Tag Archives: bruce hanify

Talking Raven Interview, Seattle 1993

Posted on by
1

In 1993 I gave an inter­view to Antero Alli for his Seat­tle under­ground news jour­nal, Talk­ing Raven, Jour­nal of Imag­i­na­tive Trou­ble.  Antero, founder and direc­tor of ParaThe­atri­cal Research, is a poly­math, and has an uncanny knack for see­ing the things other peo­ple can’t (see Angel Tech: A Mod­ern Shaman’s Guide to Real­ity Selec­tion).  I highly rec­om­mend that you explore his writ­ing.

I made one good friend from this inter­view; and one solid enemy.  The ideas expressed herein I think are pretty good, but I’ve never met any­one will­ing to take them to the next step.  Insti­tu­tions tend to be institutional.

Inter­est­ing read, any­way, so I’ve included it.

This is the inter­view, as it was printed, word for word.

Inter­view­ing the Law BRUCE HANIFY Deputy Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Yakima County, WA: Nar­cotics Divi­sion

Over the last sev­eral issues, TALKING RAVEN has fea­tured inter­views with knowl­edge­able experts and pro­fes­sion­als from respectable insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies. I knew this “intox­i­ca­tion” issue would be incom­plete with­out talk­ing to a narc. Bruce Han­ify is not your aver­age nar­cotics offi­cer; his peers respect his work and prob­a­bly con­sider him a mav­er­ick in his field, which is pros­e­cu­tion. Mr. Han­ify is one of those guys you head off with in a court of law after you’ve been arrested for a ncarcotics-related crime in Yakima County, WA. To many out­siders, Yakima is a postcard-perfect pic­ture of whole­some North­west Amer­i­cana. (One of my favorite actors, Kyle MacLach­lan, hails from Yakima.) To Bruce Han­ify, his co-workers and supe­rior offi­cers Yakima is a major drug war con­duit with an inces­tu­ous under­belly of state wel­fare pro­grams. Han­ify was vaca­tion­ing on the Olympic Penin­sula when he agreed to meet me and chat about “intox­i­ca­tion.” Well over six foot and maybe 200 pounds, Han­ify, 38, has a fighter’s gait and some­times speaks tru da side uv hiz mout when mak­ing a point. His short com­bus­tive laugh, like a mis­fired shot­gun blast, occa­sion­ally pep­pers our con­ver­sa­tion. Hanify’s eyes are kind, I thought, from see­ing too much that wasn’t. Dur­ing an oth­er­wise pleas­ant meet­ing, I couldn’t help feel­ing under the influ­ence of a series of small, com­pletely irra­tional teenage para­noid flash­backs: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TALKIN’ WITH A NARC, MAN!” — ANTERO ALLI

TALKING RAVEN: What do you do and long have you done it?

BRUCE HANIFY: Half of my work at this point is drug prac­tice which involves search and seizure and privacy-type issues and I’ve been work­ing for the Nar­cotics Divi­sion since 1990. The law enforce­ment empha­sis in Yakima, which I think is the same for most Wash­ing­ton coun­ties, is in the­ory to go out and get the deal­ers .… an art form in itself. But, in prac­tice, a lot of the peo­ple that get nailed are peo­ple who are guilty of sim­ple pos­ses­sion. In other words, the Class “C” felony, which means, in actual sen­tenc­ing, 20 to 30 days in jail for mostly cocaine and some heroin cases. Then, you’ve got the mis­de­meanor mar­i­juana offenses, which I per­son­ally do not deal with, but our office does. At least half of the drug cases filed in Yakima every year are cocaine cases; Yakima is known as a major con­duit for cocaine supply.

TR: Where does the Yakima cocaine come from and how does it get there?

BH: Sta­tis­ti­cally, the belief is that it comes mostly from Mex­ico through Cal­i­for­nia. It prob­a­bly comes via mostly ille­gal immi­grants run­ning it up to make a quick buck. It’s a lot like the pro­hi­bi­tion era in that respect; poor peo­ple look­ing for money.

TR: From your per­sonal expe­ri­ence, what are some of your ideas and the­o­ries about why the so-called “drug prob­lem” might never be solved?

BH: Let me explain that by shar­ing a per­spec­tive I have about mod­ern soci­ety. If you look at a soci­ety that is demo­c­ra­tic, like ours sup­pos­edly is, you look at where psy­chic energy is invested. This coun­try invests enor­mous sums of psy­chic energy in wel­fare or state-dependence, and also on drug and sub­stance depen­dence. You don’t real­ize this until you pros­e­cute and you see peo­ple com­ing in and get­ting the most atten­tion they’ve ever had in their lives while they’re being pros­e­cuted for a crime. The judge will ask them about their past and their his­tory. For the first time in their lives they’re asked about their per­sonal his­tory and it’s in the con­text of being pros­e­cuted. Most peo­ple don’t under­stand the enor­mity of this be we’ve devel­oped whole pop­u­la­tions, in terms of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, who are depen­dent upon the state to define them and part of the fuel for that depen­dency is drug and alco­hol use.

TR: Speak more on this con­nec­tion between depen­dence on the state and drug addiction .…

BH: It doesn’t mean I’m right, but I’ve never met an alco­holic or drug addict who’s ever said, “Howdy, I’m sure glad I’m depen­dent on drugs.” When peo­ple describe their con­di­tion of depen­dence, they describe despair. When you look at the prin­ci­ple of despair and ask your­self, “Is the cure for despair pun­ish­ment and incar­cer­a­tion?” The naswer has to be no. But if you look at the actual things our soci­ety does, the answer has tra­di­tion­ally been more depen­dence, more wel­fare, more struc­tures in the school, and more incar­cer­a­tion itself. Prison especi­cally is a form of depen­dence. I’ve seen peo­ple who, for the first time in their lives, have fam­ily because they’re being pros­e­cuted; the judge is their fam­ily. The defense and the pros­e­cu­tor are their family.

TR: Let’s return to the so-called “drug problem.”

BH: We recently had prosecutor’s train­ing where cer­tain Supreme Court jus­tices, who shall remain unnamed, were invited to speak with sev­eral hun­dred pros­e­cu­tors. One of the nine Supreme Court jus­tices asked a table of us who work crim­i­nal appeals, “What do you think we should do about the drug wars? We’re spend­ing so much money on this; the court sys­tems are tied up by drug cases.” Now, this is a Supreme Court jus­tice [Note: It was Richard Guy of Spokane, with whom I had worked for a short time out of law school.], a real level-headed guy with­out a stand on the issue one way or another, want­ing us to tell him what to do. From my expe­ri­ence with police offi­cers going out on crime calls, I think about it from the angle of “What makes a human being give up his or her claim to inde­pen­dence and self-government in order to become overly depen­dent and invoke the machin­ery of the state to shape his or her life?” That’s a very inter­est­ing and very dan­ger­ous con­cept. What con­cerns me the most and what your read­ers can be cer­tain of is that peo­ple in gov­ern­ment at policy-making insti­tutes, under­stand that we have whole pop­u­la­tions depen­dent upon the invo­ca­tion of the state to shape and deter­mine the course of their daily lives.

TR: You men­tioned the prin­ci­ple of despair a lit­tle while ago. Wha are some of your thoughts about pos­si­ble cures and alle­vi­a­tions for despair?

BH: I have a real life story about that because of what I do to stay in shape. When peo­ple hear I do this, they won­der about me, so don’t get me wrong, but I work out in a box­ing club. Most of the peo­ple who work out there are typ­i­cally young men twelve t0 eigh­teen years old. Every­one of those young men thrives on some­one say­ing, “I believe in you. You’re a worth­while per­son and you have some­thing to work towards.” Young men need to be told that by an adult per­son who will help him get there through dis­ci­pline. We don’t really pro­vide that in our soci­ety. At the same time, we’re pre­tend­ing that a greater law enforce­ment mech­a­nism or greater wel­fare spend­ing will give these kids what they don’t have. So I think the prob­lem is spir­i­tual and moral in nature.

TR: Describe the most appalling encounter you’ve had dur­ing actual crime calls.

BH: Gen­er­ally speak­ing, when you see house­holds of ten or fif­teen kids under the age of eight who swear like sailors and hate author­ity fig­ures, with­out any psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work to guide them. It’s deves­tat­ing. The adults they’re grow­ing up with are mostly drug-dependent. When these kids encounter demonic rage — the kind you see at mur­der scenes — within him­self or her­self, there’s absolutely no struc­ture in place to deal with it.

TR: What do you mean by “demonic rage” at mur­der scenes?

BH: Since I’ve been pros­e­cut­ing I’ve learned that less than 10% of the peo­ple we process through the sys­tem are truly crim­i­nal. A good 85% to 90% we process are welfare-dependent, drug-dependent peo­ple who don’t know how to direct their own lives. That small per­cent­age of peo­ple who are truly cruel, truly rapa­cious and truly mur­der­ous — when you see that, there’s a ter­ri­ble feel­ing aso­ci­ated with that which you learn to intuit. That intu­ition is a great asset to have when you’re on the streets. My the­ory about the energy of demonic rage is that some peo­ple, at var­i­ous points in their lives, become sus­cep­ti­ble to pos­ses­sion by the force. I don’t mean to sound reli­gious or any­thing, but if it pos­sesses them, I think it’s pretty much a per­ma­nent pos­ses­sion. I also think if you’re a 14 or 15 year old kid with­out much psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work or dis­ci­pline who opens their psy­che to drugs, you can become sus­cep­ti­ble to that kind of possession.

TR: Let’s change the sub­ject. Here’s a more exotic ques­tion. Sev­eral kinds of opium poppy grow wild in the state of Wash­ing­ton, in people’s back­yards, and on hill­sides. Had any poppy cases yet?

BH: No; none. I don’t per­son­ally know where the plant is cat­e­go­rized, but I can tell you that in title 69.50 of the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton, every sin­gle mind-altering sub­stance in the world is clas­si­fied as a Sched­ule I, II, III or IV drug; it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where. In terms of law enforce­ment, there hasn’t been a lot of atten­tion paid to it yet but when there is, leg­is­la­tion is sure to fol­low. That’s usu­ally the way it works.

TR: I want to talk more about despair. In my own life, I’ve man­aged to kick the habit of cynacism, but am still work­ing on despair which I’m look­ing at now as an addic­tion and as some­thing that feeds on itself. Once you enter a con­di­tion of despair, it might be a symp­tom or a prod­uct of overde­pen­dence elswhere, rob­bing your auton­omy and dimin­ish­ing your place in life. I’m think­ing that despair might be a nat­ural out­come of self-diminishment … Have you met or known any adults over­whelmed by despair who have kicked the habit?

BH: It’s inter­est­ing how you phrased that the way you did. You said the addic­tion to despair may be the prod­uct and out­come of some other addic­tion. As a pros­e­cu­tor I’ve noticed that our soci­ety, and maybe most West­ern soci­eties, preaches a doc­trine of Must Feel Good .… a dogma of self-esteem. You don’t dare feel any sort of depres­sion. As any cre­ative per­son knows, depres­sion is part of the process of cre­at­ing. I am sus­pi­cious that despair may be a symp­tom of our insti­tu­tional deter­mi­na­tion and insis­tence that peo­ple feel good all the time. I sus­pect the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and doc­tors’ inter­est in Prozac is to make sure no one ever feels bad. In my own war­rior phi­los­o­phy I believe one of the engines of progress in a human being is feel­ing bad about some­thing. I write poetry, for exam­ple, as an out­let for what­ever that feel­ing is. When soci­ety and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal peo­ple try and con­di­tion that out of you, the ques­tion then is where does the cre­ativ­ity go? What would be the nat­ural psy­chic response to that loss of cre­ativ­ity? It may be despair.

TR: Got any exam­ples of good luck sto­ries of peo­ple kick­ing the habit of despair?

BH: There are suc­cess sto­ries. I used to hear a lot of drug addicts and alco­holics say they hit the road to recov­ery in a “Blue Light Spe­cial.” That means until see­ing the flash­ing blue lights in their rearview mir­ror, they don’t even under­stand they have a prob­lem. As a pros­e­cu­tor, you see the need for state inter­ven­tion in many people’s lives to alert them to the fact that there is a prob­lem. Once they begin to work the force of that prob­lem, as you your­self have begun to work the force of trou­ble in TALKING RAVEN, I think you’re on the road to free­dom. I don’t think the free­dom comes in six months or two years. I think it comes in ten or fif­teen or twenty.

TR: The virtue of per­sis­tence.

BH: By virtue of under­stand­ing that soul engaged in life some­times feels bad and some­times looks but but that’s part of what being human is. Try­ing to drug it away or psy­chother­a­pize it away or State it away with some sort of huge wel­fare sys­tem is … bull­shit. (Blasts of com­bus­tive laugh­ter) Editor’s Note: Mr. Han­ify has been writ­ing quite a bit lately. We were pleased to pub­lish his provac­tive piece on wrestling demons, “COMMUNION”, some­where in this issue.

READ THE PROSECUTOR SERIES AT BRUCEHANIFY.COM

Define “Drug”: A Drug Warrior’s Thoughts on the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs

Bruce Han­ify 2011 All Rights Reserved

Clallam County Age Discrimination Case Settled for $1.6 Million

Posted on by
12

May 22, 2012, by Bruce Han­ify  Three for­mer Clal­lam County employ­ees and the daugh­ter of one for­mer employee have accepted a $1.6 mil­lion set­tle­ment in an age dis­crim­i­na­tion suit for dam­ages they suf­fered as employ­ees of the Clal­lam County Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office in Port Ange­les, WA. Deb­o­rah Kelly is the elected pros­e­cu­tor of Clal­lam County.

The for­mer employ­ees included deputy pros­e­cu­tor Carol Case, legal assis­tant Kathy Nielsen, and admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant Elaine Sundt. Hol­lie Hut­ton, daugh­ter of for­mer employee Robin Porter, who was fired in Feb­ru­ary, 2007 and died within a year of her ter­mi­na­tion, appeared on behalf of her mother in the lawsuit.

In an 80-page plead­ing to the supe­rior court, attor­neys Stephanie Bloom­field and James Beck of Tacoma law firm Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well alleged a dis­turb­ing pat­tern of age dis­crim­i­na­tion that resulted in the fir­ing of Carol Case, Elaine Sundt and Robin Porter. Admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant Nielsen, who suf­fered severe phys­i­cal and emo­tional dis­tress brought on by work­place harass­ment, resigned under extreme duress. While only four indi­vid­u­als joined in the law­suit, there appeared to be an office pol­icy of sub­ject­ing older employ­ees to a cal­cu­lated pat­tern of Machi­avel­lian harass­ment, accord­ing to alle­ga­tions con­tained within the legal pleading.

The alle­ga­tions in the plead­ing, while not proven in a trial, appar­ently were suf­fi­ciently cred­i­ble to induce the county to set­tle the lawsuit.

In a press release issued by Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well, it was revealed that elected pros­e­cu­tor Deb Kelly admit­ted that her office suf­fered a turnover rate between 210 and 215%. How­ever, Kelly blamed the set­tle­ment on the legal system:

“This settle­ment was made by the excess insur­ance com­pany strictly for eco­nomic rea­sons,” Kelly said in a state­ment released Saturday.

“The county had no option for going for­ward on its own, short of hir­ing its own attor­neys and spend­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of tax­payer dollars.

“If Wash­ing­ton were a loser-pays state, this law­suit would never have been filed.”

Going Younger The Clal­lam County Prosecutor’s cam­paign against her older work­ers com­menced when she appointed 30-something deputy pros­e­cu­tor Mark Nichols to the posi­tion of chief deputy, which one for­mer employee allegedly char­ac­ter­ized as “putting a five-year-old in charge of dyna­mite.” Kelly stated in a depo­si­tion that it did not mat­ter to her that Nichols, two to three years out of law school when she made him king, did not meet the job require­ments of hav­ing “exten­sive expe­ri­ence in munic­i­pal law.” Some might argue that his expe­ri­ence with prin­ci­ples of lead­er­ship shared a sim­i­lar depth.

Upon Nichols’ appoint­ment to that admin­is­tra­tive post, a cam­paign of “going younger” was waged against those unfor­tu­nate enough to have the capac­ity to exer­cise inde­pen­dent judg­ment. The cam­paign con­sisted first of harass­ing and intim­i­dat­ing older work­ers, then replac­ing them with younger work­ers — with the appar­ent inten­tion of chill­ing dis­sent. Both Kelly and Nichols were sur­pris­ingly can­did in their aim to replace those they regarded as obso­lete. Nichols told one employee:

“Look, Carol [Case] is an older gen­er­a­tion, or is older and she just doesn’t under­stand young peo­ple. Over the past year we’ve been try­ing to get younger peo­ple in the office.”

“Key­stone Nazis” One anony­mous source shared with this writer that for­mer mem­bers of the office secretly referred to the tac­tics Nichols and Kelly engaged in as befit­ting “Key­stone Nazis.” Exam­ples of their hos­tile work­place con­duct allegedly con­sisted of:

While pros­e­cu­tor Kelly used her county com­puter to shop eBay, employee Porter was fired for “inter­net use” within days of receiv­ing a work­place eval­u­a­tion that praised her work and dedica­tion. A num­ber of ques­tion­able dis­ci­pli­nary issues were lev­eled against Porter, who com­plained of being sin­gled out and treated unfairly. Sev­eral employ­ees agreed that Nichols was out to “get” her. Porter’s fir­ing estab­lished the pat­tern of cre­at­ing con­di­tions that couldn’t be met, so that the employee could then be fired.

After Porter was fired, Nichols then turned the tools of his Inqui­si­tion toward Nielsen. While Nielsen had been receiv­ing glow­ing work­place eval­u­a­tions, she was now being accused of insub­or­di­na­tion for con­sult­ing with her super­vis­ing attor­ney about office prob­lems. In one par­tic­u­larly chill­ing inci­dent, two younger employ­ees were invited to one of Nielsen’s dis­ci­pli­nary meet­ings, where they taunted her.

Insub­or­di­na­tion On Jan­u­ary 16, 2008, Robin Porter died. Employee Sundt com­mit­ted the sin of sit­ting at Porter’s memo­r­ial with three female employ­ees who were out of favor with Kelly, includ­ing Carol Case. Nichols com­menced a cam­paign of iso­lat­ing and ridi­cul­ing Ms. Sundt. In fact, at one dis­ci­pli­nary meet­ing, pros­e­cu­tor Kelly accused Sundt of “dis­loy­alty” for sit­ting with for­bid­den mem­bers of the office at Porter’s funeral.

At one point, Sundt con­sulted an attor­ney about her sit­u­a­tion, who mailed the prosecutor’s office alleg­ing age and gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. Within min­utes of being informed by Kelly of the let­ter, Nichols asked Kelly out for cof­fee, then emailed Sundt with a list of ques­tions about who she was spend­ing time with at the office, and who she was talk­ing to. In retal­i­a­tion for con­sult­ing with a lawyer about work­place hos­til­ity, Sundt was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave. (Sundt suf­fered a heart attack while being deposed for this case.)

62-year-old attor­ney Carol Case was sent to a “fit­ness for duty exam” — nor­mally reserved for emer­gency per­son­nel only, never for attor­neys — for the crime of defend­ing her­self against false accu­sa­tions. Case was declared fit for duty, which didn’t fit in with the Going Younger pro­to­cols. Amaz­ingly, Case sur­vived a sus­tained cam­paign of emo­tional and men­tal tor­ment. Even­tu­ally she was fired. That was exactly the wrong thing to do. Case fought back. And won. Let it be said that this blog­ger believes she is the per­fect replace­ment for Mark Nichols.

Employ­ees who dared to con­front Nichols about the dou­ble stan­dard of sub­ject­ing older employ­ees to sur­veil­lance, taunt­ing, and being “set up” to be fired — while giv­ing a pass to younger employ­ees — were cer­tain to under­stand that their job was at risk. What is star­tling about this case is the num­ber of past and for­mer employ­ees who tes­ti­fied about the hos­tile work­place con­di­tions. Sev­eral cur­rent employ­ees demon­strated remark­able courage given the risks they faced.

As stated, none of these claims were fully tested in court, but the plain­tiffs had plenty of evi­dence to sup­port their cause — and Clal­lam County set­tled, which likely means they faced an even larger loss had they gone to trial.

In their press release, Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well wrote:

“The sub­stan­tial amount of money paid out to these women should serve as a reminder that no one is above the law, even an elected pros­e­cu­tor” stated James Beck. “Once Kelly and Nichols were made aware of the dis­crim­i­na­tion claims, instead of putting a stop to it and treat­ing peo­ple fairly, they chose to retal­i­ate. These four women brought this law­suit to take back their good names, and with the hope that it might pre­vent Kelly and Nichols from engag­ing in sim­i­lar con­duct in the future.”

#  #  #  #

May 23, 2012  The Sequim Gazette reported today:

Kelly said the issues in the office were never about age dis­crim­i­na­tion, dis­abil­ity or retal­i­a­tion but rather a power struggle.

She said she and Nichols take com­plaints of harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion very seriously.

Pat­ter­son said he absolutely believed Kelly and Nichols did the right things.

“They were hold­ing peo­ple account­able that were not held account­able pre­vi­ously,” he said.  Clal­lam County Set­tles $1.6 Mil­lion Age Dis­crim­i­na­tion Suit

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was employed as a deputy pros­e­cu­tor at Clal­lam County from Novem­ber, 2005 to Sep­tem­ber, 2006, but chose to leave because I found the work­ing unnec­es­sar­ily tense.  I am proud to say that I worked for one of the great pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys of this state, Jeff Sul­li­van.  Sul­li­van was an old school lawyer: prin­ci­ple before per­son­al­ity.  While I might have wanted to con­tinue pros­e­cut­ing in my home­town (I was born in Port Ange­les, and grad­u­ated from Forks High School), it was obvi­ous to me that the office was headed to some sort of con­fla­gra­tion.  Hav­ing read through Honeywell’s plead­ing, it is very clear that I made the right deci­sion.  I was appalled by what I read in that doc­u­ment.  It was far worse than I thought — in part because I left before it got any juicier.

Robin Porter was my sec­re­tary and a friend of mine.  She was a lovely per­son, with a vibrant sense of humor, and was quite tor­mented by the intim­i­da­tion she expe­ri­enced in that envi­ron­ment.  When I learned that she died, I felt very strongly that she died of a bro­ken heart — related to get­ting fired.  I still believe that.  Can’t prove it, but I believe it.  Let me say there are karmic oblig­a­tions beyond the finan­cial for those who enjoy tor­ment­ing fel­low beings.

Elaine, Carol, Kathy, Con­grat­u­la­tions.  Holly, I loved your mother as a friend.  I’m proud of you. This Bud’s on me.

OF INTEREST:  Three drug cases inves­ti­gated by the Olympic Penin­sula Nar­cotics Enforce­ment Team were dis­missed after Supe­rior Court Judge Ken Williams found the Prosecutor’s Office vio­lated court rules by not dis­clos­ing the iden­tity of its key wit­ness to the defense.  Drug Cases Dismissed

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

Define “Drug”: A Drug Warrior’s Thoughts on the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs (UPDATED)

Posted on by

by Bruce Han­ify Here is the short answer to the War on Drugs: there is no short answer.  Whichever side you fall on this issue, you will be blinded by prej­u­dice.  Why?  Because if you sup­ply a yes or no answer, you will likely neglect one of two nec­es­sary prin­ci­ples at play in how law and gov­ern­ment work.  Which one you’re blind to tells me whether you’re for or against the legal­iza­tion of recre­ational drugs.

Before we get started, let me con­fess that I have been per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally involved in the entire imbroglio of illicit drug use for what now seems like my entire life.  I pros­e­cuted drug cases for 15 years, and defended them for 10.  What fol­lows is an hon­est account of the bat­tle thus far, as I under­stand it.

Here are the two principles:

First, gov­ern­ment is force.  It is sheer lunacy to expect gov­ern­ment to work like a fine instru­ment in, say, the hands of a Leonardo.  Gov­ern­ment, ulti­mately, is about tak­ing your money and throw­ing you into jail — or worse.  And the big mys­tery about gov­ern­ment isn’t really such a mys­tery.  When and where and how peo­ple want gov­ern­ment to use force is an out­growth of cul­tural dynam­ics that are some­times dif­fi­cult to spot up close.  It usu­ally takes at least a cen­tury of sep­a­ra­tion before peo­ple can hon­estly assess what was going on in some spe­cific period.  And then there are those notable excep­tions, like the “War Between the States” and the Fall of Rome, where no two his­to­ri­ans have ever agreed on much of any­thing.  The War on Drugs is equally per­plex­ing.  When­ever these things are researched in detail, they fail to yield easy answers.

Gov­ern­ment does not solve prob­lems cre­atively.  Never has, never will.   What gov­ern­ment does is wipe out the com­pe­ti­tion.  Gov­ern­ment is not a nanny or an art teacher or your Aunt Rose.  It is the biggest, dullest boy on the block, and when you get in the way, it whomps you.  The ques­tions addressed by the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion are never the legit­i­macy of force, but when, where and how force ought to be applied — and to what end.  Cre­ativ­ity can only occur when absolute free­dom of choice is allowed to oper­ate.  In the case of pol­i­tics and law, cre­ativ­ity is more an ado­les­cent indul­gence than an event we can all look for­ward to.  Hence, the first prin­ci­ple forces us to con­clude that no mat­ter which course of action we choose, it won’t be pretty.

The sec­ond prin­ci­ple peo­ple are likely to miss derives from the Equal Pro­tec­tion clause, found in the 14th Amend­ment — a major Civil War era mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the constitution:

.… No State shall .… . deny to any per­son within its juris­dic­tion the equal pro­tec­tion of the laws.

Put sim­ply, you can­not equally enforce laws unless there is a gen­eral social agree­ment about what it is you’re try­ing to do.  If you doubt how crit­i­cal this is, com­pare a mostly homoge­nous pop­u­la­tion like Japan’s to our het­ero­ge­neous nation.  A Japan­ese pretty much under­stands where he or she is, what’s going on, and what’s expected of him, whether he’s at a wed­ding, or in a court­room.  We don’t have much of that in the United States.  The first big ques­tion on the table is, then:

Define ‘drug.’

You can see the prob­lem imme­di­ately.  If you passed a drug law in Japan, chances are most Japan­ese would under­stand what the law intended.  Here it is not so clear.  What a drug is to a Chris­t­ian Sci­en­tist is not the same thing as a drug to your physi­cian, and so on.  It is extremely unlikely that we will ever have much agree­ment as to the fed­eral government’s proper role in the reg­u­la­tion of drugs because few of us could agree on what what is being reg­u­lated: meth, or aspirin?  Even my sub­ti­tle, “the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs”, is mean­ing­less.  Younger read­ers would think the War on Drugs began with Reagan’s coro­na­tion of it as such, but for old folks like myself it started in ’67, after Art Linkletter’s daugh­ter fell (?) out a win­dow and died; and for the Reefer Dudes it started in the 20s; and for the purist Lib­er­tar­ian types, it started with the  .… .

The Food and Drug Act, passed in 1906.  That gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple had wit­nessed one of the largest pop­u­la­tions of opium addicts ever seen in this coun­try.  Between opium-laced con­sumer prod­ucts and wounded Civil War vet­er­ans, the United States expe­ri­enced a wide­spread, chronic prob­lem with seri­ous drug addic­tion.  You could argue — many do — that noth­ing needed to be done, but if you put your­self in that time and think about peo­ple mak­ing money sell­ing dope-laden con­sumer prod­ucts to preg­nant women, you can under­stand why it seemed advis­able for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to step in, i.e., poi­so­nous foods and poi­so­nous drugs are in the same cat­e­gory, socially speak­ing.  Aren’t they?

Con­sider: do you want to repeal the Food and Drug laws?  The first time someone’s baby dies from bad for­mula, we’re right back where we started.

The com­plex­i­ties mul­ti­ply expo­nen­tially.  You don’t have to be a rocket sci­en­tist to under­stand that relax­ing the fed­eral government’s cur­rent reach and finan­cial take might reju­ve­nate many tor­pid areas of our coun­try. When you look at the enor­mity of power and the finan­cial drain rep­re­sented by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, you can say, “They should get out of drugs.”  But then someone’s baby dies, and every­one says, ‘Why doesn’t some­one stop them?’  That’s the real­ity of hav­ing a huge coun­try, a het­ero­ge­neous pop­u­la­tion, and a dis­tant, abstract, often dis­mally stu­pid national gov­ern­ment.  There is never going to be one easy answer because the answer will change with the ques­tion.  You can take that same obser­va­tion and apply it to any of the other thou­sands of things our fed­eral gov­ern­ment is doing.  There will always be folks stand­ing in line say­ing, “Look at these good things”, and then folks in the other line, say­ing, “Tsk, tsk, such a waste!”

So let’s start from the out­side and work our way back.  Let us argue, as many do, that “treat­ment is the right answer.”  Okay.  I agree.  Treat­ment is a bet­ter answer than pun­ish­ment.  Now let’s look at three fac­tors which com­pli­cate that pic­ture entirely:

1)  Pre­sum­ing we are going to man­date treat­ment, which will require tax­a­tion and gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, we are still fight­ing a War on Drugs.  We may be fight­ing more like a Peace Corps engage­ment than a U.S. Army Search and Destroy mis­sion, but we’re still in a War.  Peo­ple will have to be arrested.  Force will be nec­es­sary.  Do you doubt this?  How would you expect to enforce laws that are sweetly writ­ten but don’t carry the force of law?  What you’re really doing is shift­ing the use of force, so let’s be hon­est about that.

2)  The assump­tion is that once we move the empha­sis from pun­ish­ment to treat­ment the drug car­tels will dis­ap­pear and the cost of the War will drop.  Where is the proof for this?  The fact is, you will still need to expend a great amount of money to treat addic­tion on a national scale, and you will still have com­pe­ti­tion.  In other words, there is no legit­i­mate rea­son to expect that things will sud­denly improve.  Prob­a­bly we would have to expend even greater effort than before because now you are argu­ing against some­thing you have given tacit approval to.  Maybe not.  I’m just throw­ing that out there.

3) The other assump­tion is, once you legal­ize drugs, mar­ket prices will drop, but I ask again: where is the proof of this?  Per­haps the only way to do that is to get rid of the com­pe­ti­tion alto­gether and give peo­ple their drugs, but .… given the gen­eral inef­fi­cien­cies of gov­ern­ment (and government’s well-documented resis­tance to any­thing like facts), you know as well as I do they’d screw that up so badly, we’d prob­a­bly spend three times what we’re spend­ing now.  Besides, this option works best when you have the option of wip­ing out the com­pe­ti­tion.  Back to where we started.

So .… what is the answer?  I believe I started this post by say­ing “There is no one answer.”  And I stand by that, with this pro­viso: treat­ing addicts like they’re mon­sters is not a good idea.  Addic­tion, like finan­cial chaos, like obe­sity, like men­tal ill­ness, is a weak­ness many peo­ple suf­fer from that is rooted in brain chem­istry, devel­op­men­tal dynam­ics, social pres­sures, and so on.  The answer — if we’re forced to resort to force — lies some­where in pro­vid­ing suit­able train­ing struc­tures and med­ical treat­ments that address men­tal ill­ness and dietary chal­lenges.  Pul­ver­iz­ing a person’s self-image to make a point is likely to rein­force the neg­a­tive behav­ior, in my view, which is the real moral dif­fi­culty with our War on Drugs.

#  #  #  #

Two Thoughts About Pro­hi­bi­tion  Almost always peo­ple resort to the tired and incon­gru­ent anal­ogy of Pro­hi­bi­tion: “We tried it dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion and it didn’t work.  Ha Ha Ha!”  Well, here are two thoughts about Pro­hi­bi­tion you might want to consider:

#1  Socially, Pro­hi­bi­tion was feminism’s first major elec­toral vic­tory after obtain­ing the right to vote.  Women rebelled against drunken, abu­sive men.  Guess what?  It served them (the men) right.  Since they couldn’t con­trol them­selves, they shouldn’t whine about some­body knockin’ ‘em around.  By the way, this has a direct bear­ing on whether or how a free peo­ple can reg­u­late them­selves.  The fact is, drunk­en­ness and drug abuse are incon­sis­tent with free­dom.  Most peo­ple resent being reminded of that.  Eas­ier to bray.

#2  The very idea that you can ban alco­hol is, on its face, absurd.  Pro­hi­bi­tion was eas­ily one of the most ill-conceived legal maneu­vers in the his­tory of man .… and it has a direct bear­ing on how we should treat addicts: pun­ish them, or help them?

In related news, some­thing that I would like to see more of: Gen­uine dis­cus­sion of how cer­tain drugs, like psy­che­delics, ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE.  Vic­to­ria Har­ris pro­vides a rea­son­ably inter­est­ing primer on how chang­ing social views affect how we treat ques­tions of what ought to be legal, but com­ments like THIS ONE are bet­ter than the arti­cle.  MDMA and var­i­ous other sub­stances actu­ally do pro­mote psy­cho­log­i­cal insight.  Blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tions against cer­tain drugs aren’t sci­en­tific.  They’re hys­ter­i­cal and imprac­ti­cal and .… cruel.

Some peo­ple are call­ing Obama’s stance on drugs Disin­gen­u­ous.  Wow.  Where have I heard that before?

Child­hood chum Mar­tin Shaugh­nessy wrote: “Actu­ally, there is a short answer. All drugs should be legal, high qual­ity, priced to mar­ket con­di­tions, and read­ily avail­able. What hap­pens when you give a junkie all the dope they want? Prob­lem Solved. Damn, you think too much, Bruce.”

UPDATE  While I am grate­ful for Martin’s feed­back, he makes my point for me.  The posi­tion, “legal­ize drugs”, pro­duces the same result as “abol­ish the FDA.”  Sounds great over Sun­day fried chicken, but I’ll guar­an­tee you will NEVER win a national elec­tion on it.  Everyone’s lib­eral about drug use till they think about tak­ing their grand kids to Tar­get and hav­ing to dodge ston­ers.  Or, like I tell my Lib­er­tar­ian friends, “Two weeks after drugs are legal­ized, there’ll be a bounty on you guys.  Twenty bucks a scalp.”  No one seems to think polit­i­cal and social real­i­ties are rel­e­vant to the dis­cus­sion — which was the point of my post.

Rob DeWitt wrote:  “You right­fully employ the image of a national opium prob­lem in the early 20th cen­tury. Imag­ine if there had been tele­vi­sion and movies every­where in 1900, sub­tly explain­ing to every­body who passed by that see­ing a prob­lem with opium addic­tion and the casual use of opium and cocaine in patent med­i­cine was just an indi­ca­tion that you were an uptight ass­hole who’d never get laid. There would not only not have been a great­est gen­er­a­tion, there would likely not have been their fathers fight­ing WWI, either.”

Hard-hitting stuff.  And way beyond what Deniers are able to grasp, I know.

Also, this, at Vanderleun’s:

mjazz: If meth was legal, the “tweaker next door” wouldn’t care if Mr. Han­ify was spy­ing on him. It would be like the lady next door shoot­ing you for watch­ing her grow toma­toes.

I replied:

“Spy­ing”?

That’s funny. And paranoid.

If you were ratio­nal, you’d real­ize I’m not tak­ing a spe­cific posi­tion. I’m talk­ing about soci­ety, and human nature.

UPDATE:  I was asked to give the Keynote speech last night at Mike Maki’s gala ben­e­fit din­ner and silent auc­tion Olympia Women’s Club, Abi­gail Stu­art House.  Mike and some friends were arrested in Octo­ber for grow­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing psilo­cy­bin mushrooms.

Mike and I are vet­er­ans of the West End of the Olympic Penin­sula, circa 1970s.  I was com­ment­ing that things were sure mel­low back in those days.  Peo­ple who came to see the national parks in the sum­mer used to always say, “You Pacific North­west peo­ple sure are friendly!”  Yes, we were.  And then polit­i­cal oper­a­tives invaded, and started cor­rect­ing thoughts and words.  Hasn’t been the same since.

Of sin­is­ter his­tor­i­cal note: the mania to cor­rect people’s thoughts has not come from tra­di­tion­ally con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tu­tions, like the Catholic Church, say.  It has come from mod­ern day “church­men” who have all but destroyed the indi­vid­u­al­ism that was inher­ent in my Pacific North­west.   It has all the fea­tures of a sci­ence fic­tion plot.

We see this neg­a­tive pat­tern played out in dis­cus­sions about top­ics like drugs.  If you have an opin­ion that dif­fers from the self-righteous, they cru­cify you.

What is that about?

All in all a very inter­est­ing evening.  Mar­tin Shaughnessy’s reply and the hys­ter­ics demon­strated by some com­ments at Amer­i­can Digest betray a com­plete inabil­ity to even con­sider that other peo­ple don’t agree with you.  They regard peo­ple who are opposed to legal­iz­ing drugs as “unin­formed.”  Here’s a news­flash for you guys: Mar­i­juana causes sig­nif­i­cant men­tal health impair­ment in many peo­ple.  I can’t help but notice that my friends who still smoke are .… oh.  Not cur­rent.  The rest of us see it.  We’re wait­ing for you to fig­ure it out.

And why and how are you so anx­ious to see peo­ple die?  Eh?  Just a question.

Inter­ested read­ers may enjoy my Pros­e­cu­tor Series.

This inter­view of Jerry Gar­cia is prob­a­bly the sin­gle best sum­ma­tion of the Six­ties I have ever seen.  Please note there was a very spe­cific kind of moment in which there was clar­ity, but .… “It went away as soon as it was publicized.”

[video mp4=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Grateful-Dead-Jerry-Garcia-Interview-1994.mp4” poster=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/jerry-garcia-ripple-rose-ben-upham.jpg” preload=“yes” autoplay=“no” loop=“no” width=“575” height=“422”]

Inter­view of Jerry Garcia

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

The Education of a Maverick Prosecutor, Part I: Life in the NOIR Zone

Posted on by
Reply

by Bruce Han­ify

The fol­low­ing Pros­e­cu­tor Series encap­su­lates what I learned dur­ing my 15 years as a deputy pros­e­cu­tor. They are intended to shed some infor­mal light on a very dark area: crime.  Hope you enjoy them.

#  #  #  #

I was born before 1960, when the world was Black-and-White. Repressed men and women mum­bled innu­en­dos through cigarette-clenched lips. Dan­ger­ous, exis­ten­tial con­flicts cir­cled rest­less dreams like a hun­gry lion — kept in check by house pay­ments, kids, and alco­hol. You know what I mean. If you are 50-years-old or older, you were likely con­ceived in a cloud of Chester­field smoke and learned to accept lip­stick on your restau­rant glass as a part of the Sur­geon General’s rec­om­mended diet for future depres­sives. Yeah.

That’s Noir, man.

The A&E execs pay peo­ple to answer the ques­tion: “What is film Noir?” Are you kid­ding me? Noir is not a film, man. It’s the world America’s World War II com­bat vets revealed through films like Black Angel and The Asphalt Jun­gle. The world of Noir started with All Quiet on the West­ern Front and ended with Cape Fear. That’s Noir, Jack. About 30 years. If you throw in Twi­light Zone’s five sea­sons, 35 years.  Noir is the world that shaped my soul.

My sis­ters and I grew up in a house where the specters of the dead did not let us for­get the shad­owy side of life. My mother’s first hus­band was killed at Nor­mandy; her sec­ond hus­band — my father — landed at Nor­mandy and sur­vived the Bat­tle of the Bulge through VE Day. We didn’t watch war movies with either of our folks around.  The end result of my early years was that I was always more at home in the 1940s than I am in our own time, which seems so .… so much like a pam­pered kid from a one-child fam­ily. They’re only cute to their par­ents. The rest of us are forced to endure their specialness.

Flash for­ward to the sum­mer of ’88. Freshly divorced, and rest­less, I began what would turn out to be a near-career of pros­e­cu­tion in Yakima County. One after­noon I was argu­ing a sum­mary judg­ment motion in a civil case against the County. I turned and saw that Jeff Sul­li­van, the elected pros­e­cu­tor, was watch­ing me in action. I barely got back to my office when the phone rang. It was Sul­li­van. On a sweaty August day in 1988, I hung up my spurs as an insur­ance defense attor­ney and became a deputy pros­e­cu­tor.  I would spend my next 12 years in that office.

Yakima was a shoot­ing gallery. It seemed there was a drive-by shoot­ing almost every week. A friend of mine in the defense busi­ness went with his client’s fam­ily to the Pizza Hut for lunch break dur­ing his client’s trial for .… a drive-by.  A car back­fired. Every sin­gle per­son at that table instinc­tively ducked for cover. That’s how it was. With­out even real­iz­ing it, I learned to check belt lines when I was on the street, in stores. Yakima was my sweaty intro­duc­tion to America’s post-Noir world, a place where there was nei­ther romance, nor honor.  Smarmy greed and cruel force were the dom­i­nant cur­rents in America’s dete­ri­o­rat­ing social scene.

Man per­fected by soci­ety is the best of all ani­mals; he is the most ter­ri­ble of all when he lives with­out law, and with­out jus­tice.  Aris­to­tle

The only entity that can medi­ate between the indi­vid­ual and the tribe is, for bet­ter or worse, a state, and it is the prosecutor’s pecu­liar respon­si­bil­ity to enforce the will of the state against an indi­vid­ual.  Because jus­tice is rooted in pro­por­tion­al­ity, and pro­por­tion­al­ity can­not take shape with­out some­thing with which to mea­sure its appli­ca­tion, i.e., force, it nec­es­sar­ily involves the use of power against oth­ers.  Hence there is always an ele­ment of war in pol­i­tics.  You can­not impose an income tax with­out mak­ing “polite” war on the cit­i­zenry.  There is no nice way to part some­one from what they’ve cul­ti­vated through effort and intel­li­gence.  You have to take it from them, and if they resist, you have to imprison or kill them.  Peo­ple want to hear these things expressed in terms of ideals, but up close, it doesn’t work that way.

Still, if it weren’t for the state, we would soon find our­selves in a Hobbe­sian night­mare of end­less strife.

It is in jus­tice that the order­ing of soci­ety is cen­tered.  Aris­to­tle

The entire uni­verse is a power sys­tem. In any dynamic, whether mechan­i­cal or psy­chic, there is an exchange of energy.  In inti­mate rela­tion­ships there is sex­ual power, emo­tional power, finan­cial power, even psy­cho­log­i­cal power — unless the two per­sons are excep­tion­ally evolved. Even kind­ness can be used to manip­u­late the other. Some­times one party is an extremely secure per­son, the other is not, and so on.  Always there is con­flict in human rela­tion­ships.  The best rela­tion­ships are the ones where each party pulls his or her own weight and respects the other per­son with­out resort to guilt, or fear.  It is by this mech­a­nism that our per­son­al­i­ties and our char­ac­ter evolve.

Almost all the world’s prob­lems can be traced to the improper exer­cise of power.  The pur­pose of foren­sics in the law is to shape the per­son­al­ity so that it gives expres­sion to the prin­ci­ple of pro­por­tion, which could be defined as the “cir­cum­scribed appli­ca­tion of force.”  True matu­rity in the law and in pol­i­tics con­sists of get­ting the per­son­al­ity out of the way.

There is no human being who can­not fall prey to greed or evil.  It takes a tremen­dous amount of work to free your­self from dis­torted attach­ments to the power dynamic. Most of us prac­tice power rit­u­als we believe are unique and use­ful but which are, in fact, prim­i­tive force plas­tered over with a Smi­ley Face.  In the final run, Death is the Joker that forces us all to let go of all our delusions.

The law is rea­son, free from pas­sion.  Aris­to­tle

Over time, the force of per­son­al­ity is con­cen­trated by respon­si­bil­ity, whereas eva­sion of respon­si­bil­ity weak­ens its force, which is why I’ve told the pros­e­cu­tors I’ve trained that you can­not achieve jus­tice with polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy or per­sonal pref­er­ence because when you do that, you are impos­ing your per­son­al­ity upon other peo­ple which is — to use the old-fashioned term — tyranny.  To apply force justly upon oth­ers, your will must be guided by prin­ci­ple.  It takes an uncom­monly evolved per­son­al­ity to under­stand how quickly prin­ci­ple can be dis­torted by greed, pet­ti­ness and cru­elty, whether open, or concealed.

Therein lies the pri­mary issue of power: whether its appli­ca­tion is con­scious or uncon­scious, prin­ci­pled or tyran­ni­cal.  It is the same for all human beings, in all cir­cum­stances. You can only dis­en­gage from manip­u­la­tion if there is a con­scious effort to cul­ti­vate a ster­ling char­ac­ter for­ti­fied by solid prin­ci­ple — or the pain of adver­sity forces you to let go.

In my 15 years as a pros­e­cu­tor, I actu­ally got to know, and exer­cise, power, albeit at mod­est lev­els. In the next install­ment, we’ll con­tinue with real life sto­ries of pros­e­cu­tion, and how I learned to observe the State in action.

Or, more prop­erly, how I learned to exer­cise power.

Wel­come to my world.

Books by Bruce Han­ify at Smash­words
Bruce Han­ify 2010 All Rights Reserved

The Education of a Maverick Prosecutor, Part VI: Compassion

Posted on by
Reply

by Bruce Han­ify  Things changed for me as a result of being put into “the bucket” — the Invol­un­tary Treat­ment Act (“ITA”) hear­ings at the Memo­r­ial psy­chi­atric unit in Yakima.  Each of us pros­e­cu­tors in that rota­tion were there for a month at a time, twice a year.  With two “men­tal” hear­ings every week, that meant you were at the hos­pi­tal by 8 a.m. eight times a month.  Dur­ing that time I became famil­iar with the face of men­tal ill­ness.  How that affected me I could not have foreseen.

It grad­u­ally dawned on me that many decent human beings are trapped in some sort of rep­e­ti­tious chem­istry pat­tern from which they can’t escape.  I’ve heard crim­i­nal defen­dants say, “Your Honor! This isn’t me!”  And from my con­di­tion­ing, and my own prej­u­dice, I assumed they were mak­ing excuses.  My rota­tion through the ITA hear­ings taught me oth­er­wise.  What I finally saw was that there is this kind of sta­tic, or white noise, that oper­ates like an Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der in many peo­ple.  It’s like they can’t get their lit­tle mar­ble to roll down the same track every day.  Peo­ple who don’t overeat assume peo­ple who do are weak; peo­ple who per­form sim­i­lar func­tions every day assume those who can’t are moral fee­blings.  The fact is, depres­sion, overeat­ing and, in many cases, crim­i­nal con­duct, are func­tions of brain chemistry. But we don’t dis­cuss brain chem­istry. We thump peo­ple. Then we won­der why they don’t get fixed.

The dra­matic exam­ples are per­haps less instruc­tive.  I saw a lit­tle fel­low so far out of con­trol that it took three big lugs to throw him to the floor and strap him to a board.  Two days later, after the meds kicked in, he was a lucid and very intel­li­gent — and very charm­ing — fel­low.  His mother was a long-time edu­ca­tor, a Ph.D.  There was no short­age of intel­li­gence in that fam­ily!  What I learned from sev­eral of the psy­chi­a­trists was that fre­quently very intel­li­gent peo­ple are also not very sta­ble men­tally.  It goes with the turf.  Sev­eral psy­chi­a­trists have told me, for exam­ple, that you can’t have bi-polar dis­or­der unless you have a fairly impres­sive IQ.  One psy­chi­a­trist put it bluntly: “Stu­pid peo­ple don’t go bipolar.”

But the truly trou­bling cases are those folks who wan­der in and out of society’s insti­tu­tions with ghostly anonymity.  Their lives never gel.  They live with fear and anx­i­ety and con­flict, all of which com­pound one another over the years, a thick layer of scar tis­sue that suf­fo­cates the life from them.  After God knows how many tours through jails and men­tal hos­pi­tals, their self-image is shat­tered; and no mat­ter how much peo­ple put on the face of com­pas­sion, deep down these folks know them­selves as rejects.  They don’t really believe any­one is there to help them; they’ve stopped believ­ing any­one can.

It is truly aston­ish­ing how many peo­ple in the men­tal health pro­fes­sions don’t seem to have any gen­uine insight into suf­fer­ing.  The sys­tem is loaded with psy­chol­o­gists who believe they’re per­form­ing heal­ing func­tions when they say things like ‘cog­ni­tive’ or ‘behav­ioral’ while adopt­ing the most intel­lec­tual expres­sion they can muster.   It takes a rough and tum­ble Irish-American like myself to see it.  I some­times joked, “The Irish are born bipo­lar.”  Those of us who have felt the sting of lonely anguish have a gen­uine con­nec­tion with those who cry out, “Your Honor! This isn’t me!”  The prob­lem is, see­ing that and doing some­thing about it are two very dif­fer­ent things.

Bureau­cra­cies are not geared to address that very human side of things, which is a bit ironic when you think of it.  If gov­ern­ment funds can’t sus­tain an effec­tive heal­ing sys­tem for the men­tally ill, what would?  That’s a legit­i­mate ques­tion, to which there is no ready answer.  Most Amer­i­cans lazily assume that once the gov­ern­ment has spent money, the prob­lem is solved.  When you and I slough off our cre­ative, problem-solving pow­ers to an abstrac­tion, we really haven’t done any­thing except evade the issue.  I would describe that iner­tia as typ­i­cal of how we gov­ern our­selves in Amer­ica.  Cre­ativ­ity is local; gov­ern­ment is abstract.  Want to solve prob­lems?  Get in there and go to work.

A reader asked the other day, “Do you really believe that we have lawyers because peo­ple won’t accept respon­si­bil­ity?”  She then observed that when peo­ple try to argue their own cases in court, they are shut out.  This posi­tion has two prob­lems.  First, it assumes that ordi­nary peo­ple typ­i­cally make ratio­nal argu­ments, which isn’t true.  Peo­ple make emo­tional, not ratio­nal, argu­ments.  If it were oth­er­wise, this coun­try would be a very dif­fer­ent place.  The sec­ond prob­lem is that she missed my point. If your life can only be resolved in the court­room, you are not tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for it.

As a result of my tour through the men­tal health sys­tem, I con­cluded that we are bar­bar­ians when it comes to address­ing human suf­fer­ing.  We really don’t know what we’re doing.

And no, I don’t have an imme­di­ate answer.  One thing I do know is, Amer­i­can soci­ety would be wealth­ier and more peace­ful if peo­ple were encour­aged to pull their own weight with­out resort­ing to blame, whether penal blame, polit­i­cal blame, or any other kind of blame.  Blame doesn’t heal.  Respon­si­bil­ity does.

How to do that?  Do you have any ideas?

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012