Over the target

 It's fascinating how people give themselves away. I recently watched a TV series, The Lincoln Lawyer, which depicted an attorney who hired a professional poker player to consult on jury selection. What an amazing tactical idea! Witnesses who are lying, or who desperately try to avoid testifying so they won't have to lie, stand out like a sore thumb.

I almost have enough business, enough cases now, that I could be tempted to "save time" by backing off from resistance when I encounter it from opponents in litigation. My idol, W.T. "Billy the Torch" Sherman was supposedly more circumspect than his contemporaries Grant and Lee, preferring to break off combat when it appeared too costly, in favor of operational and strategic maneuver. It's a normal human reaction: "Hey, let's look for an easier hill to take, this one is too strongly defended." Sherman was brilliant.

On the other hand, the flak gets heaviest when you are over the target. If you are not attacked you might not be on target. I have frequently been attacked, by the plantation overseers and the slave masters at Elgin Mental Health Center; and funny thing (!), the attacks are almost always about this blog. It rather amazes me that virtually all of my readers are EMHC staff (plus an occasional family member of an EMHC "patient", and one notable Assistant Illinois Attorney General). I usually tweet about each new article when I first post it. But the one thing that predictably increases my readership the most is when I put some overseer's name in the headline.

I'm not putting anyone's name in today's headline. But I'm as convinced as I've ever been that we are over the target. The sexual abuse cases keep on coming to our law firm, and there will be several new filings before the end of this year. Almost everyone who ever calls me has some story, mild or severe, that dovetails with the theme that forensic psychiatric "patients" in Illinois are seen by the people running the system as property. If a social worker or some other kind of middling overseer wants to use that property for their private sexual gratification, they feel entitled and everyone else will turn a blind eye. Sean Gunderson's recent article for Mad In America is probably the best explanation of this.

Elgin patients are psychiatric slaves. They know it very well. The public knows it, too, when they hear or read about custodial sexual abuse. Hitting that target will be effective.