Let’s be respectful to all
I commend Dr. Robert Springer for calling out disrespectful behavior in his opinion printed Easter April 1. Lack of respect of self and others is what we see too much of. However, I don’t think this is the “norm.”
The “norm” is the media blasting us with aberrant behavior. We’re arguing gun control while publicizing every aspect of the shooter’s life. It’s not a wonder that copycats are emerging. This behavior is being exploited by all the tabloids.
I listen and learn from those smarter than myself, Dr. Robert Springer being one of them. Another is recently elected OHA representative Dr. Kelii Akina.
Dr. Akina continues to list four suggestions for political behavior.
• Issues, not labels
• Listen, don’t prejudge
• Unite, don’t divide
• Lead, don’t complain
The Golden Rule continues to be the foundation of most spiritual disciplines. I believe this rule is still the “norm,” not the exception that many media outlets would have us believe. Respectful is how I choose to treat others.
Mike Curtis, Koloa
Talent show appreciates support
Thursday, March 29, the Kauai District Student Council hosted the annual Kauai District Talent Show.
In this talent show, all winners from each public school showcased their talent while competing for the perpetual trophy. The acts consisted of Beyond Fam, Triton Avaeoru-Villatora, Carla Mae Satumba & Eilon Jamorabon, MJ Pascual, Jalen Hook, Flashpointe, Analani Bacon, Tiffany Sagucio, Mahina Olores, and Adina Burrow, Chrystal Burrow, & Allen Bueno.
In addition, we had special acts as Zavier Cummings, an Instagram comedian performed stand up comedy, making everyone laugh through our short break. In addition, Pink Pebbles Crew amazed the crowd with their breakdancing as the auditors calculated the scores.
For judges, we had Arthur Brun, Gina Duarte, Mel Rapozo, Starla Marie, and Mary Lardizabal. Auditors were Chuck Brady, human resources for Kauai Marriott, and Billie Terao, KCC Lecturer. Special thank you to the mMayor who came and gave words of encouragement to the contestants.
In the first place, taking home $100 and the trophy was Adina Burrow Chrystal Burrow, and Allan Bueno. Second place, Mahina Olores, taking home $75. Lastly, third place went to Flashpointe, taking home $50.
Special thank you to the acts, special guests, auditors, judges, and audience. Each year the council would like to improve the district talent show that will attract bigger crowds every year. If you missed this past talent show look out for next years one!
Emily Morden, KDSC secretary
Mike Curtis, I sincerely hope someone at TGI reads your letter and takes it to heart — and starts ENFORCING ITS OWN POSTED RULES about Comments here.
Those Rules read “comments must be civil and in good taste, with no personal attacks.” And yet, this space is Troll City on a daily basis: with few exceptions, it’s a contest to see who can be the Most insulting.
Your LTE is timely. It happens that I put up a personal pledge to no longer participate in such lack of civility just yesterday. I hope others do the same … but if TGI does not ENFORCE ITS OWN RULES, nothing will change here.
Thank you Mike for a wonderful and timely letter? Of course, it will be difficult in this world of “fake” news and personal agenda to find the common ground. There are Trolls permeating all news sources who just can’t pry themselves loose from their addiction to the “dirt” news they thrive on. As they say in the media, “dirt” sells! Unfortunately, good news and accomplishment are only treated as bylines in our “news” world where tabloid behavior for money has replaced “fair and balanced” reporting. Unfortunately, there are real Trolls who comment here who have little capacity to think for themselves outside of the “dirt” they’re, for whatever insane reason, attracted to. They then take said “dirt” and spew it out as if it were their job to be a good little tabloid regurgitation neophyte. This of course is dangerous to our Society, Constitution, and to our Republic itself! Trolls like Craig Callaway who has been professing unbelievable bias and personal name calling for years, along with a few of his trollhorts, just can’t help themselves. Hopefully, despite the Trolls, common sense will make a come back and we can move on as a Society to Make America Great! Thanks again Mike for the wake up call and your wonderful post!
Gordon, your comment is what we refer to in the trade as the pot calling the kettle black. An equally appropriate one would be, “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Recipe for making America great:
Take vulgarity, bullying, infidelity, lack of empathy, misogyny, racism, religious persecution, wrap it all up in a rather fat orange blob with 5th grade language skills and put it in the White House!
Here’s a thought Mike? Perhaps the Garden Island should limit the comment section to those individuals who actually live on Kauai? That would get rid of the majority of Trolls who, for whatever reason, think they need to poke their collective noses into the affairs of our beautiful Island. Trolls like the most absurd one who actually lives in Oregon and hasn’t lived on Kauai for over 50 years, but just can’t let go. Or those who come here for a vacation and somehow hang on to the Paradise they want to control, but know nothing about? Let’s keep the comment section for those who actually have a real stake in the beautiful Island we call home. Our quality of life has been affected quite enough by outsiders. We certainly don’t need to have these “outsiders” controlling our neighborly dialogue! Perhaps they should Troll in their own back yard?
Agree. But don’t expect pay if people who break other rules set forth along the way, just to get there. I prefer a blog like this to just say it. Politics is a stupid business.
Just to show Mr. Curtis that we can do this, let’s have a polite discussion about everybody’s favorite topic: guns.
I’ll put up a question for R.G. DeSoto or Mark Beeksma, who are usually civil in tone — or anyone else willing to be civil. That means you state your case, and avoid calling anyone who disagrees with you a liar, or pretend that you alone know all the facts.
In Conservatives’ defense of rapid-fire weapons (whatever you name them), their arguments usually boil down to “It’s not the guns, it’s the people. We have a mental health problem in America,” due to … violent videos, drugs, whatever.
The problem, from my point of view, is that the people in positions of authority who say this are the very same ones who consistently vote to Kill the social programs that would find and help such people before they become violent.
So, will you please tell me WHAT social Programs YOU personally support that would find and help such people — and how much in financial capital or effort you are willing to pay to make these programs successful. (Or, you might share any volunteer efforts you are personally involved in that reach-out to mentally-hurting people.)
Take Nikolas Cruz as an example. Before he massacred 17 students and teachers at the high school in Florida, by all news accounts he was a walking time bomb; anyone who came near him knew it. So, what could / should have been done to prevent his butchery? Does society have the right to take away guns from a clearly troubled person like that — before he commits a crime? Who should be empowered to make such decisions?
Thanks!
PS: For the record, I’m a gun-owner and target-shooter … and I’d guess that with my 1950’s High Standard pistol in hand, I can shoot as straight as just about anyone here.
Here are a few reasons why we cannot come to an understanding between pro and anti-gun opinions regarding mental health here.
1. Brevity- there is only room to exchange bumper sticker slogans, no depth of discussion.
2. The mental health field and the experts that populate it are crazy. New mental illnesses are literally voted in to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . Homosexuality was voted in and later voted out. Nearly everyone can be found mentally ill in there somewhere.
3. Lack of education, understanding and agreement on the importance (or lack thereof) of our constitutional rights.
4. Lack of education and understanding on the history of governments and how they treat their own citizens.
5. Lack of understanding as to what gives impulse to some people to commit murder.
Patsy Clairmont may have said it best- “Normal is just a setting on the dryer”. What defines normal and mentally ill are apparently fluid. A generation ago someone claiming to be a member of the opposite sex would have been considered mentally ill. Not so today.
Not all mentally ill people are dangerous, it’s only when they might harm themselves or others that we have to step in. Same goes for people who are normally sane. Some people lead perfectly normal lives until something sets them over the edge such as a cheating spouse or the demonetization of one’s Youtube account as you can read about today.
Do mentally ill people have all their constitutional rights or not? Do they have the right to defend themselves? If not, then you are going to have to come up with clear reasons and a court order, not just opinions, in order to remove their rights. And if you are going to remove their rights to defend themselves, you’d better be prepared to step in and protect them. If they can’t have a gun, how about a club- a knife, or do they have to live as perpetual victims? If you take away their rights and they are assaulted or killed are you then responsible by taking away their means of self-defense?
One of the problems with mental illness is that the “cure”, the drugging of such people, is often worse than the original sickness. Nearly all of the mass shooters were recently on psychotropic drugs, you know, the ones you see on TV with disclaimers the drugs might cause violent outbursts or thoughts of suicide. But the drugs frequently keep them quiet. Until they’re not.
Until you are willing to make arbitrary decisions on who is crazy and who is not, why not let the demonstrably sane, those with clean records and proper training, carry concealed weapons? Why not allow teachers who also fit the above description and have the willingness to protect the children entrusted to them to also carry concealed?
As long as we have the psych industry draining billions of tax dollars for their failed treatments we can’t afford the billions more to contain and clean up their mess. So Craig, I don’t support any social program without addressing the causes of the problem, namely the destruction of family values by encouraging fatherless homes, the degradation of morals, ethics and reason and the over-prescribing of psychotropic drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. Just let me protect me and mine and I’ll be fine. I don’t think we need another government program; they have a pretty lousy track record of failed programs. I don’t think we need more laws. There were plenty of laws in place to have stopped Nikolas Cruz but they weren’t enforced.
This is already too long so I have to end with a bumper sticker slogan- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
All right, Stan; thanks. You’ve obviously given this a ton of thought already.
I’ll answer my own question now: What social program(s) would I personally support? I will do it in two words: “Universal Healthcare.”
The rest of the industrialized world seems to be able to make it work; I don’t see why we can’t also, given the will and the recognition by a majority of citizens that “We are all in this together.” And my definition of “health care” would include treatment for mental illnesses.
Would it have stopped Nikolas Cruz? I don’t know. But I believe there are many more like him, walking around thinking “I want to be the next school shooter,” and at least some of them are aware they are sick and would seek help if it was readily available.
Well, what we see here is an uninformed and biased summary of the psychiatric profession and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) by someone with no academic education regarding the profession and using talk radio throw away lines like “They’re all crazy” and “DSM=5 says you’re crazy.” A few weeks ago he was denigrating the teaching profession; the same profession he now wants to arm with guns! Why? Because if just one, or many, in a profession disagree with Stan’s tribe, Stan, his entire tribe, and his tribe’s talk radio will go right to work demeaning the entire profession! Just watch, if, in relation to another shooting, trump tweets that we should arm mental health workers, Stan will do a piece on how it sounds like common sense even though today he says they’re all crazy!
Of course you are right, not everyone in the mental health field is crazy but they do try very hard to defend their failed profession beyond all reason. According to Health.com, therapists are in the top five most mentally depressed professions. Would you trust an auto mechanic who can’t make his own car run right? If your car runs rough because it’s starved for fuel a competent mechanic will be able to diagnose whether you just have dirty injectors that need to be cleaned, or if they’re faulty and need to be replaced or whether it might be a clogged fuel filter. The point is, any competent mechanic will be able to solve the problem. Not so in the mental health field, there is no agreed upon course of treatment that will cure anything. Go to five different professionals in the field and receive five different opinions and courses of treatment. If it’s a psychoanalyst he’ll try a little Freudian therapy, a psychologist in the mold of B.F. Skinner will explain your behavior based on his understanding of rats and of course a psychiatrist takes the least time of all to quickly ascertain that what is really needed is the right prescription.
Dr. Eric Maisel writing in Psychology Today gives a verbatim listing of the definition of a mental disorder from DSM-4. He then gives the new and improved definition, which is completely different, taken from DSM-5. They are both long and convoluted; you can look them up for yourself. He then says “The very idea that you can radically change the definition of something without anything in the real world changing and with no new increases in knowledge or understanding is remarkable, remarkable until you realize that the thing being defined does not exist. It is completely easy—effortless, really—to change the definition of something that does not exist to suit your current purposes. In fact, there is hardly any better proof of the non-existence of a non-existing thing than that you can define it one way today, another way tomorrow, and a third way on Sunday“. The mental health field has never been able to adequately agree on, articulate or define what mental illness is much less cure it.
Have you ever felt emotions such as grief, sadness, frustration, impatience or excitement? Those are now mental disorders. If you refuse to follow the authority of President Trump you now have Obedience Defiance Disorder (ODD). Of course there is no need to take my word for it, here’s what the experts say:
“There are no objective tests in psychiatry, no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.”
—Allen Frances, Former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
“We can manufacture enough diagnostic labels of normal variability of mood and thought that we can continually supply medication to you…But when it comes to manufacturing disease, nobody does it like psychiatry.” —Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Harvard trained Pennsylvania psychiatrist, 2004
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.” —Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK, Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of Canada
The entire field of mental health and psychotropic drugs would collapse without taxpayer funding. This is an opinion piece and in my opinion it’s all about the money, follow the trail, it’s a very short trip.
I think anybody of good character with a clean record who has received extensive training in firearm operation and safety to be truly competent should be allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Especially those in the mental health field. And possibly even you, Pete.
Stan, one more thought: If Nikolas Cruz or Anyone else goes around saying and writing things like “I want to be the next school shooter,” I don’t care What we call him. I don’t care whether he is diagnosed by a mental-health professional or not. I think society has a right (indeed, a duty) to take away any guns he has and stop him from buying a new one. This would include notifying every gun-seller within say 100 miles “Do Not sell this person a gun!”
Yes, I realize that even something as draconian as this won’t-stop-Everyone who’s sick. But if we could stop even One person such as Cruz from slaughtering people, I think it would be worth it.
You cannot compare, or lump together, therapists and counselors with Psychiatrists with Ph.Ds and M.D.s. There is a galaxy of difference between them. Analogies are fun provided you know something about clogged fuel filters and nothing about psychology. It’s also easy to embrace the words of a critic when you lack the knowledge to counter it in your own mind, especially when those critics have language skills 10 grades higher than the temporary president. Changes to DSM are based on thousands of monograms, white papers, academic studies, journal articles, and more, in a constantly ongoing effort to elevate the state of the science relevant to psychiatric diagnosis. Because of that, the DSM’s very purpose is to avoid everyone being lumped into ODD (which is actually “Oppositional defiant disorder”). Oppositional is the perfect word since ODD children act even against their own interests and preferences. You give one qualification for ODD, the DSM gives 8 plus two sections of rule out plus frequency over time. Although not just assigned to children, adults would typically receive a different diagnosis. Children with ODD, and I’ve known two, really stand out as different from all other children. They are not the children you see laying in the supermarket aisle kicking their feet
A much better analogy is the heart disease we cannot “cure” but, can control with medication, some corrective surgery, and lifestyle modification, to give a person many productive years with higher risk than others. The same is true for a person with anxiety disorders who has responded to treatment. They can look forward to productive years but with risk that major life changes can affect them once again.
The emotions of “grief, sadness, frustration, impatience or excitement” are not now mental disorders. To say they are is not only preposterous; but, can harmfully discourage someone from getting the help they need!
Right after I sent my first post, I was watching a news video about a guy (I won’t publicize him by writing his name) who goes around to various massacre sites such as Parkland and calls the survivors liars, claims the event never happened, calls any birth certificates of death certificates shown to him “fakes,” and more. It’s incredible and sickening to watch.
Can we agree that this guy is mentally ill? Can we agree that he is so severely mentally sick that he should not be allowed to own a gun? If we can agree on that, then how do we prevent him from possessing one, or take away one that he has, when he apparently hasn’t committed any crime yet?
This is where the “We don’t have a gun problem; we have a mental-illness problem” argument rubber meets the road, folks.