re: #242 BryanS

That’s a false dichotomy, though. We don’t have to choose between having a debate about mental health and one about vitriol. Both are important.

The problem of mental health is an eternal and thorny one. It comes down to three basic problems:

1. Unlike physical illness, the seriously mentally ill usually resist treatment.
2. The mentally ill often intentionall mask the seriousness of their problems when ‘threatened’ with confinement.
3. There is a lack of public funds to fully address all the mentally ill we have in this country.

I would be happy if one of the things that came out of this was an emphasis on providing mental health for veterans.

But that doesn’t in any way diminish the importance of stopping the violent rhetoric. Indeed, I don’t see them as fully separate issues. A lot of the paranoid, over-the-top, conspiratorial vitriol that Beck spews is only a shade more sane than what Loughner has said.