Joe Pierre, Michael Gadson, and Milt Pinsky

These are three guys whom I am tempted to like. They're all apparently smart, very social, and on the opposite side of some critical issues from me. Being on the opposite side of issues is a positive trait which draws me to a person, because my constant anxiety is that I may be unaware of some threat that is sneaking up from just outside my field of vision. At any moment, I might become Professor James Lowry, searching in suppressed terror for my lost hat. Communicating frequently enough with people like Joe, Michael, and Milt reassures me that I'm not ignoring parts of the world that might kill me.

I just wrote about Dr. Joe Pierre yesterday, and I've written about him before. He is apparently a well-respected young psychiatrist who has been in his profession almost as long as I have been criticizing it or actively fighting for its abolition. He may not respect me as much as I respect him (he probably just can't, knowing I'm a Scientologist), but at least he does occasionally communicate.

Dr. Michael Gadson is a state psychiatrist and the Medical Director of one of Illinois' plantations (Packard Mental Health Center) where human beings are psychiatrized and enslaved. He's a master up in the big house. I was recently called on the carpet by someone who thinks this is a very unprofessional thing for me to say about an opposing party in legal disputes; but I'm not the only one saying it. My clients agree, from their own subjective experience (which of course the broader society might love to discredit as born from "mental illness" that no one needs to understand). And Tom Szasz, who was an M.D. psychiatrist just as qualified as all the slave masters and overseers whom I accuse, wrote several very compelling books that made the philosophical argument in great and scholarly detail.

Dr. Gadson is an extremely professional, and apparently very "caring" clinician. He recently walked me to the parking lot and figured out how I could get into my car after I had locked myself out. I told him, "Doc you saved my ass, thank you very much!" But I always feel like I should check to be sure he's not holding a knife behind his back when he smiles and tells a patient, "I'm only here to help with your recovery, not to sabotage it..." or "Your assertive communication skills are improving...".

Milt Pinsky is a neighbor. He's hard-core, left- or far-left-leaning Democrat, and he loves to argue politics. He always brings out every sympathy I might have for Republican views (there aren't really that many of them). Milt and I have virtually never ended an argument on a bad note. I'm looking forward to seeing him tonight in fact, at a local social event. I will probably have a conversation that will begin with, "Milt! You look pretty good, but I've been warned to be very careful about triggering you right now, in case you're too upset that Trump has been nominated for the Nobel and his every action looks golden, even through the eyes of CNN." If the event makes a good story, I may blog about it further.

My mother was a very devoted Christian, and "Love thine enemy!" was a principle close to her soul. There are two ways that makes sense to me. The first is that if you can love somebody and understand their views, you won't have to fight them, and the world will be better without so many fights. The second way is that if you love your enemy to enable knowing him better, you can probably kill him quicker.

I go back & forth with the Christianity. But Milt and his wife are friends.

Joe Pierre's egghead SOB arrogance

Maybe I should take it as a compliment that Dr. Joe Pierre, the San Fransisco psychiatrist with whom I occasionally argue/discuss on social media, believes that I am so educated as to know the meaning of "QED" as an abbreviation for the latin phrase, quid  erat demonstrandum. This translates to "that which was to be proved." It's a sort of showboating or peacocking at the end of a written or logical argument, perhaps analogous to a raised fist and screaming grimace after a long three-pointer right at the buzzer in basketball, or a gloating, ecstatic dance in the end zone after a touchdown reception.

Dr. Joe has been increasingly prone (like a huge number of people, maybe most of the population of the USA these days) to political tirades presented as obvious logic that everybody just has to agree with or prove themselves to be of subhuman intelligence. The famous example of this, and of how it can utterly fail to win over opponents, was Hillary Clinton's phrase, "basket of deplorables." (It's pretty safe to presume that Dr. Joe voted for Hillary, by the way, and if he reads this article, I expect his reaction will be, "Of course I did!")

Recently, Dr. Joe posted on X: Measles update: 1168 cases and counting--we're now 106 shy of the 1274 from 2019, which would make it the worst outbreak in over 30 years. With new airport exposures, it's likely we'll get there. Meanwhile, RFK Jr is like "vaccines are the problem." 

I responded to his post: You're rooting for this, right Doc? Like it's more important to score political points against anyone who challenges orthodoxy than to identify and disseminate truth. 

His retort was: Don't conflate "expecting" with "rooting." The effects of RFK's vaccine denialism will demonstrate themselves soon enough and will likely be well beyond the scope of measles. Highlighting this is a case of QED, not "wanting Trump and his regime to fail" as is often claimed. 

I could go on and on about this exchange.

• If he weren't "rooting," Joe could easily have added "unfortunately" or "alarmingly" somewhere in the post. And rather than "...we'll get there," he could have written, "...I'm afraid it will happen." His "expecting" rather than "rooting" denial is transparently disingenuous; sorry, but he was rooting. I should add that rooting for a disease, while simultaneously claiming that the same disease is so dangerous as to justify abrogating people's informed consent and coercing them to accept medicine they don't want, seems quite contrary to the fundamental ethics of medicine.
• What exactly is "RFK's vaccine denialism?" That's a curious way of labeling it, probably meant to imply without having to argue that RFK's views on vaccines are ignorant prejudice and simply must give way to the proper judgment of experts or the established facts, like with "Holocaust denialism" or "climate denialism" or some other clearly discredited denialism. But many people consider some issues to still be open, and they have a freedom of speech right to keep talking about them. If Joe doesn't want to take any responsibility for convincing anyone of any arguable point on vaccines, he would be free to simply laugh at the dinosaurs for their views. But then why would he bother to go on about it on social media?
• I never said anything about wanting Trump to fail. Joe's protest there is a protest too much. He definitely wants Trump to fail more than he wants the measles outbreak to be limited to any particular number. Saying "Trump and his regime" also might betray Joe's view that the current administration is some non-democratic entity rather than the duly elected, appointed and confirmed executive branch of our government. Isn't this a brand of "denialism"?

Anyway my main point, I guess, is just that most psychiatrists are arrogant SOB's (NB: unlike QED, SOB is an abbreviation for an English phrase that most people know) who are incapable of legitimately arguing or proving their beliefs, so they are reduced to refined practices of cowardly, covert coercion for which it is ultimately necessary to recruit government and police assistance. 

I'll continue following Joe Pierre, MD on X because he gives me good examples of psychiatric arrogance, and once in a while he inspires me to learn abbreviations of Latin phrases.

"Patients" with no doctors at fake "hospitals"

If you're an involuntary "patient" in a psychiatric "hospital," you should probably have a psychiatrist or psychologist who is assigned to your "treatment" team... right? 

There are constitutional arguments that say, if the state is depriving you of liberty without convicting you of a crime, it must have a justification like protecting you or helping you, or protecting the community. This only becomes an issue in the context of so-called "mental illness," because that term means you "have" some disease or disorder that both absolves you of criminal responsibility and simultaneously renders you dangerous or otherwise unacceptable in society. In plainer terms, people are committed to state nuthouses for their own and everybody else's good, to be cured of insanity.

This would be evidence of our modern enlightened morality, kindness and tolerance, not to mention scientific/medical genius, if only the nuthouses ever did cure anyone's insanity, and perhaps if only the clinicians who work there for taxpayer-funded salaries and pensions actually knew what mental illness is. But they never cure anyone, and they don't have a clue what they're doing.

In fact, sometimes they don't even show up.

Illinois' psychiatric plantation system has such a shortage of psychiatrists and psychologists that these days, many patients ironically complain about not getting treatment. "Treatment" is AKA abuse or even torture, so a lack of it may arguably be a good thing. But defense attorneys and prosecutors lately even tell courts that criminal defendants should not be sent to these plantations because, whatever you may call treatment, abuse or torture, people who go to the plantations obviously are not helped. Choate Mental Health Center is especially discreditable, but other facilities are no better.

Take the Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard MHC, where Kasturi Kripakaran, Kathleen Treanor, Sara Broyles and Michael Gadson pretend to be legitimate helping professionals. I know a patient who recently called Dr. Gadson, after he officially claimed he was the psychiatrist heading that patient's treatment team. Gadson didn't want to hear any complaints or concerns the patient had, however. He was just angry that the patient knew his phone extension and was thereby able to call him in his office. He  said explicitly, he was "not allowed" to talk to this patient more than once a month!

The situation is inconsistent (at least) with the idea that a psychiatrist is in charge of a treatment team and the patient is the most important member. It's possible that Dr. Gadson has too many important administrative duties to pay any attention to real patients. And maybe this particular patient is suing him, so he's "not allowed" (by his lawyers!) to have regular communication with the plaintiff.

In any event, "treatment" for this patient is not happening. And critically, the Illinois Department of Human Services cannot do anything about that. But they never have been able to provide help for mental/emotional/behavioral problems. It has always been a scam on the taxpayers, who are easy to take advantage of because they've been convinced that insanity is dangerous, and they don't know what insanity really is, and many of them are afraid they or somebody in their family might "have" some.

But when we consider "mental patients" who get pregnant in state custody and are not allowed to talk to their psychiatrists, we have to wonder what exactly we're paying for.

Right?