males aged 10 and older. They found that 60% of victims had no documented mental health conditions.

Further, males without a history of mental health issues died more frequently by firearms than those with known mental health issues, and many were found to have alcohol in their systems, the researchers noted.

The report highlights the major public health challenge of addressing suicide among males, who are far more likely to die by suicide and less likely to have known mental health conditions than females. In 2019, for instance, males accounted for 80% of all suicide deaths in the U.S., the authors said, and suicide is the eighth-leading cause of death among males 10 and older.

Kaplan and his colleagues examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System for the most-recent three-year period available, 2016 to 2018, during which more than 70,000 American males died by suicide. More than 42,000 of them had no known mental health conditions, they found.

The researchers then compared characteristics of those with and without known mental health conditions across their life span in four age groups: adolescents (10–17 years old), young adults (18–34), middle aged adults (35–64) and older adults (65 and older). Identifying the various factors that contribute to suicides among these groups is crucial to developing targeted suicide prevention efforts, especially outside of mental health systems, the team emphasized.

Among their findings, they discovered that across all groups, those without known mental health conditions were less likely to have had a history of contemplating or attempting suicide, or both, than those with such issues. In particular, young and middle-aged adults without known mental health conditions disclosed suicidal intent significantly less often, they said.

In addition, males with no mental health history who died by suicide in three of the four age groups — adolescents, young adults and middle-aged men — more commonly experienced relationship problems, arguments or another type of personal crisis as precipitating circumstances than for those with prior histories.

The researchers emphasized the importance of focusing on these kinds of acute situational stressors as part of suicide prevention efforts and working to discourage the use of alcohol, drugs and guns during times of crisis — particularly for teens and young adults, who may be more prone to act impulsively.

Kaplan and his colleagues said the findings highlight the potential benefits of strategies to create protective environments, provide support during stressful transitions, and enhance coping and problem-solving skills across the life span.

“Suicide prevention initiatives for males might benefit from comprehensive approaches focusing on age-specific stressors reported in this study, in addition to standard psychiatric markers,” the researchers wrote.

“These findings,” Kaplan said, “could begin to change views on the non–mental health factors driving up the rate of suicide among men.”

Today's Eternal Sadness

We're getting some details on the killing of a Pentagon cop last Tuesday.

The murderer had a history of violence, apparently due to mental health problems, and yet nobody could quite figure out that he might be a danger to himself and others, and that maybe he shouldn't be walking around waiting for something to set him off?

That in itself is worth looking into, but the thing that chaps my ass is the fact that the cop was killed with his own gun.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Phillip Brent said he was awoken early one April morning by word someone had broken into his home in an upscale Atlanta suburb. He was away, so he quickly dialed up video from the home’s surveillance cameras on his phone.

Brent said the video showed a masked man smashing through a back door with a sledgehammer. The intruder, who appeared armed with a crowbar, eventually left and pulled off his mask. Brent said he instantly recognized the face on the video.

He said it was a neighbor, Austin Lanz, 27; the same man the FBI said killed a Pentagon police officer without warning or provocation Tuesday on a Metro bus platform outside the military headquarters. Lanz also was killed.

Brent said the April break-in, which resulted in Lanz’s arrest, was the culmination of a long campaign of harassment by Lanz against him and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells. The couple didn’t know Lanz personally and still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind his fixation on them.

Brent and Wells, both 23, said the encounters were by turns menacing and bizarre, offering a glimpse of the man who carried out such a confounding attack at the Pentagon. The two said they were fearful of Lanz, but also deeply concerned about him and his mental health.

What triggered his attack outside the Pentagon also remains unknown. In a statement released by Lanz’s family, his relatives offered condolences to the family of George Gonzalez, the slain Pentagon police officer, saying they were “sorry and heartbroken.” In an interview, the family’s attorney, Jimmy Berry, said the family knows of no motive for the attack.

It goes on - and gets creepier - but the point for me is that we're told over and over that having a gun is how you keep yourself safe. That officer had a gun. He was trained in how not to get shot with it. And he's unavailable for comment because he's fucking dead now.

Which brings me to this: Fuck the shooter - I don't wanna remember that prick. I don't wanna hear his name.

Officer George Gonzales