“I’ve had grown men wet this floor with tears, begging for a job. We have to pray with some to keep them from killing themselves. So many say they just want to die,” says Charlie Tarrance, a director of a private social agency. His task is to deal with growing lines of despairing people looking for jobs, housing, and food. The place is Gadsden, Alabama, but it could be anywhere in the United States.
It could be Washington, D.C., at a Safeway supermarket a mile or so from the White House where an elderly man is crying and holding a can of dog food. When asked what's wrong, he says, “I’m hungry. I’m hungry.”
It could be New York City, where a woman begins screaming at the landlord who evicts her and her several children. The Bureau of Child Welfare takes her children, which distresses her all the more. She herself is transported to a New York mental hospital crying angrily—only to be diagnosed and committed by the all-knowing psychiatrists as a "paranoid schizophrenic."
There is misery and cruelty in the land. As U.S. leaders move determinedly toward their free-market Final Solution, stories abound of hunger, pain, and desperation. Such things have existed for a long time. Social pathology is as much a part of this society as crime and capitalism. But life is getting ever more difficult for many.
Some Grim Statistics
Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it. To their ears the anguished cries of the dispossessed sound like the peevish whines of malcontents. They denounce as "bleeding hearts" those of us who criticize existing conditions, who show some concern for our fellow citizens. But the dirty truth is that there exists a startling amount of hardship, abuse, affliction, illness, violence, and pathology in this country. The figures reveal a casualty list that runs into many millions. Consider the following estimates. In any one year:
- 27,000 Americans commit suicide.
- 5,000 attempt suicide; some estimates are higher.
- 26,000 die from fatal accidents in the home.
- 23,000 are murdered.
- 85,000 are wounded by firearms.
- 38,000 of these die, including 2,600 children.
- 13,000,000 are victims of crimes including assault, rape, armed robbery, burglary, larceny, and arson.
- 135,000 children take guns to school.
- 5,500,000 people are arrested for all offenses (not including traffic violations).
- 125,000 die prematurely of alcohol abuse.
- 473,000 die prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses; 53,000 of these are nonsmokers.
- 6,500,000 use heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine or some other hard drug on a regular basis.
- 5,000+ die from illicit drug use. Thousands suffer serious debilitations.
- 1,000+ die from sniffing household substances found under the kitchen sink. About 20 percent of all eighth-graders have "huffed" toxic substances. Thousands suffer permanent neurological damage.
- 31,450,000 use marijuana; 3,000,000 of whom are heavy usuers.
- 37,000,000, or one out of every six Americans, regularly use emotion controlling medical drugs. The users are mostly women. The pushers are doctors; the suppliers are pharmaceutical companies; the profits are stupendous.
- 2,000,000 nonhospitalized persons are given powerful mind-control drugs, sometimes described as "chemical straitjackets."
- 5,000 die from psychoactive drug treatments.
- 200,000 are subjected to electric shock treatments that are injurious to the brain and nervous system.
- 600 to 1,000 are lobotomized, mostly women.
- 25,000,000, or one out of every 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, or medical sources for mental and emotional problems, at a cost of over $4 billion annually.
- 6,800,000 turn to nonmedical services, such as ministers, welfare agencies, and social counselors for help with emotional troubles. In all, some 80,000,000 have sought some kind of psychological counseling in their lifetimes.
- 1,300,000 suffer some kind of injury related to treatment at hospitals.
- 2,000,000 undergo unnecessary surgical operations; 10,000 of whom die from the surgery.
- 180,000 die from adverse reactions to all medical treatments, more than are killed by airline and automobile accidents combined.
- 14,000+ die from overdoses of legal prescription drugs.
- 45,000 are killed in auto accidents. Yet more cars and highways are being built while funding for safer forms of mass transportation is reduced.
- 1,800,000 sustain nonfatal injuries from auto accidents; but 150,000 of these auto injury victims suffer permanent impairments.
- 126,000 children are born with a major birth defect, mostly due to insufficient prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or maternal drug addiction.
- 2,900,000 children are reportedly subjected to serious neglect or abuse, including physical torture and deliberate starvation.
- 5,000 children are killed by parents or grandparents.
- 30,000 or more children are left permanently physically disabled from abuse and neglect. Child abuse in the United States afflicts more children each year than leukemia, automobile accidents, and infectious diseases combined. With growing unemployment, incidents of abuse by jobless parents is increasing dramatically.
- 1,000,000 children run away from home, mostly because of abusive treatment, including sexual abuse, from parents and other adults. Of the many sexually abused children among runaways, 83 percent come from white families.
- 150,000 children are reported missing.
- 50,000 of these simply vanish. Their ages range from one year to mid-teens. According to the New York Times, "Some of these are dead, perhaps half of the John and Jane Does annually buried in this country are unidentified kids."
- 900,000 children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor in the United States, serving as underpaid farm hands, dishwashers, laundry workers, and domestics for as long as ten hours a day in violation of child labor laws.
- 2,000,000 to 4,000,00 women are battered. Domestic violence is the single largest cause of injury and second largest cause of death to U.S. women.
- 700,000 women are raped, one every 45 seconds.
- 5,000,000 workers are injured on the job; 150,000 of whom suffer permanent work-related disabilities, including maiming, paralysis, impaired vision, damaged hearing, and sterility.
- 100,000 become seriously ill from work-related diseases, including black lung, brown lung, cancer, and tuberculosis.
- 14,000 are killed on the job; about 90 percent are men.
- 100,000 die prematurely from work-related diseases.
- 60,000 are killed by toxic environmental pollutants or contaminants in food, water, or air.
- 4,000 die from eating contaminated meat.
- 20,000 others suffer from poisoning by E.coli 0157-H7, the mutant bacteria found in contaminated meat that generally leads to lifelong physical and mental health problems. A more thorough meat inspection with new technologies could eliminate most instances of contamination--so would vegetarianism.
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