Arizona

The state has been on my mind, much like the rest of the country, I imagine.

Let me be clear, I do not watch the news. Many years ago I became tired of the incessant images of violence and death that pervade the evening news. Instead, I read it, mostly now on my iphone courtesy of the npr app and the boston.com app and read it sparingly. Well, now, my news sometimes comes from Facebook when people post articles that I find interesting and choose to read (like that one about being a Chinese mother WTH?). All of that is to say that I don't know intimate details of what happened because I don't watch CNN obsessively, or even watch the Today show with its considerable morning fluff mixed in with hard news.

All that caveat aside, what I've read about the Arizona shooting is that the incident has been 'politicized'. Everyone seems content to find blame for what happened in politics. There was an article about how Sarah Palin put a crosshairs on Giffords' location a while ago and people were connecting that with this man's impetus to shoot. Clearly, that was a stupid thing to do on Palin's part (surprise, surprise), but I don't know that is the reason why the event came to pass. I'm sure there's other rhetoric around the political-ness of the shooting, but I don't care to research it.

It seems to me it came to pass because a mentally ill person didn't get the help he needed and was instead walking around in a society in which he could not function. There is such a stigma that still exists about mental illness in this world and that strikes me as strange when you think about how many people deal with it at one time or another. (What a mentally ill man was doing with a gun is another kettle of fish as well). You could look at these issues as political, but I think the larger society can take some ownership here about what ideals we promote and all that.

As most people reading this know, my father committed suicide, now almost 11 years ago. As an adult I always thought of him as a 'glass half full' kind of guy, but I never thought he was suicidal - though his own father had also committed suicide. His action was taken after his second wife asked for a divorce and the reality of his life pushed him into a bad place - his therapist also put him on Prozac which had the opposite effect on him, I'm told by my uncle. The reality is, his violent act could well have been enacted on someone else (wife #2 most likely), but instead he turned it on himself.

Could this young man have made a similar choice? Did he go there that day intending to die himself? How long had he slipped through the cracks and not received treatment for his issues? What was going on in his world? Maybe he blamed politics for why he needed to do what he did. I don't know.

I'm somewhat curious to see what the defense will bring to trial. I don't agree with the insanity plea in murder cases - I do not think a sane person commits murder so as far as I'm concerned it should be taken off the table as a plea option.

The bottom line for me is when I read about these stories and think in a way that isn't political, I find I have compassion all the way around and wish a very public incident like this could open up a much needed dialogue in our world about mental illness and how we deal with it.