War by the Terrified

Posted on December 11, 2005 in Stigma Terrorism

UPDATED

“Mental illness affects people like you and me. Its time we realized this is about us, not about them.”

— Soumitra Pathare, Psychiatrist, Pune, India

It’s been interesting watching people take in the spectacle of what happened in Miami on Thursday. The unafflicted either kept their mouths shut, for the most part, or said that the federal marshals just did their job. The weirdest pronouncement came from the sister of someone whose past blogging I’ve respected a great deal: she suggested that if you suspect that you might go crazy on an airplane, don’t fly. In other words, being bipolar means you are grounded for life.

Among the afflicted, I’ve seen a few reactions. There has been fear. “That could have been me.” There have been righteous (and right) invocations of the importance of taking your medications. A very few have stood up for the marshals, but most folks aren’t saying anything at all. It’s the bipolar ghetto and its walls are made of a vacuum, the coldest, most noise-free state of existence of all.

So I am going to come out and say what I think: Alpizar is a victim of the War on Terrorism. Before 9-11 there was a long interval of time when men like Alpizar were wrestled to the ground, not shot. We did fine. And in this age when there is superb security going into the gate, when the planes themselves are checked, etc., there was no call to kill a man shouting that he had a bomb, especially when his wife was crying out that he was suffering from bipolar and off his medications.

Several years ago, I was arguing against arming pilots and putting armed federal marshals on planes. I predicted, rightly, that the day would come when one of these would panic and shoot a mentally ill man. Since these practices were implemented, not a single terrorist has been deterred. And now Rigoberto Apilzar is dead.

I think one reason why the unafflicted — even the ones who oppose the War on Terror or at least the War in Iraq — are lining up to support the marshals is that we, the mentally ill represent an imaginary threat — a threat of anarchy and violence. They believe this beyond all reason, beyond the results of studies. Movies define their world for them and they actually believe what they see. People who laugh off Rambo and the Terminator as impossible, believe that we who suffer from mental illness are more dangerous to them than they are to us.

I don’t think the unafflicted are bad people. With a little education, they learn. If they are willing. Getting the unafflicted to learn the real story is like getting some of us to take our meds. They make all kinds of excuses. They keep making the same mistakes about our nature over and over again, justifying right and left their own infernal and painful solutions to our problems! And they end up with the same results.

Everyone who has seen the film 28 Days or been through a partial hospitalization program knows what that defines!

This isn’t a War on Terror. It’s a War by the Terrified, people who have been brainwashed by a corrupt administration and by their own folk-psychology. And consequently, license has been given to the military, law enforcement, and just about everyone else to shoot at anything which scares them.

Speaking as a highly probable target, I say that it’s time to chill, folks.

The WHO Site talks about the Rights of the Mentally Ill

Thanks to Shrinkette for these WHO links.

Schneier on Security wrote an excellent explanation about why current sky marshal protocols do not fit reality:

….any time you have an officer making split-second life and death decisions, you’re going to have mistakes. I hesitate to second-guess the sky marshals on the ground; they were in a very difficult position. But the way to minimize mistakes is through training. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in this sort of thing read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Two, I’m not convinced the sky marshals’ threat model matches reality. Mentally ill people are far more common than terrorists. People who claim to have a bomb and don’t are far more common than people who actually do. The real question we should be asking here is: what should the appropriate response be to this low-probability threat?

Also read The war on terror: Miami