Why in the World Would Suicides Be Up in the U.S. Under Bush-Cheney? (Mark Crispin Miller)

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Mark Crispin Miller

Today's New York Times includes a front-page article on the odd spike in suicides among the middle-aged. It's an awesomely myopic piece of work. According to it, all those suicides are purely individual cases of "depression" bearing no relation, somehow, to their common history, or the world around them--the world that those departed simply couldn't bear to live in anymore. Rather, they all killed themselves for reasons that were "personal" (i.e., not historical), and/or because it's so darned easy to acquire prescription drugs these days. (Formerly, of course, you couldn't get your hands on any lethal substances.)

That all those suicides may be a desperate mass response to what America has now become--no, that sort of thinking is forbidden. Only when there's been a wave of suicides in other countries have we rushed to just that sort of judgment: in the Soviet Union (they couldn't bear life under communism), or in Sweden (they couldn't stand their welfare state, or free love), and so on. Here it is unthinkable that lots of people, burdened with the memory of, and old hopes for, a better nation, would rather check out early than go on; for this is, of course, the best of all possible worlds.

What follows, before the Times piece, is a devastating comment on it from Jonathan Simon, who posted it on nytimes.com (along with many others in the same vein):

Let's see, what happened between 1999 and 2004 that would cause a spike in suicide among those born in the years when JFK was president, America was a functioning democracy oozing promise, and Rupert Murdoch did not yet own the New York Post? Could it possibly be the "election" of George W. Bush and the demise of the democracy and the America those 45-54 year olds thought they knew? Could it be the cruel and cynical hypocrisy of the mainstream media, "entertaining" us into submission, uncritically passing on (or making up) lies and covering the hard truths? Could it be the same perception of ignorant decline that caused David Walker to resign as the head of the Government Accountability Office, after likening our nation to near-endstage Rome?