I
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You
You fascists bound to lose
Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You
You fascists bound to lose.
All of you fascists bound to lose:
I said, all of you fascists bound to lose:
Yes sir, all of you fascists bound to lose:
You
Bound to lose!
People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching
Where a million fascists dies
You
You fascists bound to lose!
I
And take my union gun
We
Before this battle
You
You fascists bound to lose!
As someone who has spent decades living with severe mental illness, I think your stance will both kill innocent people and ruin the lives of many that survive. It was hard enough dealing with the stigma (even in medical settings) before the culture decided that becoming a mass shooter had to mean you had a mental illness. Now that we’ve decided every bigot with a gun and a vendetta is “mentally ill,” things are even worse. And now you want to make our lives even harder by lumping Nazis in with us? Tribalist hate shouldn’t be in the same category as depression; they are fundamentally different phenomena. I don’t think you have any concept of the harm this would do to people who are already vulnerable. Besides, if you think Nazism is a mental illness, are you arguing that most of Germany simultaneously developed the same murderous mental illness for a decade or so in the 20th century? Really?
Thanks for replying; I’m still developing my understanding of how to navigate this area of ideas with care.
How do you feel about drug addiction being classified as a mental illness? Do you feel that pharmacological alterations to the brain belong in the same category as depression and suicidal ideation? Would things be easier for people struggling with depression if there was a different category for addiction-based dysfunction that separated the two more distinctly in the public consciousness?
It might be easier for people suffering from other mental illnesses if addiction were in a different category, but addiction isn’t something you choose. You may choose to try a substance, but no serious scientist holds addicts morally responsible for their addiction in the way we hold murderers or Nazis responsible for their actions.
An example of how things are already hard enough for us: https://www.propublica.org/article/they-needed-mental-health-treatment-mississippi-threw-them-in-jail