Short excerpt below, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.
This last point is interesting. If the most radicalized and antidemocratic segment of the public is also a small and unrepresentative minority, then there’s no real reason to worry about its influence on electoral politics. Yes, it may elect a few similarly radical members of Congress (who at this moment are giving the Republican speaker of the House a terrible headache) and it may even be strong enough again to choose a major-party nominee. But if these voters are a distinct minority, that nominee will be easily defeated at the ballot box. That is, unless the institutions of our democracy amplify that minority’s influence — which they do.
[ … ]
One response is to say that this dynamic represents a distortion of our political institutions: It’s just that they’re not working properly! But that’s not right, is it?
Whatever they were, the radical impulses that animated or shaped the most prominent and influential of the American revolutionaries were refracted through an inherited commitment to the received hierarchies of status that shaped their world. What’s more, the framers of the Constitution were pushed toward a mistrust and wariness of popular government as a result of the riots, rebellions and other forms of mass discontent that characterized American politics under the Articles of Confederation.
Soldiers who came home from fighting ISIS after firing thousands of artillery shells developed severe mental health problems (likely because sending giant nonstop shockwaves through your brain is not great for it), and the Marines mostly turned their backs on them:
Didn’t read the article yet but from the actual medical treatment standpoint what does NYT want? It’s not like there is magical fairy dust to sprinkle on brains to fix them or a super secret pill approved to fix brains injured by repetitive cannon fire that was being withheld from them. So of course people with significant psychiatric symptoms are likely going to be treated with “potent psychotropics” as part of their treatment plan
The system is working as designed. SUPPORT THE TROOPS! Until the second they’re back on home soil and oh healthcare costs? That’s SOCIALISM!
And if they document the risks and the injuries, then they actually have to pay to treat them, and we can’t have that. Better to just let them slip through the cracks and spit them out into society and see how it goes.
I think that part wouldn’t be the problem in the context of a comprehensive attempt to figure out what was wrong with these people and how to help them, including trying various things and seeing what worked and what didn’t. That doesn’t sound like what happened, though - rather the military misdiagnosed them, gave them the treatment for a problem they did not have, then when it didn’t work said “well, too bad, I guess you’re all just bad eggs and this is your fault, not ours” and kicked them out and cut off their benefits.
Perhaps it wants our government to provide minimum support to our soldiers who lost their health doing what the government told them to, instead of shitting on them?
Reading this article I really see the issue that they were exposed to this in the first place and the standard DOD/VA service connected disability system issues not the medical care afterwards but NYT seems to never miss a chance to take some shots at reasonable psychiatric practice. Its chasing ghosts from a medical standpoint (see the quote below), so you by definition have to use treatments that aren’t approved for it as none exist, but NYT has a long history in my experience of being unreasonably critical of off label medication use in psychiatry. In one case a year or two ago I remember they seemed to criticize a psychiatrist who used an an antipsychotic to treat depression but didn’t mention the medication has an FDA approval for that indication and has been shown to better at treating depression than some “normal” antidepressants!
(Also makes me realize there going to 10s of thousands of Russian and Ukrainians dealing with this)
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Finding that pattern in living veterans is another matter. There is currently no brain scan or blood test that can detect the minute injuries, Dr. Perl said; the damage can be seen only under microscopes once a service member has died. So there is no definitive way to tell whether a living person is injured. Even if there were, there is no therapy to fix it.
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Imagine there may have been some underlying psychiatric issues but being ready to kill yourself and others for a political statement but not even knowing who you about to kill seems kinda emblematic of modern world these days
yes, democrats are running a 200 year old corpse against a guy who is literally broadcasting that he wants to execute his political opponents, and have zero inspiration, no problems detected!
