"American untouchables," a letter to the editor of Ashland's "Daily Tidings" news-rag

      To my deep regret, due to a schedule-conflict with my wedding, I was unable to attend the recent "democratic forum on mental illness and addiction," a government-sponsored event which was hosted by our downtown Medford branch library.  It is admittedly a minor positive sign that such a forum was even held...  because, you see, we are just now starting to emerge from a tangled dark age in regards to these two twin-minorities.  

          Now, it is true that mental health and drug use tend to be intertwined: easy-chair cynics would have you believe that this is because drug-addicts poison their lives to the point of a medical psychosis, or just a need to blame one.  This does occasionally happen, but far more often it's a case of the afflicted self-medicating with varying levels of success and misadventure;  Many of the mentally-ill(including myself) have unnatural levels of traumatization to somehow pacifically soothe.

          See, the big American human-rights story was never Guantanamo, unappetizing though that island alcove's happenings have been, but rather how a confluence of social "forces" have on a national level led to the utter neglect and dehumanization of two vulnerable minorities(inside the wealthiest economy-state in the world.)   As racism, sexism, and even homophobia became politically incorrect, we became the convenient sub-human other to tie the yellow-star on.  

        This paper, due to legitimate cited legal concerns, won't let me tell you more about specific human-rights violations, but I don't need to.  The evidence and the enabling "ideology" are all over a television near you.