"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

Everyone’s talking Trump and the election and either it’s a new day in America or the doorstep of Armageddon.

I don’t mean to sound crass, but I predicted Trump would win the day he announced – with the caveat: if he really wants it. My wife is witness to that.

I’ve been an American all my life and if there is one thing I do know, I know my people. And they were ready for someone like Trump.

The only thing that surprised me is that any candidate for public office could so shoot themselves in the foot so often and still win. THAT surprised me – a little.

But what it all comes down for me, is a phrase I’ve not heard used in election post-mortems; at least not yet.

The term is ‘compassion fatigue.’ Remember that?

This happened in 2008. Did anything change? Or course not.

It can mean something different to people who care for the disabled but in the popular vernacular, it means “indifference to charitable appeals on behalf of those who are suffering, experienced as a result of the frequency or number of such appeals.”

It was sometime in the latter half of the 1980s when concern for ‘the poor’ in American political discourse was replaced instead, with concern for the middle class. The poor became invisible to the politicians largely because they didn’t vote or contribute campaign cash, and, invisible to many Americans because they were an intractable problem that Lyndon Johnson had failed to solve. So they were done with them. Besides, they kept blocking the sidewalks downtown with their incessant demands for change. 

Remember this song?

Standing in line, marking time
Waiting for the welfare dime
'Cause they can't buy a job
The man in the silk suit hurries by
As he catches the poor old lady's eyes
Just for fun he says, "Get a job."

Bruce Hornsby from 1986

I remember an interview with Hornsby some time ago where he recounted that a well-coiffed young lady came up to him and said she really loved his song and agreed that ‘those people’ should go out and get a job.

So this has been going on for some time now but primarily under the surface. 

Skipping through a lot of history since then, we can come to the point where the problem with providing people with basic health care reached a critical mass important enough for the political class to do something about it.

But it wasn’t going to be a Canadian or British-style national health care plan, oh no. Because socialism.

But the President said this:

“Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”

It wasn’t President Obama. Those were the words of Harry Truman who proposed a universal national health insurance plan in, wait for it. . . 1945.

The American Medical Association (AMA) led the charge to shoot it down, of course. Because socialism.

I was amazed that the ugly chimera that came to be known as ‘Obamacare’ actually got as far as it did. Now it will probably be undone.

Because socialism. Because compassion fatigue. Because you’re not gonna give ‘free health care’ to ‘them who didn’t work for/deserve it.’

The rallying cry of compassion fatigue is ‘not with my tax dollars you won’t.’

Health care for the poor? See above.

Pre-natal or contraception services/abortions for women? See above.

Quality school lunch programs and expanded education opportunities for kids from poor families? See above.

Halfway homes for recovering addicts or those released from jail? See above.

A new generation of jet fighters for an expanded war in the Middle East? Whoa, wait, let’s not be hasty here.

Well, you see where I’m going with this. 

But compassion fatigue, over time, does other things to society. It makes us coarser to those less fortunate than us and we begin to believe that’s because these people didn’t take responsibility for themselves or it was God’s will. 

We begin to lack empathy for each other when we can so cavalierly dismiss their suffering. These people, the poor, the disabled, the disadvantaged, jeez, we’ve been listening to them whine for this and that for decades. We’ve cared enough and paid enough and, gosh darn it, we’ve had it pretty rough too and no one gave us a handout.

Let me speak now for the physically and mentally disabled.

I noticed an attitude of eye rolling when I used to cover city council meetings back in the 90s and early 00’s when the subject of the Americans with Disabilities Act came up. Expensive and ugly ramps we have to build the city engineers said. Parking spaces no one will use. Expensive handicapped restrooms and other modifications to building plans. And yet they want more – can you imagine? My grandmother was in a wheelchair and no one ever built HER a ramp with taxpayer dollars!

Public programs for the mentally ill? Don’t get me started. Ronald Reagan freed the mentally ill from the horrors of institutionalization to the tender mercies of unfunded community care and unaffordable for-profit treatment centers. Why in God’s name do we waste money on people that will add not one dime to the GNP? Now they’re everywhere in public being a nuisance and demanding their rights, just like the cripples. 

Compassion fatigue does horrible things to society.

According to Snopes.com, New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a condition which limits the movement of joints and is particularly noticeable in Kovaleski's right arm and hand.

You know where I’m going here. You all saw what President Elect Donald Trump did in front of God and everyone. He mocked Kovaleski’s impairment.

Funny, right? And so Presidential

People were, for the most part, shocked. I wasn’t. 

I remember seeing it for the first time on TV and feeling nothing except the inexorable inevitability of historical trends. I knew we would get here, because history.

It’s been a while in coming, but I knew we’d get to the point where a candidate for President would mock the disabled, not to mention all the other groups of people that were mocked.

I thought of my son, an adult with autism. His mother, my mother and I had to fight every step of the way for special services for him in a public school. You would have thought we were stealing the Superintendent’s own money. My son used to get harassed on the playground by other kids. I know because once when I was a playground monitor, it happened right in front of me. 

Other parents made their feelings known at school board meetings that too much money was being spent on ‘special education’ to the detriment of their little achievers, bound for the Ivy League.

And my son did the whole hand flapping phase which brought quite a few disapproving looks in public. I had to take him out of church and many restaurants because I didn’t want anyone to get mad at him for ruining their dinner or service. 

The Clinton campaign not only did a political ad criticizing Trump for mocking the reporter but also an ad from a Republican mom with an autistic son who saw her son in that reporter and was aghast at Trump’s behavior.

I would say about 20 years ago, it would have been enough to sink any candidate, but not now.

You’re kid has autism? Too fucking bad, take care of him, don’t ask for any help from us. Life is tough. And hey, when your kid does that flapping thing, it makes my kid nervous, OK? We shouldn’t have to see that. 

Nope. I wasn’t surprised at all. As I wrote, I know my people all too well.

Many, many disenfranchised groups are stating their fears of this Brave New World of Trumpism this week. So, I will chime in and say I fear for not only my son, but for all the people with physical and mental disorders, including the bipolar, anxiety and depressive illnesses I share with countless others. We are now all on notice that we’re officially ‘in the way.’

It’s time to put all of them back where they came from – to the asylums, the work farms and the institutions -- because no one who is a normal, God-fearing, taxpaying, hard-working American has time or money for that anymore. And that goes for ALL the special snowflake, overly sensitive, social justice warriors too! 

 

Right, back you go, out of sight, out of mind

Vince Lombardi (who probably would have loved Trump) was famous for saying that fatigue makes cowards of us all. 

I think compassion fatigue makes heartless ghouls of us all – if we let it.

Psychiatry R Us

I went to see my drug pusher today.

She has a nice office, of course, in a nice building and she has a lot of pretty professional plaques on the wall and a special chair given to her by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. And she’s been listed as one of the top psychiatrists in the metro area by Pittsburgh Magazine for at least two years in a row.

And, frankly, she stinks at what she does. And I probably should find (yet) another psychiatrist, but I am so tired of it all.

Maybe she's still practicing?

Today was the day I knew I wasn’t going to get any more help from her than I already am. 

I told her about my ER visit and how, after all the tests, they could find nothing wrong with me. I also told her that since then, things have not been getting better with the reprimand still hanging over my head and a supervisor who gave me a yearly rating guaranteeing between the two personnel actions, that I will not be able to leave this job, even if we want to move.

I made it very clear that the drug regimen is not working.

I made it very clear that the work situation was untenable. 

All she wants to know is whether I’m going to kill myself. And how. And she wondered about my rusting shotgun.

Exasperated, I said, no, I’m not going to kill myself but if I did I know it wouldn’t be with a shotgun that doesn’t work. 

It was Col. Mustard in the bedroom with the bungee cord

Well, how, she asked.

I gave this a few seconds of thought. Drowning myself in the koi pond sounded romantic but I didn’t think she’d buy that.

Um, how about a bungee cord from a doorknob? Seems easy enough, and, like those exercisers you see Ronco pushing at Christmas, they fit over any doorknob anywhere – at home, at work, even in your doctor’s waiting room!

Seriously, I wouldn't kid you

Instead of seeing the humor (hell, no one ever sees the humor, I think they’d rather see you off yourself since it would demonstrate that at least you’re a serious person), she asked me if I had any bungee cords at home.

Seriously?

Yes, seriously.

Doctor, do you want to come over to my house and take all my bungee cords? Because if I ever must bring home something large in my car or move, I’ll have to buy a whole other set.

Words fail me some times. This was not one of those times.

I really think we're making progress here

“Look, while you’re there taking my greasy bungee cords, why don’t you help yourself to all the knives and forks in the kitchen too,” I said. “I mean I don’t mean to be disrespectful (but I did), but there are so, so many things you can use to off yourself, it’s only limited by your own imagination!”

See why I’ve gone through so many, many mental health professionals in my life? 

As for the drug regimen that is clearly no longer working, that seemed to panic her about as much as the phantom bungee cords (I mean seriously, have you even LOOKED at pictures of suicides doctor? I could show you a few sites. . .).

Her solution was to double down and prescribe more of the same, which we did six months ago. 

Happy happy happy happy

Yes, if it’s clearly not working, let’s do much more of the same.

With that kind of thinking, I think she has a clear shot to be the next general manager of the Cleveland Browns.

As for the job, her solution was quite novel.

“I just think you need to find a different way of thinking about your job,” she said. 

I am seriously not kidding. 

And that’s when I knew it was game over.

You see, I think my psychiatrist is probably pretty book smart. But I think judging from what I’ve seen of her credentials and FB site (yes, I spy on everyone – I was in Military Intel, it’s in my blood) that she can’t put herself in the shoes of her patients. I asked her to do that today and she said “I’m trying.”

She can’t. She has never known the want, the pain and the fear inside of people she is looking to help. She can’t relate to it. There’s always a book solution, always another pill, always some, well, bullshit rationale that will keep the patient from bleeding out mentally. At least until they do. 

But for Christ’s sakes, don’t die on my watch. The paperwork is such a pain.

Often time I have caught her looking at me as if I was some sort of exotic insect. I suspect many other patients have noticed the same thing as well. We fit somewhere into the diagnosis matrix of the DSM V. Some of us are just a little harder to identify, classify and index.

So, the next time I go back to see her, everything will be fine. I won’t waste her time by whining about intractable issues of jobs and medications and she can get me in and out in enough time to protect her billable hours because her nice Lexus in the parking lot needs paid. 

No sense fighting for treatment or a solution. There is no solution and treatment, it seems, is pushing the latest drug the pharmacy rep has just given her samples of (I’ve seen all manner of trinkets on her desk with drug trade names on them). 

I should have given up on treatment a long time ago. I was stupid. I believed the advertising, the hype, the caring professionals who said, in the nicest ways, that they wanted to help you. 

It’s an industry, like everything else. As for your mental concerns, what it comes down to is this:

You’re on your own sucker. 

Well meaning advice and sick coping strategies

You have your coping mechanisms, I have mine.

Post Script: HOW COULD I MISS THIS? It's one of my favorite movies. Anyway, the subtitle for this piece should be:

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

The Mighty has run another interesting article by an author who deals with a problem very familiar to me: pre-worknight anxiety (is that a thing? it is now).

3 Tips for Managing Sunday Night Anxiety

The author, Andrea Addington, is a self-desribed (and commonly known as) an 'Anxiety Counselor' who plies her trade in the wilds of New Brunswick. Apparently she has mad marketing skills and is attractive enough (and young enough) to make it into The Mighty. That aside, she offers a basic set of pretty good techniques to help the garden variety anxious ready for their workweek.

I wish these techniques worked for me. 

They deal with WORK DEMANDS which are a real thing for a lot of people with anxiety. I get them too, as an added bonus to the real 800 lb. gorilla which is a hostile workplace which Addington doesn't address. 

What Addington describes are what I refer to as the 'mind tricks' that I have tried several times (including failing miserably at meditation) that no longer work.

Ergo, Ativan. Ergo, addiction.

But I sure can identify with what she writes here about her 'catastrophic thinking:'

“Oh no I’m going to go into work Monday morning and have a ton of emails to respond to, I won’t be able to get it done in time and my boss is going to get upset with me and think I am a terrible employee, then I will have an awful performance appraisal and get fired and wont be able to pay my mortgage and lose my house and end up homeless!” 

I am dead serious when I write that that 'fired' and 'lose my house and end up homeless' part is the end of pretty much every fear I have.Every. One.

So I thought, here it is, Monday, which is my Sunday, my I don't have to run day (OK, I couldn't resist the Bangles reference), and even though I work four 10 hour weeks to get a three day weekend every weekend (I know: what the hell am I complaining about?), so what would my paragraph of fear contain?

“Oh no I’m going to go into work Monday  Tuesday morning and have a ton of emails to respond to, one of which might be a summons to another inquisition about something I said that was jumped on as 'disturbing' by the people I work with who are constantly listening for me to say something they can take the wrong way. Despite getting my work done in time and in good order, they will eventually find some other rationale to convene another administrative investigation board, and, because I already have a reprimand in my file for quoting a movie line,  I won’t be able to get it done in time and my boss is going to get upset with me and think I am a terrible employee, then I will have an awful performance appraisal and I'll get fired, [redacted], but at least I won't have to work at the VA anymore!” 

But this is defeatism, yes, and it's not like I still try to play the psychological mind tricks on myself to put all this horror in perspective. I mean, seriously, how would you cope at work when behind every set of smiling eyes you see in your office you know they're just waiting to pounce? It's not paranoia when it's already happened more than once. And going back to the story of almost being killed on my front step by a SWAT team is getting a little tiresome. 

Yes, I'd quit if I could and I almost got a PR job locally in another Federal agency until one (or more) of my coworkers called said agency and, well, what are the odds of two positions, advertised nationally, going to two employees from my office?

Anyway, with the reprimand in my file, that cuts off any chance of getting another Federal job. So I am well and truly fucked trapped. I have to deal, I have no choice. Private industry? Again, give me a break? Two words: age discrimination. PR is a young person's game. I don't even bother looking at Linked In anymore.

So I how do I get ready for Tuesday?

This article has me thinking about things I can and could do to help, so let me blue sky a little here.

1. Ativan - the go-to benzo. The problem of course is with a dependence on it, one has to ramp up the dosage in sudden crisis situations. But it's there if needed. Like the old Dr. Pepper commercials, I tend to take it at 10, 2 and 4. 

2. All my other meds. What do they do? I don't know anymore, but if I stop taking them bad things will happen. Big Pharma loses a point or two on Wall Street. Not advised. 

3. Prayer. I don't mean to offend anyone but for me this is a desperation move. I'm always reminded of a Mad Magazine spoof from my youth, titled 'You Know You're A Football Fan when' where one of Jack Davis' (RIP) football fans is on his knees in front of the TV and the caption reads "you rediscover a childhood prayer when your team is behind by six points with one minute left in the game." 

One day, I don't remember what was happening, the Ghost of Catholicism Past pushed through all the shit that normally clutters my waking stream of thoughts and blurted out:

"Remember oh most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known, that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your assistance, or sought your intercession, was left unaided . . ."

Good Catholics (or those with good memories) I'm sure recognize that as the opening line of The Memorare. It's an intercessional prayer to the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mother) to get the pray-er out of some serious shit.

Then, of course, when you want to call out the heavy artillery (no offense BVM), there's this:

"St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. . . "

Of course, I feel GUILTY when I utter these prayers because I have not turned out to be a Good Catholic, and where the hell do I get off saying these prayers when I am not in a state of Grace? Do I really think that God, whom I'm not sure exists in the form I was taught, is going to even pay scant attention to the prayers of someone who only rediscovers their childhood religion when they have nothing more to fall back on?

 But hey, deus ex machina and all that. 

4. Walking around the complex. This doesn't seem to help anymore because it leads right back to my office and I'm sure when I'm out I catch the cops giving me the look. It's not a "short calming break." It's more like taking a stroll around the prison yard. But in this one, I can buy a candy bar; see: fat.

5. Relaxation tapes. There is no sanction against listening to music at your desk in my office as long as it doesn't disturb anyone and I have tried this numerous times. Again, it doesn't seem to work anymore. It throws off my concentration when writing. Then I have to lean back, close my eyes and listen and you can imagine the fear I have of being caught doing that! If I do it for two minutes, that will be the two minutes my boss comes through the door. I try music as well, but I find that classical music is what I reserve to myself when I am home or in a safe place and my good old time rock and roll just reminds me when life was not so painful (and it seems every song has a memory attached to it), so I pretty much spend my time in silence.

6. Reading self-help inspirational pieces on the Internet. See above. They're column fodder, nothing else (it's all been done, like 29 shrinks). 

Ah hell, what's the point? Andrea has it all down pat for her situation. Good for her. 

The brutal truth for many of us is, at some point, life becomes a slog and a bad one at that. I have been able to punctuate it with brief but happy moments of diversion but as they say, the laughs are getting fewer and farther between. 

The only real mental coping mechanism that works is reading various websites that remind me that the world is truly going to hell in a hand basket. Between the US and Russia perhaps willing to start a war over Syria, the North Korean madman anxious to try out his new nuclear toys, the artifice of an unsustainable economy disintegrating and the acceleration of global warming and the rising extinction of species, plus the fact that the next leader of the US is either going to be a warmongering, psychopathic liar or an arrogant, fascistic psychopath, I think I'm in pretty good stead to this - this too will pass - into some kind of nuclear fireball. 

It's sick, but it's all I got. 

. . . some sunny day