Posthuman Blues

Bush Wants To Be Your Shrink

"The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nation's mental health delivery service and make a report. It's interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nation's largest drug companies."

"New Freedom Initiative"? Even the name is creepy. The main reason it sounds suspicious is because it's meaningless. But who has time for words anymore?

What this initiative means is that a whole generation of children is going to be compelled to take spurious psychoactive drugs to treat dubious or fictional psychological "abnormalities": probably such dreadful things as creativity and independent thought. After all, we're going to need more fodder for new and better Gulf Wars; best to squash out critical thinking early.

If mass-scale drugging is what it takes, then Bush (or his ideological successors) will do it.