Surviving until SHTF

There have been almost too many events in the last few years to even attempt to list where people have been killed by the so called "habitual criminal". The usual democratic claim is that it is not the criminal's fault. I hate to admit it but I am beginning to agree with them. We now have a system in which a person with mental problems can only be placed in a secure mental facility if he is a danger to himself or others. Since we have closed the former system of mental facilities, we now wait until they actually commit an act that is well beyond normal behavior, kill, rape, ect. We then and then as a last resort lock them in a prison system with no real mental health care. The problem has been made worse, not solved by the use of prescription drugs to treat the mental conditions. Expecting the mental ill to follow a complicated drug regime on their own over the long run is a pipe dream. Expecting the medical system to prescribe the right dosage of the effective medication in a non custodial setting is just as much a pipe dream.

Since the standard policy now is to only lock the barn after the horse has been stolen, what can we do? I treat everyone who appears to have a mental problem as a potential danger. I would like to help, but if society isn't going to spend the resources, why should I risk my safety? There are areas with higher than normal concentrations of the mentally ill. These I avoid. Large crowds, protest groups, homeless camps, certain sections of the cities, mass transit facilities, areas around the homeless shelters and such. Certain groupings like the trans community, or some biker groups. If they have the tats and wear the colors it is in my mind a sign, I don't attempt to pet random pit bulldogs or rotties either.The problem is also local. I have a neighbor who is in most senses both wealthy and successful who has a 30 year old son living with him when he isn't in jail. His son has been diagnosed as mentally ill since he caused problems in school in the primary grades. He is both a drug addict and a person who can justify in his own mind everything he does. Theft to raise money for his drug habit. They have so much and I need my drugs. Beating a friend nearly to death with a hammer while high on coke. He shouldn't have said that about me. In my limited contact around here, the problem in the long run is solved by overdoses, suicide, prison, and a life style leading to death by about 40 due to abusing their bodies. In my self limited exposure, it is seldom corrected by treating the illness.

At this point I would usually list a few references that illustrate the problem. But in this case I would just suggest that you read the latest headline on a random stabbing, mass murder, or such. These are very seldom the acts of a rational normal person. I could list the "pit bull" groups that I avoid, but that would bring all sorts of bad mouthing down on me by certain political groups.

 

If I understand correctly, you are saying mental illness is linked to crime. I agree, sometimes they are linked, especially most of the gruesome crimes, but a huge majority of the time they are not. I think we need a realistic approach to both crime and mental health.

I consider the 'habitual criminal' to be the 'professional criminal.' They have progressed to this point over years, taking the easier road which has rewarded them in the past and if caught - well - they give up their freedom, but just for a while, for '3 hots and a cot', healthy food, free medical care, instead of losing a hand or their life. Most of the time, they are not caught so the odds are definitely in their favor by quite a lot.

We are now, what I call, 'over civilized.' Why should society care what happens to these criminals and even the bad mental cases? They certainly don't care about me or you. Why should we wring our hands about the lack of mental institutions that would cost billions? Perhaps the easiest and certainly the fastest solution is simply a rope and tree, much like our forefathers did. That horse thief will steal no more horses when caught the first time, right? He/she is gone and so is the problem.

First, immediate and permanent justice to those, whether mental ill or not. You rape. You die. You kill. You die. You do any crime with any sort of weapon. You die. Crimes against children. You die. You deal drugs. You die... and do it publicly. We watch it all the time in movies so show it in real life, the consequences of crime. Hell, it might be healthy and rub off some of that Hollywood nonsense.

Second, give up the fantasy that we will someday discover what makes these criminals for its a multitude of things that we as a society cannot control or fix, such as family, background, abuse (emotional and physical), environment, culture...on and on. There are now 8.2 billion people in the world with 341+ million in the USA alone. We can neither control or fix all these specific causes nor even be allowed to do so. So, why continue to waste time and resources thinking we can.

Why must we think we have to be so civilized. A person comes onto my property and steals from me - yet - I cannot shoot him to protect my property. Why? Why am I stopped from doing the normal reaction, yet the criminal's abnormal action is given all the consideration. Now, that sounds like mental illness to me! Most of these criminals know exactly what they are doing and why and all the reasons that got them there are meaningless.

Anyway, my opinion on crime is if we chop a few heads and hands off, do it publicly, and don't give a damn about age, gender, race, creed, nationality, etc. we will see immediate and much better results. I do not think mental illness and crime are constantly linked. Sometimes, yes, but most the time, no.

As far as mental illness, that's a really slippery slope. Is drug addiction or alcoholism a mental illness? Didn't they have a choice to use or not, much like the criminal choosing to perform the crime? Then, there are a thousand other oddities that could be considered mental illness...slippery slope.

 

This is what has been missing for the past few decades. Elimination of the perpetrators...no more "catch and release."

 

Mental health care is a really bad joke, Regan was right to end those abuses and try to force the states to do something else, the problem was the states refused, it cost money and there was no incentive, no money to be made! Worse, those institutions were nothing but places of untold horrors, criminal experiments in all forms, and drugs for everything were tested on patients endlessly, everyone in those places of torture suffered extraordinary pain and anguish!

FACT: there were only ever two "Successful drugs ever actually developed to "Treat" mental health issues, BOTH only masked the issues, with out ever actually fixing anything. all the rest of the drugs should have been made illegal LONG ago, but were allowed to continue, partly for the YUGE profits, partly to keep society's most vulnerable under "Their" Thumb!
FACT: it is estimated that 1 in 3 humans suffer some sort of Mental defect, pick your curse, 1 in 3 of us have something "Wrong" in our heads! DO we medicate for it, or should we be experimented on, or institutionalized?
FACT: there has been NO research into Mental health or the science in what the root causes might be, instead, the "System" only seeks to medicate and house for profit! There is zero money for research outside the Pharma Community, and those meds cost thousands per dose! Insurance companies will refuse coverage, there is no profit in it unless the patient suffers other harms!!!
FOrcing folks to medicate only makes things worse, those meds only mask the issues, and getting folks hooked, eighter by the actual effect, or the expectation of effect, once you take that away, the only option is to turn to the illegal narcotics and to self medicate, making a bad problem much worse!

Equating Mental issues with Criminal behaviour isn't fair or just, the vast number of folks with mental issues manage to quietly go about their lives, choosing to suffer silently and alone, partly out of fear, partly out of embarrassment, Criminals come from all sorts of places, bad/no parents, drugs, conditions of community, ect,........most find being a criminal is vastly easier then working hard "For the Man" most choose that life for the ease of it, the instant gratification, the risk to reward, the thrill of it, and they become addicted to it, many move into drugs to get their next thrill, and that spiral keeps going down! Now, take all that and go back to the second FACT, 1 in 3 people have some sort of mental defect, and you get what we have now!

The best solution is to identify those with serious issues, and separate them from society, put them in "Camps" ( Not Hospitals ) where they can live their lives and be productive with supervision, treat them with humility and respect, give them every chance to be the best version of themselves they can be, but keep them separate from the rest of society!

For criminals, no more of this revolving door justice, or two tiered justice, you commit crimes and get caught, you go away for a while, you pay your debt to society and move on, or you remain locked away and you WORK for your keep, no more prisons for profit, you don't work, you eat a bullet and we move someone else into your cell and not even change the sheets!
Make Capital Punishment Great Again, and do it publically, have a cable channel so folks can watch if they want to, the nightly news should have a few min. report on the worst of society paying their price, getting gassed, shot, hung, beheaded, electrocuted, or best yet, spinning the wheel of misfortune and letting fate decide how you pay your debt! No last meal, no waiting till midnight, , no long term imprisonment awaiting an appeal of a weak society afraid to do the deed, NOPE, you die within 72 hours of your sentencing, and your body is Burned, no grave, no head stone, no memorial to remember you as a human, just ashes mixed in concrete to be used to build something that benefits society! THis is a self correcting issue, enough folks pay their debts this way, the problem mostly fixes itself, those few who think they are above the law find out they most certainly are not, and those who de not believe they will be caught, well, they learn the finality of that real quick when they get killed!

 

Run for president you got my vote

 

What has happened is that we have subsets of our society who live in a world with different values. Street gangs and drug dealers as well as welfare mothers come to mind. Violence and cheating the "man" are considered valuable societal markers to those groups. Johnson and the great society he helped create as well as the illegals and drug subculture have no wish to co exist with us or to share the old middle class values. They have and are passing down to the next generation a culture where going to the movies has been replaced with car jackings, drive by shootings, shop lifting and beat downs for being dissed as the new normal. Add in groups with a different or no religious beliefs and a cohesive voting pattern and you end up with the"squad" as a group that are making our laws with no sense of being American, what ever that might be.. Am 87, in poor health, and live in a rural area. Not my problem. If you are 60 and in good health, you had better pray that Trump somehow turns things around or at least prevents another 30 million from coming it with totally alien cultures from lower class Africans, Haitians, Latin Americans and just plain 3 rd world terrorists getting in place for the revolution.

 

I could also support legalization of drugs, leave it to the states as you stated. Why? The biggest compelling reason as I see it is the decades long failure of all of the federal agencies and the trillions spent on their failure. I would close the DEA for starts or at the very least downsize it tremendously. Why throw good money after bad? Now, I would still hold my hardline stance on illegal drug dealing or drug addicts committing crimes. You want to snort a line of coke on the weekends? Fine. You get yourself a big habit and need to steal to keep it fed. Sorry about that as the law is the law and it is severe.

I guess you see that I have no problem with the blowing up that Venezuela drug boat. Too bad. So sad. You were ordered to stop. No? Okay Bye-bye.

One last point then I'm off the soapbox... The Mongol empire was the largest contiguous empire spanning China to Eastern Europe in history. It is said that 'a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol Empire with a pot of gold on her head and never be molested or robbed.' Why? Punishments for crimes were extremely severe and swift. My point is this...We could eliminate crime; however, we don't have the stomach to do it. We're too civilized.

 

I agree with @johnbb . You got my vote! I think you already got your platform slogan: Make Capital Punishment Great Again!

 

In regard to the title of the thread......

I have come to believe that S will never actually HTF. We'll just keep slumping slowly forward more and more into even deeper dystopia than we already live in. The "people" calling the shots are being very careful to keep it slow and steady, at a rate that the normies will continue to accept rather than rebel against. It's very carefully calculated.

I kinda hope I am wrong. Otherwise we'll never be able to rip the bandaid off and actually get to the business of fixing things. :/

 

You do have a very valid point and it's certainly a real possibility. I'm thinking if the mid-terms do not go our way - well - that's that. This is our last shot. Trump is doing a pretty good job all-in-all given the constraints he is working under and trying to change decades of BS in just a few years. The mid-terms will tell us if this is working or not...

 

By making it a free for all when already psychotic people get to go on a no holds barred meth bender the resulting crime wave will be much to be reckoned with. When all of this is legal there will be drug bars opened up everywhere and you will produce a huge group of young and old that once they cannot any longer afford to get their sustainment high will result to stealing candy from a baby and not thinking twice if it gets what they need. If you would not involve the government who is going to grow and supply all of these narcotics? Who is going to have quality control accountability, Rahllo on the street corner?

Once burned out and useless, it is the rest of America that has figured out this isn't a route they wish to take will have to pay for them. Housing, food assistance, medical care, psychological services. Then once they get stabilized they decide this is no fun and relapse. Can't lock them up because drugs are now legal. If all of these drugs are made legal then who pays for the fallout from it all? It certainly isn't coming from the lawmakers pockets. It certainly isn't coming from the justice system.

 

My view any one taking drugs has a death wish and make drugs legal in order to fill their wish. I have no sympathy for druggies. Give them all the drugs they want --un wanted population control

 

I would expand a bit to go along with what @Broker said... Yes, we probably would have an uptick in crime but if we stop playing games with crime and decide to eliminate it - well - there will be one incident from one individual with one solution, no repeated incident from that individual. You cannot stop someone that wants drugs, they will get them somehow, someway and it's very possible they will ruin their lives with it. That is not society's problem. It is the individual's problem. Now, if you perform criminal acts to get drugs then it is a society problem, and the heavy hammer should fall and fall but one time.

Also, look at what our drug policy has created - huge cartels with tremendous amount of power from the selling of drugs...which obviously the American people want or there wouldn't be a market for them. Same as what happened with alcohol except exponentially larger. We destroy one cartel and another one pops up, costing the taxpayer another billion dollars to take down. All for what? To save those that don't have sense enough to not use drugs?

My point here is we continue to do the same damn thing with the same damn results and have gotten nowhere. Trump's policy of simply killing the traffickers, if necessary, and not play games with them, is a definite change for the better but the market is still there, and it will be filled so the outcome will be the same - drugs will continue to flow to America because it is hugely profitable.

We have been led to believe crime cannot be stop, it's a fact of life, and that might be true, but it can be deterred and reduce greatly to the point of that it becomes a true rarity instead of the norm. Drugs are here to stay, as long as there is a market for them. They will never stop. We are addressing the issue completely wrong and have been for decades without significant effect.
Crime and drugs are two completely different issues that are linked by our approach to resolving them.

Anyway, this is my opinion...we keep doing the same damn insane thing and get the same damn insane results and our self-licking ice cream cone government pats itself on the back and asks for another billion dollars. The legalization of marijuana is a good first step. They want to gut a cartel without firing a shot or spending a dime then legalize cocaine.

 

There would be no drug cartels if there was not a demand for drugs by weak people in this country. The problem is us. Government tried it with prohibition didn't work people like Joe Kennedy got rich suppling alcohol

 

Only legalize drugs if we stop treating people who OD by their own hand.that way nature takes its course.