THE UNITED STATES, FREEDOM, AND THE "RIGHT" TO LIFE

No people on earth boast about their country’s “freedom” as do Americans. It is not uncommon for many American patriots to exalt their country with an air of national pride as they chest-thump over civil liberties that their country has which others around the world lack, such as the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to criticize the government, among others. Other Americans like to support their portrayal of the United States as a “free country” by referencing the Declaration of Independence’s well-known claim:

         “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Also, many people in American soil use the expression, “it’s a free country” when they agree to disagree with someone else’s actions, typically in response to actions that they deem to be odd, a bit startling, or unwise. A girl at a mall who sees one of her friends getting ready to spend her whole paycheck on fancy clothes in a single department store might say, “well, it’s a free country! She’s allowed to drain her earnings like that!” Likewise, a man who sees his friend at a bar drinking alcohol to stupor, gleefully mingling with other bar customers with incoherent speech, and languishing on the streets from severe intoxication may look at his drunk friend and also dismiss his actions by thinking to himself, “Well, It’s a free country! He’s allowed to get wasted like that!” When it comes down to it, however, how free is the United States truly? In what instances do we see that the United States is not the “free” or “glorious” nation that many American patriots portray it to be? Sadly, there is no shortage of examples, as listed below.

Racial Profiling

In the United States (as in many other parts of the world, sadly) being of color is a major factor that often strips someone from the freedom that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution promise all its citizens, and the rates of police brutality against people of color is one of the most striking example of this sad phenomenon. According to statista.com, from 2015 to May 2021, the rate of fatal police shootings against Black people stood at 36 per million, which is more than twice the amount of police shootings against white people in the same time-span. Also, an article from nyu.edu states that black people are 20% more likely to be stopped by policemen and are searched 1.5 to twice as often as white drivers. How can people of color feel “free” in a country where they will be inconveniently disturbed by the police when they’re driving solely for being of color? How can they live a life of “freedom” in a country where the police (the people whose duty is to keep citizens safe) have little to no regard for their safety in the first place? How can the children of parents of color live a free and happy childhood in a country where they have to live in fear that one of their parents  (or even the child themselves) might get shot one day, just for being of color? How can people of color feel “free” in a country whose system of racial bias push them into issues like crime, poverty, and imprisonment?

Oppression Against the LGBTQ+ Community

People from the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender individuals, are often victims of fatal hate crimes in the United States every year, as well as targets of backlash just for being transgender or gender non-conforming. Many transwomen are murdered in the United States every year, and it is no wonder that a Day of Remembrance, November 20th, was established to memorialize those who have been murdered because of transphobia. According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than 200 deaths of transgender people have been recorded by the HRC since 2013, and their records indicate that the death toll stood at 37 in November of 2020-the highest number of murders per year since 2013. The Human Rights Campaign attributes these murders to a variety of factors, including anti-trans stigma that stems from lack of support from the government, lack of family acceptance, and cultural marginalization and invisibility. The HRC also mentions denial of opportunity (and thus, privilege) in society, such as denial of access to healthcare, employment discrimination, and unequal policing. Homelessness and physical/mental health disparities are very common problems that transgender people endure, and they are the direct result of the aforementioned contributing factors. How can these transwomen feel “free” in a country where coming out as their preferred gender alone feels like an imminent danger to their lives? How can they feel “free” in a country so saturated with transphobia that they are pushed into the periphery of society, becoming prone to problems with mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness?

Profiling in Action

The story of a woman we will call Jessica illustrates how sly the United States and it’s organs can be in their profiling practices, treating incidences of espionage and stalking as actions of “safeguarding” Jessica recalls:

“I remember back in the day, when I had recently moved to DC, I made a trip to the Dunn Loring station in nearby Northern Virginia. That was my first or second trip to Virginia on the metro, and I was impressed by the beautiful landscapes that I saw in all of Northern Virginia while riding the metro, so I thought to myself, why not film the landscapes I see in my rides and share it with the world? That same day, before leaving the Dunn Loring station, I saw a nasty white woman with red hair giving me a dirty look. That’s one of the very few times I got that kind of look in the DMV region. I had just come from the Midwest, however, where I got those kind of looks every so often for being part of the LGBTQ community, so I was used to that at the time and shook it off. Anyways, the train came, I got in, and I started filming the landscapes I saw while riding the train. Little did I know, however, that I was being photographed and spied on while I did this because, a few days later, detectives from the metro came to my house, stating that a “suspicious person” lives in it. I didn’t know what they were talking about and I had nothing to hide, so I let them in my house, and they just started interrogating me. They even showed me a photograph that some asshole took of me doing my filming, and told me that the person who took the photograph, who worked for some branch of the military, thought I “looked” like the type of people they work against, and I’m not sure if it is because I’m noticeably from the LGBTQ community, or if it is from my olive skin tone. Who knows? The cops also told me that the stalker found me suspicious because “I was carrying a map,” while all I was using was google maps like every other damn fucking clueless tourist in a city full of tourists like DC would. The pigs mentioned that I was spotted at the Dunn Loring station, the same station I got the dirty look from the old white bitch, so I suspect that she may have been behind this. In the end the cops took down my information and left. Boy, do I feel violated- all because I was filming the landscape of a city I had just discovered, just like a tourist would. Those asshole pigs might as well knock on Nick Johnson’s door for doing what he does for his Youtube channel. Oh, wait! He’s white, thought, so he’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants to do in this stupid country without the pigs meddling in his business.

I swear, the next time this happens to me, I will file a lawsuit against whichever people or entities are behind this.”

The fact that branches of the United States Military endorse such practices highlights how much more the United States as a whole favors asserting a controlling hand on the people in its soil rather than extending the freedoms that it promises for them in its well-known historical documents. Needless to say, any nation that spies on, interrogates, and profiles tourists who document landscapes and vistas that it’s own capital boasts is not, in any conceivable way, “The Land of the Free.”

Idiotic Law Practices in the United States

There are also some less extreme (but nonetheless pathetic and ridiculous) examples of the United States’ oppressiveness. One of them is the United States’ banning of Kinder Surprise eggs (not to be confused with Kinder Joy eggs) over potential choking hazards. Anyone caught smuggling these eggs into the United States by authorities can be fined $2,500 per egg, as if the Shopkins and Squinkies (which are perfectly legal in the United States) that children in the country play with on a regular basis didn’t pose the exact same choking hazard that the country so frantically tries to avoid with it’s ban on Kinder Surprise eggs. The United States thus becomes a country where kids and toy collectors alike do not have the freedom to enjoy the surprise toys inside the egg chocolates of one of the most famous and respected brands in the world, which most countries in the rest of the world do allow its citizens to enjoy without any restrictions whatsoever. Who would have thought that the government of “The Land of the Free” could be so oppressive that it will severely tax anyone in its soil who is spotted “smuggling” harmless chocolate eggs containing smiley assembly figures of Fred Flintstone holding a dinosaur grass mower, or another of Cindy Bear holding a magnifying glass with a butterfly sitting on top of it, or another of a Smurf holding a godforsaken watering can? The United States is both an embarrassment and a laughing stock to the world when it comes to its pathetic protocols on Kinder Surprise eggs. This is a ridiculous example of high-tier oppression that is hardly seen anywhere else in the world. 

The United States also has major restrictions when it comes to the pursuit of sex, especially for involuntary celibates, or incels. Soliciting a prostitute is illegal in the United States, as if legalizing the exchange of money for safe sex with a consenting adult man or woman, under no coercion, in a safe and private setting, meant the fall of civilization. If one takes into account that engaging in, and soliciting, prostitution is illegal in the United States, but the making and broadcasting of pornography and sexual innuendos in American media is not, one sees a shameless and hypocritical double standard in American society which puts incels in the United States at a great disadvantage by narrowing their "freedom" down to merely being allowed to derive fantasies from porn or references to sex from TV shows to stimulate their libido, and to use them as a vehicle to reach orgasm on their own. This endeavor is limiting at best and unfulfilling at worst, and it is therefore a major cause of sexual frustration for many incels in the United States. Much to their dismay, they are not free to pay someone to partner up with to make those fantasies a reality without getting arrested in the United States, nor are they free to even talk about those fantasies or their sexual frustration without facing ostracism in American society as well as backlash, especially from the traditionalist, anti-prostitution prudes, activists, and zealots that abound in the country. The end result of this social dynamic becomes a tediously prudish American society that imposes far more restrictions than it allows freedoms when it comes to incels’ pursuit of sex. Law enforcement in the United States even goes as far as to waste time setting up sting operations to arrest and disgrace adults who make advances to pay for sex with another adult rather than investing the time and resources they waste in those unnecessary operations to fight real crime. To say the least, American society can be frustratingly tedious, prudish, oppressive, and disempowering to live in for incels, and it is likely that many of them are incels to begin with because they are socially marginalized by the vast majority of crowds in said society for reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with their sexual ardor. This is yet another example of how freedom in the United States is very lacking and how it is in no way all-inclusive. 

THE UNITED STATES' OPPRESSION OF THE MENTALLY ILL

The above examples of nationwide oppression and restriction given above should be more than enough to dispel any notion in people's minds that the United States is a “free” country like the country’s patriots want everybody else to believe. But there is yet another arena in which the United States clasps its oppressive hands, and that is the mental health community in its soil. The United States specifically oppresses those with mental illness who wish to be euthanized, and it does so in three major ways:

1) Oppressive Legislation

The United States oppresses the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized through a public policy power known as parens patriae, which allows government authorities to intervene in situations in which a child, person, or animal need protection from an adversary influence. In this case, because the United States deems those with refractory mental illness who wish to die as always being “incapable” of making informed decisions, not only does the United States deny them the option to be euthanized, but it denies mental health clinicians permission to euthanize their patients. Furthermore, the United States gives policemen and clinicians the authority to intervene at their discretion in situations where someone with mental illness expresses wishes to die. And because these measures are compulsory, doctors and clinicians can take liberties to suppress any and all potential risk for someone to willfully end their own life in ways that range from highly-taxing, to coercive, to downright brutal, regardless of the consequences that such pursuits can have on the target victims of these oppressive measures. Below are some examples of these abuses of power.

2) Compulsory Treatment on the Suicidal

Because of the paternalist pro-life dogma that directs parens patriae’s stance on the suicidal in the United States, clinicians in the country are required by law to subject a patient to inpatient hospitalization if that patient expresses death wishes. In these instances, the therapist will call an ambulance or the police to transport the patient to an emergency room, and all of this will be done whether or not the patient wishes to be treated, or whether or not they can afford it. Because the nature of this procedure is compulsory, the methods that are used to carry out this procedure often involve excessive restraint. A survivor of these abusive measures, whom we will call Jason, shares a striking example of this form of oppression and coercion:

“I once saw a student therapist at a Christian Theological Seminary that offers counseling services. The procedures of that facility where pretty strict from the get-go. First, the therapist wanted me to sign a promisory letter where she provided a signature agreeing to be fully in charge of my treatment, and where my family members were supposed to provide a signature stating that they would be involved in my care, despite the fact that I was 26 years old at the time, and not younger than 18! I was also supposed to sign that paper stating that I would agree to be involved in this. I can’t remember whether or not I signed that paper. What I do remember is that I told the student therapist about my suicidal thoughts and my wishes to poison myself so I could end the pain I had to put up with because of my mental illness. This concerned the student therapist, so she asked me to sign a “no suicide contract” which I thought was a bullshit protocol I didn’t believe in and that I wanted no part in. So, when I told her that I refuse to sign that bullshit document, the therapist called the police. I knew better than to bolt because, from previous experience, I knew that the pigs would be after me regardless and the assholes would hunt me down and catch me one way or the other. I also knew that the more I evaded the police, the more fiercely they would chase me down, so I thought it was better to give in and put up with the long-ass wait for the police to arrive in the therapist’s office while the director of the facility would chit-chat at me about bullshit that was supposed to keep me distracted. When the pigs arrived, I was handcuffed (Yes! Handcuffed!) for the police’s “own protection” they said, as if they were the ones that needed protection from me, and not the other way around. I did not even act violently towards the cops in the first place! Anyways, before the pigs took off with me, one of the staff of the counseling center gleefully “congratulated” me for my “courage in taking this step” as if I was letting myself get taken away because I had any choice in the matter. The cops then entrapped me in a barred police truck (Yes, the ones where they transport the people that get arrested) and took off to the emergency room. I remember how much anger and despair I felt when I was in that cage with wheels. It was darker inside of it than the night sky, and I was so worried about what was going to happen to me and about going to the inpatient unit that I didn’t want to be in nor that I could afford. All I had left to do was to close my eyes, lower my head and whisper to myself, “everything is going to be ok.” “Everything is going to be ok.” Once I arrived at the hospital, they released me from the super uncomfortable handcuffs, and they had me wear a patient gown and sit on a chair in a room that reclinable chairs attached to the walls. It was very uncomfortable to recline on those chairs, so I simply sat upright. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited for hours until one of the hospital staff finally talked to me and asked me what was going on. I told her what had happened and told her that part of my problem was that I had no way to afford insurance, so I had to rely on a public agency for my care which didn’t have the best resources for me, including a therapist who worked on his computer for half of the session times he had with me because he was so overworked, from what he told me. I remember telling her specifically that I was scared being in a situation of so much restraint and was worried about what could happen to me at that point. The staff person asked me, “What do you want to happen?” I knew for sure what I didn’t want to happen, which was that I would be taken to an inpatient unit against my will,but I knew that if I even told the staff person just that, she would more than likely consider internalizing me, so I just told her that I “ just wanted to get better,” and finally something went my way. The staff person referred me to another public agency for counseling and psychiatry I had never been to in order to follow up, and they finally let me go. Unfortunately, days after, I came to find an envelope addressed to me at home, from that hospital, charging me FIVE HUNDRED PLUS DOLLARS for that uncomfortable, compulsory experience I didn’t request! And for the next few months that I couldn’t come up with the money, they just kept mailing me bills again and again until I had to pay the full amount (again, for an unwanted service) about year later.”

Jason’s story not only illustrates how the United States oppresses those who wish to be euthanized, but it downright treats them like criminals. What "free" country would endorse someone troubled by a mental illness to be handcuffed by the police and taken to a hospital behind the bars of a police truck (as if they had committed a crime) in a time of severe vulnerability, rather than taking the more sensible approach to have that person taken to a hospital by an ambulance? Also, what "free" country would demand someone with a mental illness to receive a medical “service” by force, and charge that individual for having been subjected to this highly negative experience just to receive a service they did not request in the first place?! As if such coercion wasn’t enough, the so-called “Land of the Free” takes its brutality towards those who wish to be euthanized to an extreme, as illustrated below.

3) Coercive Intervention and Intrusion

The United States’ suicide prevention initiatives are radical at best, stripping away all rights from people with severe mental illness to take any steps to have their lives extinguished, yet expanding the rights to suicide preventing interventionists to accomplish their death-prevention tasks in whichever way they please just as long as these tasks are accomplished, with little regard to how the implementation of these tasks, and the specific ways that they are carried out, may impact their targets. Because these death prevention tasks prioritize life preservation much more than it does the enhancement of the sentient experience of a suicidal individual, they are sometimes carried out in the most coercive and brutal ways imaginable. Jason experienced oppression by suicide prevention agents to this extreme as he recalls below:

“Back in 2012, I was part of a mental health group on Facebook. I joined the group to make friends and to share my experiences with mental illness with other people who could relate. In that group, I met a member by the name of Valerie Scalera, who went by the pathetic nickname of “Valerina Valerie.” She joined our Facebook group to advocate for suicide prevention because her own mother committed suicide. At first, there seemed to be no issue between Scalera and the rest of the group. Her posts in the group seemed very genuine and that’s how she started to develop following in the group for a few days before she stormed out of the Facebook group over her clashing with other members on the issue of suicide prevention. Valerie Scalera had a bad habit of chest-thumping about the “superior” knowledge that she and her relatives had on the topic of debate and putting down other members when she disagreed with something they said. To my later regret, I ignored these warning signs of abuse and continued to trust Scalera until I learned the hard way the mistake I was making. After Scalera left the mental health group on Facebook, I continued to feel unstable to where I felt the urge to message Scalera, telling her about having some intent to seek help from someone to achieve death. She took my suicidal gestures to heart, and instead of genuinely helping to lead me out of the distressful situation I was in and teaching me ways to deal with it, she once again went psychotic on me and spun out of control. She forwarded my messages to many of her contacts and, when I snapped at her for sharing such a delicate, confidential matter to a bunch of complete strangers, she bashed me back! She and I had a back and forth argument where Scalera spouted all her reproaches on what she perceived as “faults” on my part for my "gesturing" while I pointed at her evident immaturity and incompetence as a “suicide prevention advocate” who did a shitty job at handling these issues. As Scalera’s rambling left no room for agreement, I blocked her on Facebook altogether. Unfortunately, my troubles only snowballed from there. A few days later, two nosey asshole cops showed up to work no less, in order to interrogate me about what was going on, as if this ordeal was any of their business to begin with. Like that wasn’t enough, my embarrassment from the situation rode home with me when my mother picked me up from work. She yelled at me because, apparently, an abusive swat team violently broke into my house with sirens yelling, while I was at work, like they were trying to do a drug bust. My mother later told me that there was yet another twist to the situation- Valerie Scalera inexplicably got a hold of a girl who was in one of my classes in high school (whom I only talked to once or twice six years after graduating from that high school) to tell her about our ordeal, and she ended up having an argument with that girl just like she had several times with the other members of the Facebook group we met at, and with myself. And what makes the situation more shocking is that I already had the cops called on me two other crises- once by a suicide hotline, and another by a mental health agency who (unlike Valerie Scalera) actually knew how to handle suicide crises, and in those instances the swat teams involved just drove to my house quietly, knocked on the door, and talked to me. The cops never came to my house so violently as they did when Valerie Scalera was involved, so she must have gone so ballistic when she ratted me that she caused more alarm than was necessary. 

It’s been 9 years since that incident happened, and I still couldn’t be more resentful of that abusive intervention. The only thing it accomplished was to turn me against the mental health system in America and suicide prevention programs and initiatives here. I witnessed their ugly side firsthand, and now I’m doing my part to help bring that whole system down.”

The End Result of the Work of Oppressors Disguised as "Good Samaritans"

In light of this form of brutality from the United States’ public powers, some striking phenomena about suicide prevention come to light. The most striking observation is that Jason was violated in an ordeal where he was emotionally vulnerable and where Valerie Scalera and the intrusive authorities were the aggressors. Valerie Scalera bashed Jason, blamed Jason for her confrontation with him, and created uproar that alarmed many people. The swat team, on the other hand, sought Jason out like they were chasing after a criminal, invading his privacy in a bullish manner that cause emotional distress on him. Furthermore, it is very strange that Valerie Scalera, the intrusive swat team, and the meddling cops that violated his privacy acted in the guise of "Good Samaritans" who wanted the best for Jason despite having treated him in a bullish manner altogether. This speaks volumes about Valerie Scalera's, the swat team's, and the meddling cops' priorities, in which the enhancement of Jason's sentient experience was not priority #1.

Accountability Issues

A second observation worth nothing is that the police had no problem rushing to break into Jason's house or seek him out at work out of worry that he was in a state of incapacity to function well mentally, but they never thought to do the same thing with Valerie Scalera. Considering the fact that Valerie Scalera was bashing  when he was suicidal (instead of actually helping him), and recalling Scalera’s numrous arguments with people over the topic of suicide prevention makes it reasonable to assume that Scalera does not, in fact, advocate for suicide prevention with the right state of mind, or for the right reasons. In such instances, we can infer that Scalera goes through a phase of transference, projecting the very anger that she feels towards her mother for committing suicide, and towards herself for failing to prevent this, onto other people whom she relates to this struggle. And if one considers how violently law enforcement showed up at Jason’s house when Scalera was involved in their intervention vs. the numerous other times when she wasn’t, one can infer that Scalera abused community resources to excess to relieve her frustrations, rather than to alleviate Jason’s struggles. Why did this not alarm the authorities? Also, why did they not break into Scalera's house to teach her a lesson on proper ways of dealing with someone who is suicidal in the same way that they did to Jason over his “gesturing”? How did it not concern the authorities that Valerie Scalera’s clarity of thought was being clouded by her own biases, traumas, and emotional dysregulation when she acted so irrationally in this ordeal? Another striking observation of United States’ police brutality on the suicidal answers these questions: The United States does not care how a person in its soil (whether it be swat teams or non-authorities) prevents the suicide of another, under what state of mind they do this, what their true motives are, or what repercussions this has on the targeted suicidal individual. The United States only cares about death being prevented, regardless of any consequences that the target person may endure as a result of this pursuit on them. 

The Damage Caused by Coercive Intervention

A third observation on the anti-death, pro-life advances of the parens patriae public power of the United States is that they are in no way therapeutic. They are abusive. They have the potential to traumatize their victims and have great potential to increase their suicidal thoughts, rather than reduce them. Jason is no exception, as he describes below:

"I've never felt so violated and abused by a group of people or by a government agency. After this whole thing happened, I was left feeling more depressed, unstable, and suicidal. I felt traumatized by what happened. My world was shaken upside-down and sideways as I came to realize that the suicide preventing agents that are treated with such high regard in our society, in reality, are a bunch of assholes who could be brutally abusive to someone just for the purpose of keeping them alive. It was scary, and angering at the same time, to realize that these suicide preventing assholes care more about my life being intact than my dignity, privacy, and sense of comfort being respected.

There is nothing honorable or respectable about the doings of Valerie Scalera on Jason, the swat team to broke into Jason's house, or the meddling policemen who sought him at work. Everything that those callous brutes did to Jason resembles more care for a life-preservationist agenda than Jason's dignity, privacy, and comfort. The doings of these three entities are more alike to those of abusive vandals, savages, and wild animals acting on impulse and an inclination to serve their own interests rather than Jason's. Their condemnable actions are a blatant form of abuse which, not surprisingly, only managed to traumatize Jason and to increase his suicidal ideation.

CONCLUSION

The modus operandi of the United States, when dealing with someone who expresses wishes or intent to end their life, is to preserve their life at all cost (even if it comes to a heavy cost to the targeted person), thus becoming a regime of imposition of life on people that allows for no freedom of choice in this matter, suppressing all opposition by the use of force like any other dictatorship. Therefore, the “unalienable right to life” that the Declaration of Independence mentions, in the United States, is not a right. It is an obligation. Everyone in US soil is expected and demanded by the United States government to live until they die of causes outside of their control, and anyone with mental illness who opposes to this expectation puts themselves at risk of being crushed down by the oppressive power of parens patriae.

Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not a free country. It is a very oppressive nation- one in which, among other things, the mentally ill are denied the right to choose the timing of their own death; it is a land of coercion which uses excessive restraint and oppression on many people, including those who even mention any pursuit of the ending of their life. Songs that celebrate the “freedom” that people supposedly enjoy in the United States, like James Brown's Living In America, are shallow and devoid of truth like corny commercials advertising a notoriously bad product, embellishing features that are defective or nonexistent in the product altogether. People outside of the United States who are drawn to the country by such false advertising schemes to “take a bite” out of it’s so called “freedom” will more than likely be disappointed. They will choke the United States' hard-to-bite oppressive measures, and they will find its insipid restrictions rather hard to swallow.  

The burning of a flag that, to many, represents a country of endless oppression and restriction.

Sources:

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/may/black-drivers-more-likely-to-be-stopped-by-police.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/marking-the-deadliest-year-on-record-hrc-releases-report-on-violence-against-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-people

https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/2018AntiTransViolenceReportSHORTENED.pdf?_ga=2.90258266.151781695.1629084091-493737417.1629084091