State violence has a direct impact on mental health. Author Jack Bragen explores how recent events have affected him personally, and questions what can be done to alleviate further trauma.
I was diagnosed more than 40 years ago with “Schizophrenia: Paranoid-Type.” Why are my crazy ideas normal suddenly? And really, I am truly afraid. I don’t know what life has in store for me with the decimation of basic liberty in the United States, and I don’t know anything about the future at all—no one can predict the future.
President Trump instills fear in many individuals. The fear resembles what I have seen in World War II-era newsreels of what Hitler was doing. And it resembles the fear instilled in the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984. What’s happening to the US seems like fascism. I don’t know how far Trump will be able to take this before the American people put on the brakes.
As a mentally disabled man, I feel especially at risk and vulnerable. This doesn’t even include how my paranoid tendencies have worsened.
I am upset about the extremeness of the power grab. It seems to me that President Trump intends to remain in office as long as he lives and does not intend to give up the office after his four years are up. That’s an educated guess and it comes for several reasons.
A lot of his focus is to consolidate more, more, and more power into the office of the presidency. Why would he do that, and then hand over the office to someone else? Secondly, he has hinted at changing the US Constitution to allow more than two terms for the president.
Trump is removing and replacing all of the major government officials that could pose an inconvenience to Trump’s total authority. Trump does not seem to have an issue with the US Supreme Court, so far at least.
But he has been purging the federal government to get rid of the conscientious, thinking people who may oppose his administration in one manner or another. Just look at the firing of the US Librarian of Congress and head of the US Copyright Office! How can small authors like me hope to rise to a better level, when our work will not have any protection against it getting ripped off by the big entertainment conglomerates?
Even more threatening: Our First Amendment rights are under assault. Not only is Trump using intimidation to discourage freedom of speech; additionally, misguided people who align with Trump, who can get violent, cause it to be a fearful undertaking to express our views within earshot of people. Furthermore, people who work in the media, like myself, sense some level of risk at sharing divergent views.
And now, according to news reports, citizens of the US, and not just immigrants, are “being rounded up.” Rounded up! That’s the terminology used in mainstream news.
It seems as though the American people have been desensitized to the current erosion of liberty, the oppression and violence of our government toward its citizens, and to the destruction of American principles as we’ve known them to be. Many Americans are fully ignoring and denying what’s happening, and are blithely seeking gratification. Business as usual.
What’s happening to us right now is not “business as usual,” I promise you that.
We’re heading straight into a deadly war against Iran, civilians who’ve done nothing wrong are being rounded up and imprisoned, and in Trump’s new budget, there is the prospect of huge losses of benefits for disabled people. Moreover, the military is being pitted against ordinary citizens. The US military is supposed to be defending Americans, not assaulting us.
Many years ago, before Trump got into politics, he visited Russia and may have had a meeting with Putin. Who knows what took place during that visit? Could Putin have kidnapped Donald Trump and employed mind control technology? Or did they just share a flask of vodka and make plans for world domination?
As a person who has substantial mental and physical disabilities, I don’t know whether the world will continue to have room for me, or for other people like me. I have seen the mental health “Patients’ Rights” movement disappear through strategies of social architecture, and through the fact that second-generation antipsychotics do more than their predecessor drugs to limit brain function.
Mentally ill people are kept under very tight control. Those of us who don’t want the control are released to the street, and consequently, to our slow deterioration and potentially tragic death. It is not much of a choice.
While people with mental illnesses have been a highly controlled population for decades, Trump will probably see fit to enact extreme and draconian segregation and isolation. This is only a guess. Yet he did state in his speeches he wants to put “the crazies” back into state hospitals. Or he may see fit to disqualify millions of mentally ill people who truly must have government support if we are to survive.
As a 60-year-old mentally ill man, I have seen over the decades a decreasing tolerance in the general public towards persons with mental differences. This is disheartening and it makes me feel on the one hand, that I must always be ready to explain myself, and, on the other hand, outraged at this unjust treatment.
People with psychological disabilities are often unhirable just because those in power see us as a nuisance in their company and not a potential asset. Getting hired at a decent job is the path to emancipation. This is a rocky path if you have a psych disability, and a highly improbable path if we are not young. And I do not expect President Trump to make any of this situation better for us.
I can’t live as a terrified person, and that impels me to write this piece—it is my way of coping with a situation that is beginning to look increasingly hopeless. I don’t think Donald Trump is in favor of disabled people having rights. He has not done anything too extreme to us yet. Maybe we are lower on his list, and that’s probably the only reason.
I am paraphrasing, but the well-known Martin Niemöller quote, “First they came for the socialists…then they came for the trade unionists…then then came for the Jews…then they came for me—and there was one one left to speak for me,” has never been more relevant.
What can we do about Trump? We need to speak up. We need to do this no matter how frightening it is. Silence, indifference, and inaction will not keep us safe. When more and more people speak out against Trump’s actions, the safer it will be to speak. It may not feel safe for now, but it is not safe to keep quiet.
Jack Bragen currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.