The Daily Nightmare

Prompted by a couple of suicides by persons famous in New York, the New Yorker published an article on the increasing number of Americans killing themselves.

It repeats some points made before that nevertheless bear repeating: that suicides are to some extent social, and there would likely be many fewer suicides or even attempts if there were fewer guns in the closet.

But it brings us up to date on other factors. Certain new drugs, like opiods, are complicit, as are other social factors. "A third of Americans are sleep-deprived, and sleep deprivation has a devastating effect on mental health. The mental-health system has deteriorated; according to Schwartz, there is less access to good care in most parts of the country than there was fifteen or twenty years ago. Rates of teen depression have risen since 2011, and students are carrying more debt and face more uncertainty about their lives. Despite a growing economy, people who are employed today do not feel confident that they will be employed tomorrow; with automation, many jobs feel terribly precarious. And the social safety net is being reeled in at every opportunity."

In certain high-stress occupations suicide is an invisible scourge: "... more policemen die of suicide than die on the job; more soldiers die of suicide than die in combat; more firefighters die of suicide than die in fires."

Then there's the terrible pressure of the current national regime. "There is another factor that should not be underestimated. On a national stage, we’ve seen an embrace of prejudice and intolerance, and that affects the mood of all citizens.
The viciousness that has become normalized, when added to the cultural addiction to the media moment, increase the feeling of being alone in one's particular misery. "There is a dearth of empathy, even of kindness, in the national conversation, and those deficits turn ordinary neurosis into actionable despair."

Look no further that the human crisis created by the current administration's cruel and inhuman policy of splitting up families and incarcerating children of those deemed illegal immigrants. This policy itself has led to at least one suicide.  Thousands of children face irreparable trauma from these acts that stink of Nazism.

 Were this occurring in any other country or any other time, there would be a UN resolution and world condemnation.  We might even expect it from some countries (and indeed it may be par for the course in say North Korea) but who would ever have believed it would happen in the United States of America.  Now we know why our brutal dictator wannabe loves him the brutal dictator of North Korea.

But even for those who are not under severe pressure, like many of the New Yorker's readers, there is a price to pay for continually feeling that the world has gone crazy, that it is in some respects almost literally upside down.

In this article, its writer Andrew Solomon offers a personal observation:  "My psychoanalyst said that he had never before had every one of his patients discuss national politics repeatedly, in session after session."

And why not?  We don't necessarily expect our President to be very smart or totally truthful.  But the antipresident astonishes a little more every day, with statements, tweets, speeches and lately a press conference in which everything he said was untrue, made up or a demonstrable lie.  Everything.  As for smarts, here's a recent headline: Mother of School-Shooting Victim: Meeting Trump Was ‘Like Talking to a Toddler’  Or this:Teacher corrects White House letter with 'many silly mistakes,' sends it back to Trump.

That's not about style points.  It's about the need to trust the leadership of the United States, and it's gone, thoroughly, and on the most basic levels.  Even worse, there is apparently no one better in the White House, no one even close to competent.  How about the state department spokesperson who evidently didn't realize that the US and the Nazis were not allies on D-Day?  It happened, and almost no one noticed.

The national anxiety grows as it becomes apparent that the head of the US government amounts to a paid agent of the Russian government, and that he is doing everything in his power to further the Russian agenda in the world, and to weaken the US.  And the Republican party with control of the other two branches of government are letting him do it, without a peep.

For those of us who lived much of our lives with the Soviet Union as powerful adversaries capable of ending our lives at any moment, it is beyond surreal.  For decades the Soviet Union was the second most powerful nation in the world.  Now Russia, with an economy smaller than the state of California, is accomplishing what the Soviet Union could not.

Evidence grows that Russian meddling swung the British vote to exit from the European Union, coordinated with at least one of the Brexit leaders.  Weakening European unity and the Western alliance is Russia's wet dream.  Evidence is growing of the extent of the conspiracy to take over the US government, and the extent of its success.

In just the past week, the antipresident did his best to wreck the Western alliance while proposing that Russia reenter the G-8, which he followed up by giving Russia and China everything they could want in relation to North Korea.  How can we cope with this happening, while those in power in Washington pretend that it isn't happening?  Ask your psychiatrist.