Why The Epidemic Of Depression In The US of A?

Why the prevalence of so much depression in the U.S.? In 1998, Martin Seligman, then president of the American Psychological Association, spoke to the National Press Club about an American depression epidemic: “We discovered two astonishing things about the rate of depression across the century. The first was there is now between ten and twenty times as much of it as there was fifty years ago. And the second is that it has become a young person’s problem. When I first started working in depression thirty years ago. . . the average age of which the first onset of depression occurred was 29.5. . . .Now the average age is between 14 and 15.”

  Sad! Even sadder, the deck is stacked against the struggling citizen being squeezed into passive consumerhood almost from the get go. In schools he's branded with ADD and forced on drugs because he sees he's merely being trained to be a cog in a corporate machine. At work, the intelligent employee who sees himself performing mechanical drudge tasks beneath his brain power can't help feeling enraged, frustrated. And then there is the fundamental bias in mental health professionals when any one seeks assistance. They then learn that their "problems" - often inattention and noncompliance - are treated as mental disorders. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where they all pay attention to much that is unstimulating. In this world, one routinely complies with the demands of authorities......or else....is deemed a "trouble maker". Thus for many MDs and Ph.Ds, the genuinely passionate people who rebel against this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world.

By accepting this tommyrot (committing the fundamental attribution error), people become mentally passive, no longer transgressive in their outlooks. They end up blaming themselves instead of the foul system that plays both ends against the middle to trap them. Enter the so-called “free market” which is really a COERCIVE market in which people are forced to compete but almost never win. THIS above all is responsible for the absurd rise in depression. And so we become disengaged from our jobs and our schooling. Young people are pressured to amass increasingly large student-loan debt so as to acquire the credentials to get a job, in a profession for which they often have little enthusiasm for. And increasing numbers of people are completely socially isolated – so will tend to self-medicate using assorted drugs, sex or even writing hateful, angry blogs in which they thumb their noses at the world. How to know if a market is free or coerced? Charles Reich provided the test ('Opposing the System’, 1995, p. 22):

"A free market produces results that favor the health of society as a whole, because an essential balance is maintained. But in a coercive market, the balance is destroyed, the earning power of work and the standard of living of workers declines, and society as a whole is devastated while those with economic power gain an ever more unbalanced share of the nation's economic wealth"


This is exactly what we have with the top 1% controlling 57% of the nation's wealth, and 400 billionaires with the same monetary resources as 150 million fellow citizens! And they control the purveyors of PR, whether based on university "research" or the compromised media, who want people to believe THEY are responsible for their failures and not the corrupt SYSTEM which forces them to play both ends against the middle and lose. Merely take the example of a family barely making it, one of whose members now get a promotion. But by getting that promotion - earning say $5,000 more a year - which might help them breathe easier, they then forfeit their food stamps and Medicaid benefits, so are right back behind the "eight ball". Fairness? Hell, the system's coordinators and promoters never heard of it!

  Factoring into the false consciousness that gives rise to mass depression is the "fundamental attribution error" which is defined as:

The tendency to credit or blame individuals for their level of failure or success without considering the aspects of the social structure that impel or impede their progress. Thus, it results in praise of the system and condemnation of individuals who are defined as losers.

This in turn leads to workers who mutate into automatons prepared to tolerate any amount of systematic abuse from a corrupt system, because they lay the blame on their own "lack of ambition" or some other false excuse contrived by the corporate thought controllers to deflect blame from their own greed. Then, when their own expectations for their future success aren't met, they turn the selfsame perverted paradigm onto themselves and ...become depressed. Which can manifest in many ways.

This may well be at the heart and core of why so many of the working and middle classes vote against their own best interests (even when they're on food stamps). Precisely because they blame all or most of their failures to get ahead on themselves, instead of the vicious system of economic tyranny where it belongs. In this sad way, people become passive and their own worst enemies. The idea that our mental illness epidemic is being caused by a peculiar rebellion against a dehumanizing society, is then removed from the mainstream memetic map. When a societal problem grows to become all encompassing, we often no longer even notice it.

The poor shmuck who just killed himself because he got downsized two weeks before his pension? Hell, he should have chosen a better job! The sorry loser who sits in a depressed apt., cranking out hideous hate blogs all day until he's on the verge of a stroke? He needs to go to a shrink - who, of course - will blame him for not being "adjusted". She will then steer him onto Paxil or Zoloft and if those don't work, likely have him briefly committed for electro-convulsive therapy. The young mother who lost her job because she couldn't find or afford child care? Tough luck! She shouldn't have had so many kids, or any kid, period! And so it goes!

What happens when struggling people are shut out by the deliberately dysfunctional system? Well, then they will seek to survive any way they can! They will most likely try the route of getting Social Security disability or maybe some form of VA benefits (if they were in the service) to be able to continue, since working is no longer an option - at least in their minds.

Here's a stat to blow minds: The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders (including depression) that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from one in 184 Americans to one in 76. For children, the rise is even more startling—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades,” as Marcia Angell summarizes in a New York Times Book Review. Angell also reports that a large survey of adults conducted between 2001 and 2003 sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health found that at some point in their lives, 46 percent of Americans met the criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association for at least one mental illness.


We literally have nearly half the country putatively off its rocker! Another wowser: In 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400% in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans ages 18-44 years. By 2008, 23% of women ages 40–59 years were taking antidepressants. And we won't even add to this all the poor zombies on sleeping pills like Ambien, because they can't sleep properly!

Another barometer - using questions - to assess whether our society is as fucked up as it appears or not. Do our major societal institutions promote: ·

Enthusiasm—or passivity?

· Respectful personal relationships—or manipulative impersonal ones?

· Community, trust, and confidence—or isolation, fear and paranoia?

· Empowerment—or helplessness?

· Autonomy (self-direction)—or heteronomy (institutional-direction)?

· Participatory democracy—or authoritarian hierarchies?

· Diversity and stimulation—or homogeneity and boredom?

  I warrant most readers will know which answers are forthcoming. I warrant they will also see why this society - such as it is- is totally fucked up and generating fucked up, angry or pathologically sick people almost at twice the birth rate. One way to make it healthier? Ease up and back off from all the hyper-militarist bullshit which is creating authoritarian personalities at a rate unheard of in our history. According to Harvey A. Hornstein in his terrific book Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism (Prentice-Hall, 1976, 'We and They', p.13.), this militarist-oriented personality "is pathologically rigid, absolutist and displays little or no flexibility" . In the words of some, “It’s my way or the highway”. This type of psychotic then becomes ensconced in the corporate world, say as a bully employer or worse, the guy in the next cubicle!

The problem with endemic militarism is that it literally breeds millions of such personalities, or else paranoid ones that tend to join subversive Right wing terror groups, or gun groups. As Hornstein shows, deprived of their manhood - either because of losing a job to a black or brown person (or woman), or unable to provide for family - they take out their anger and frustrations on anyone or anything that they deem offends them. In the process they dehumanize their targets, using epithets like "monkeys", "baboons", "libtards" or "c*nts" to try to make themselves feel superior - but they never do. In the end, despite all the words of roiling hate, their depression continues and their families and society pay the price.

Can this insanity be halted? Maybe, but the odds right now are slim. Too many are caught up in the brain grinder. It will likely take an alien invasion - with the focus on lobotomizing all the authoritarians and dispatching them to Tau Ceti- to fight a real war against a giant race of super -armored beetles or giant spiders. (See 'Starship Troopers' or better, read the book by Robert Heinlein.)

Why Russians Hate Neoliberal Imperialists - And Americans Should Too! (2)

"At the heart of neoliberal narratives are ideologies, modes of governance, and policies that embrace a pathological individualism, a distorted notion of freedom, and a willingness both to employ state violence to suppress dissent and abandon those suffering from a collection of social problems ranging from dire poverty and joblessness to homelessness" - Henry Giroux, 'The Politics of Cruelty - America's Descent Into Madness' (smirkingchimp.com)

In the previous installment I examined how Russia was brought to its economic knees using the "shock doctrine" of the Neoliberal capitalist imperialists, documented in excruciating detail in Naomi Klein's book,  'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007).    But as Klein describes, the shock doctrine's basis of "disaster capitalism" was to deliberately use assorted confected crises - whether military  or economic- to justify subverting the will of many other nations and their citizens to make the world "safe" for global capital. In one chapter where Klein coins the term "disaster capitalism" she analogizes it to the electric shocks delivered via certain tortures, say to a person's head & genitals. The shocked victims became so mentally incoherent, terrified -  that they were ready to accept just about anything demanded of them.


In the aftermath of what the Neoliberals did to Russia, it perhaps wasn't surprising they'd turn their eyes to the U.S. itself. But how to do it? Capitalism in a way was already entrenched, at least in terms of a mixed economy, i.e. which also had aspects of mild socialism (for example, inherent in social insurance). But the Neoliberals and their military shock troops ensconced in a de facto shadow government (exposed in Kathryn Olmstead's Challenging the Secret Government, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996) needed a way to: a) keep citizens hostage to the Neoliberal imperative, which demanded ever increasing removal of economic security - especially in "entitlements", and b) demanded an ever expanded military  -surveillance structure to halt  anti-capitalist protests in the country, as well as establish global capital beach heads in others. This meant dramatically inflating the military-  surveillance budget. The problem was how to do it, given the old enemies had been brought to heel.

The ideal way to instill shock (in an already market-hostage consumer nation) if one wished to ramp up surveillance and defense budgets (at the cost of entitlements),  would be an attack on American soil - which would then be milked for all it was worth as justification for increased security-defense spending. The attack would be such that 99% of Americans would be so traumatized that they'd be prepared to give up anything (except maybe shopping), even long established rights- liberties, just to be protected from further attacks. If the attack was large enough or spread out, the putative security state could exploit it to instill more fear, paranoia by subsequent use of color coded "alerts". The media would help by replaying the images which would then permeate every neuron of every sentient citizen in every state - much the same way the public slaughter of John F. Kennedy has been emblazoned in the minds and eyes of later presidents to make them understand they aren't the real heads of state, only puppets. If the enemy was also demonized enough, it might rival the Cold War boogeyman of "Reds under the bed" confected by the McCarthyites and their latter-day  clones.

Whether one is a "9/11 Truther"  or shares a milder perspective (like me, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-responsible-was-bush-for-911.html) it is indisputable that the Bushite regime - shoehorned into power by five Supremes - benefited enormously by the 9/11 attacks. Not only did Bush's approval rating soar from the toilet (35%)  to over 90% in days, but within barely five years the defense budget had doubled, from 2.4% of GDP to 4.9% while the surveillance budget had exploded even more - thanks to the provisions in the "the Patriot Act" which most of our dutiful reps didn't even bother to read before they signed it into law.

Worse, these reprobates rolled over like beaten whelps as the Bushites pumped the false basis for invading Iraq - seeking to validate a nearly 10 -year long invasion that would suck our own nation dry in its domestic resources, as it ramped up deficits - which of course, was the plan. It was part of the shock doctrine to generate monstrous debt,  the better to justify cutting those nasty entitlements as the Neoliberals demanded.

Thankfully, at least one true patriot and courageous citizen, Joe Wilson, had the guts to expose the Bushie's "yellowcake- Niger" fakery (part of what they claimed was the reason to attack Saddam, since otherwise we'd all be incinerated in a nuclear cloud). However, his wife Valerie Plame paid the price by being outed by the Bushies as a CIA agent. Talk about treason! But some Americans- who now blather about Ed Snowden - seem lost at sea as to who are true traitors and who are patriots.

Amidst all this changes were being made in terms of mass surveillance. Though the Bushies were caught red-handed illegally going around the 1978 FISA law to get illegal wiretaps - of those terrible 'terrists,  at least suspects- a wimp congress looked the other way and actually approved the illegal wiretaps by CHANGING the law! Never in the history of these United States has a bigger consortium of treasonous rats been exposed. And to make it even worse, a subsequent congress actually approved the extension of the bastardized law several years later.

The seeds of the shock doctrine applied to the U.S.. were already well in hand. In her Chapter 15 ('The Corporate State') Naomi Klein describes in detail how the U.S. was transferred into a massive corporate state with the security apparatus to back it up. (Red flags about too many energetic citizen protests to globalization had already appeared with the anti-WTO Seattle protests in 1999, made famous in the movie, 'The Battle of Seattle'). So the privatization forces (who also at the time were making a full court press to privatize Social Security based on the Bush Texas plan)  needed mass surveillance to identify would-be trouble makers, and they also needed something more: a martial law fallback position to lock up anyone they deemed too 'activist".

Thus does Klein, in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 15, introduce us to the continuity of government (COG) program I'd blogged on earlier, i.e. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/between-skeleton-key-and-cog-how-close.html

She writes (p. 390):

"In the heat of the mid-term elections of 2006, three weeks before announcing Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, George W. Bush signed the Defense Authorization Act in a private Oval Office ceremony. Tucked into its 1400 pages was a rider that went almost completely unnoticed at the time. It gave the president the power to declare martial law and 'employ the armed forces' - including the National Guard - overriding the wishes of state governors in the event of a 'public emergency' in order to 'restore public order' and 'suppress disorder'"

Klein added that the declared emergency could  'be almost anything' including "mass protests".  Obviously, the Seattle 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests had given the Neoliberal imperialists a wake up call and they weren't about to take it any more. Hence also, the way they bore down on Occupy Wall Street in 2011, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/12/national-security-state-spied-on-occupy.html  to the extent of even aiming sniper rifles at them in Houston.

Klein notes that before Bush's treachery martial law could only be enacted in a time of actual insurrection. Worse, deploying military on American soil violated the Posse Comitatus law.

As time went on, the corporate gangster war-surveillance state was consolidated in multiple ways. But like the proverb about the frog who jumps from boiling water when dumped into it, but is boiled alive while immersed if the water temperature is increase only 1 degree at a time , Americans (most) were oblivious as their nation was slowly transformed into a fascist police state. Or maybe they were still too shocked from the events of 9/11 to do anything, especially with the Bushies manipulating them with a series of yellow, orange and other "alerts".

Because in 2006, right under their noses, the Military Commissions Act was passed which effectively removed the age old right of habeas corpus. Not long after the National Defense Authorization Act (of 2011, then 2012, then 2013, and soon 2014) which codified the indefinite military detention of American citizens without requiring they be charged with a specific crime or given a trial. (See also: http://truth-out.org/news/item/17070-indefinite-surveillance-say-hello-to-the-national-defense-authorization-act-of-2014

In Klein's examination we also learn that the Bush martial law insertion via hidden rider to implement continuity of gov't could be traced back to John Foster Dulles who defined a two -pronged priority for the country: 1) defeating communism, especially as manifested in Russia, and 2) protecting multi-national corporations - through whatever means necessary including coups staged in non-cooperative nations, who refused to allow resources to be exploited. Thus, the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala using the CIA to protect the profits of United Fruit.

Dulles made it clear that "coups and military interventions were the means to the end" of corporate hegemony- to thereby arrive at stable environments for business to prosper. Translation: make every country with ripe resources plum for the taking and be prepared to put down any nation or its government that got too uppity. Oh, and kill any upstarts!


But why worry? After all, we now know actual American citizens can be killed at the will or discretion of the executive.  Anyone paying attention? Maybe the shock doctrine has indeed worked because it has imposed shocks that benumb the populace into ceding everything away as they mutate into consumers - away from citizens.

Interested readers may then ponder the 14 characteristics of fascism, noting in particular: Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -because of fear of enemies and the need for security, Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - people rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe, Supremacy of the Military (Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding);  and Obsession with National Security -- Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

See more at: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/14-characteristics-of-fascism.html