This year’s Grammys featured the reality of Whitney Houston’s death as well as the Grammy President delivering a pitch for Music Cares, an organization that helps musicians in need. Repeatedly, he referred to the music community as being a family.

I say, with family like that, you really need friends. Real friends.

Was there ever a more obvious case of desperate need for help than Whitney’s? Everyone saw her decline.

She staged it for us, if we had the stomach to watch that hideous display of personal and professional suicide that was her 2005 reality marriage and family show.

Following that, there were consistent and extreme public enactments of self-annihilation.

The news of her death included the fact that no one is surprised to hear that she died.

Hers was a public, salacious self-destruction.

Was she flinging herself toward us, naked and begging for help?

Bill O’Reilly is railing against her for using drugs and enraged that she obviously wanted to “leave the planet”.

How dare she? Right, Bill?

Bill O’Reilly obviously has his own agenda on this matter, or maybe it’s the show’s ratings strategy du jour.

I believe it is a mistake to jump to judgment about taking drugs or leap into debate about legalizing drugs as a first response to Whitney Houston’s death. We then miss the most elementary point in the tragedy.

I’m talking about the erosion of real love and caring in our society.

When a public person acts out extreme self-destruction, what is our response as a society?

When does the media become cheerleaders for celebrity demise?

The media is not connected humanely in the story-telling of our public figures anymore. Ratings are driven by sensationalism, by audience lust for extremes, by the gamble of hot audience envy and enjoyment of the suffering of the famous; so many success strategies, so not about humanism. Maybe it’s always been this way, yet it seems newly bold, entitled, and normalized.

If Whitney Houston had not in her life been pared down to being a financial commodity, rather than the insanely gifted vocalist she was and growing artist she could have been, she may well be alive today.

Arguably, her musical direction may also have been wildly different.

A commodity she was. Commodities are traded, analyzed through the lens of futures and fortune. They are often favored for a while, suddenly devalued, deemed worthless without warning. The fact that artists are handled this way personally and professionally, those who are often uncommonly sensitive, is a soulless crime. It is a violent act by corporate and personal management with rich rewards; a commodification partnered by the public.

Fellow commodities (other creative celebrity talent) are apparently too busy being commodities themselves to take action on behalf of a fellow artist’s urgent need for support. In short, too busy, self-directed, or who knows what blocks their ability to step forward with care. They are themselves trapped in the manic effort to sustain themselves as commodity winners.

Yes, I know that every one of these celebrities has chosen to partake in this scenario.

The question of whether they knew they were signing on for the swap of life for fame, is a separate subject.

Certainly we are in times of extreme greed and obsession with depersonalization. It is both outrageous and surreal to read about the financial uptick that her death has created. People are authentically studying the business angle and monetary figures resulting from her death, as if her life and death were game strategies.

Similarly, in this political season, the countdowns, scoreboards, daily percentage rankings and horse futures continue to obscure the content, if there is content, of any candidate’s speech.

We find our country at its weakest, our politicians blankly transparent and empty, with the stunning absence of a public who demands that questions be answered substantially.

We are plagued with candidates like Rick Santorum.

Americans are enthusiastically triggered by an appetite for hate. Cowboy-hatted Santorum poses as patriotic, and he, too, is a commodity, albeit a toxic one.

The momentary thunder of positive response to Santorum is scary when you figure how much hate and misogyny the man is driven to deliver.

The prior media sensationalism of the mental sickness and now death of Whitney Houston, as well as the current rise of popularity of politician Rick Santorum, provides an unsettling snapshot of who we have become as Americans.

Tuned out, uncaring, deaf to our own hearts.

I’m told that the very hotel room where Whitney Houston was found dead in the bathtub is fully booked days after her death. I can imagine giddy visitors taking pictures in that very bathtub and posting them madly on Facebook.

The subject of the loss of personal caring in American society is overlooked and unpopular. We gather in Roman arenas—the modern media rooms– to see blood and gore as entertainment.

It is always telling how we respond to pain, not only towards people we know and love, but to the celebrities who seem to desperately broadcast the need for attention and help.

If we, and the media that serves us, came from the heart in response to headline news; if we dared to notice outrageous words and behaviors, and cared enough to question them; if we stepped away from the urge to tune out or in rabid envy, rip apart successful people in the artistic spotlight, this America we see in decline would have a clear chance for recovery.

As would the talent we have lost; as would we recover the American political freedoms we are losing more and more.

It is hard not to wonder, in Whitney’s case, whether all the current public expressions of care and love, had they been acted upon while she visibly struggled, would have saved her life.

Even today, it is curious that people are not asking what really happened to her.

What’s up with the bloody legs and scarred arm in those last pictures of her in Los Angeles days before she died.

These pictures have been sent around the globe. Apart from sensationalism, I do not know of any media inquiry to find the cause of these physical scars and what they say about the potential truth of her life.

Nor do I hear Santorum grilled on his curious passion against gays.

For the country, this is a sign of the absence of soul and mind.

That’s not a good sign.

Americans love sports. These following nine months leading up to the Presidential election appear sadly to be a sport for most Americans, a mesmerizing reality show competition between contestants promoted and funded by various conglomerates for our entertainment and our votes.

Which candidate will be the most popular, the most family identified, (yes, bring those smiling kiddies up on the stage). Who will be the meanest, the most funded, ubiquitous presence in the media, appearing on all sorts of television, invading to the point of becoming our regular programming? Who will have access to talk show titans, a la Obama on Jay Leno last week, or sit repeatedly with the entertaining women on the View, who do not consider themselves known for their heavy political acumen about the state of our country.

The Presidential race is a sport, no doubt about it. Are we Americans conditioned to understand or even have the bandwidth to listen to complicated national urgencies that the newly elected President will preside over? The answer is “no”.

The political strategy of candidate personality vs. the abilities of candidates to take the reins and work things out with opposition in government is a done deal.

Personality rules. And like any adolescent high school society, Americans are glued to the daily nasty name-calling fights between everyone in the political arenas.

This is what we have in front of us for the next nine months.

The political talk show hosts don’t even bother to pretend that it’s not a sport.

Numbers, polls, opinions on horses leading the group on any given day are discussed with rotating sports opinionators.

Chris Mathews emphatically uses “horse race” as shorthand for “political campaign”.

Rachel Maddow expresses open glee for the game of it all, as evidenced in her commentary pre-and-post the numerous Republican debates.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Rachel and her high intelligence.

I only wonder if she is being directed to approach this campaign as a giddy game for ratings, or whether she is independently drinking pitchers of company Kool-aid.

And then there are the inevitable distractions. Which group today hates the gay community more than anyone else? The winner seems to be a group that is a division of the American Family Association called OneMillionMoms.com, raging against Ellen Degeneres for being gay and hired as a JC Penny spokesperson.

Donald Trump is always a great distraction, no matter what he says or who he now endorses (Romney), as is Scott Brown, who is endorsing Obama.

There is importance and reality in questioning Mitt Romney’s authentic global, national, and social positions, as well as questioning Obama’s authentic positions. Both remain mysterious.

So many pundits with theories; so little solid information.

So much attention to candidates as horses, and horses as winners or losers.

The public has been conditioned to use no “intelligence muscles” to approach the election or to have true knowledge of anything else occurring behind the gold curtain having import to the country, and thus, to their lives.

The economy is naturally very familiar and essential as the key issue to the public’s interest.

Is any candidate supplying real plans or brainstorming for solutions?

While the daily flood of media distractions appears on the bottom television scroll, and the loud mouth opinions blast forth on talk television, does it matter that Obama may be planning a war with Iran? Yes, it does.

But what a superb time instead to theorize about which personality is presidential and who today is up a few points in the so-called polls.

In spite of the roar of the horse race blasting away our thoughts and voices, I will yell out on behalf of us all: If there is anyone out there fit to lead this country, announce yourself. Please.

We have received the news that Paula Deen, popular television cook and self-titled “queen of Southern cooking”, has Type 11 diabetes.

There is outrage against Ms. Deen for advertising unhealthy eating, which I find particularly fascinating.

Here’s the question: are we or are we not personally responsible for what we stick into our mouths?

I’m serious. This seems to be an unanswered question in this country.

Let’s briefly discuss Ms. Deen.

Without a doubt, she is a brilliant self-promoter; a comfortable presence whose personality Americans have overwhelming approved as attractive and acceptable.

As we all know, Ms. Deen’s popularity is a matter of taste (no pun intended). It turns out that many Americans are comfortable with the homey, overweight human model on television, I suspect for many reasons.

Southern food is comfort food, and who better to peddle the grits than a Southern mama?

She did a great job in that role.

People bought it and ate it, apparently.

Let us never forget that this is television, folks. Show biz.

If it were not, perhaps if we were to meet this unknown person who enthused at a social event about high calorie treats, we would chuckle and understand that she enjoys eating those things.

End of thought process.

It is her business what she passionately eats.

It is our business what we choose to eat.

It is a free country where anyone savvy enough to snag a slot on television can hawk anything at all.

Here’s where the dispute comes in.

We like to forget a little thing called personal responsibility.

We live in a free country where we can turn the channel away from obvious stupidity, and shut our mouths to empty calories.

In other words, we can just say no to a particular television person who is not our favorite bowl of grains.

So why not turn the channel and understand that this is show business, not science?

We turn to television for expert advice, when really what we are getting is entertainment, be it medical media actors, psychologists, dieticians, financial gurus.

In fact, you are choosing your favorite entertainers when you choose these shows on television.

(It is my hope that there is some real information offered, but I know where hope can lead, and it’s not always good).

One last thought on the media event of Paula Deen’s diabetes confession.

What’s up with those who celebrate her having diabetes?

Not only do we live in a spiritless place where being mean is practiced as an art.

There is also an epidemic of blaming others for our own life circumstances and choices.

Instead, let’s study what it means to be responsible for our own health and actions.

Let’s make a deal to stop celebrating that anyone has a disease.

Right now.

Baby Boomers lucky enough to have parents who are still alive, are headed for the ultimate crisis of their parent’s physical decline and death.

Sometimes, as in the case of my mother, this decline is shocking and unexpected, and dire.

If you and I have been geographically gone from our family for many decades, prepare to reenter the same original family dynamics upon your sorrowful return. You will be thrown into your original place in the family, along with the exact same quality of relationship experiences you left behind years ago.

When your parent’s emergency occurs, what comes along with it is every feeling that ever existed between your sibling and yourself.

What to do with a sibling who acts venomously towards you as a rival?

You may be surprised to find that time has stood still for the members of your family in regards to their old feelings towards you, such as competition, or a reanimated toxic envy.

These feelings emerge in their fiercest form at the time of your parent’s physical emergency.

Further, because you have moved away from the city where your family lives, there may be added resentment when you are present.

If you have a psychologically difficult and severe family dynamic, predating your parent’s illness, prepare yourself, for this is what awaits you.

The most important thing to do is Don’t React.

As your parent struggles to recover, it is your job to find a way to deflect the dead past and any negative talk even as primitive feelings are acted out in real time by a sibling and even by your other parent.

Prepare yourself for this surprise. The original emotional condition of your family relationships is alive today as you had never suspected. But here it is.

Don’t React.

It is as if all these antique feelings have been waiting all these long years to reappear.

Now, because of the urgency of your parent’s survival, everything apart from her needs must be eliminated from the picture.

Nothing matters. Stick and Stones, remember?

Tune out everything emotionally irrelevant to your parent’s well-being. No fighting, no reaction to anything outrageous.

You are your ill parent’s emotional champion. Do not allow yourself any verbal reaction to anything your family wants to fight about.

Speak with doctors and nurses alone, if you cannot communicate with your sibling or other parent.

Your ill parent is the only player on the stage today.

Pay no attention to unkind or vengeful chatter about or around you.

Do not allow yourself to be re-hooked into an ugly relationship groove.

Don’t React.

Nothing is important except for your parent’s survival.

So it was that over three months ago when I received a message from my father informing me that my mother had already been admitted to the hospital and was now returned home two days later.

Why wasn’t I called? This seemed the most appropriate question and yet also the least important.

What was important was my mother’s physical condition.

My father and sister had kept this event a secret from me both for their own reasons and also in the hopes that the hospital visit would be brief and uneventful.

Carefully containing my extreme alarm and shock, I attempted to collate all communicated shards of information about my mother’s condition, and made a beeline to San Diego from my home in Los Angeles.

It seems my mother had felt faint and dizzy and my sister and father chose to have an ambulance take her to urgent care at Kaiser Hospital after normal business hours. This means that her personal pulmonary doctor, her only real and extraordinary doctor as I discovered, whom she has had for years, one who knows her and her health specifics, would not be seeing her or treating her that night.

On her arrival at urgent care, the doctor on duty determined that she had water around her heart and gave her an IV diuretic to remove the problem.

Tragically, they mistakenly gave her by IV too great an amount of diuretics, after which she promptly went into renal failure on the morning of her third day there.

For some still unknown reason, they discharged her at that very point from the hospital to be sent home with a hospital bed.

I arrived to find her at home in that hospital bed, in what I now understand was a beginning process of her death.

My father and sister were waiting for her to come out of whatever “temporary” healing process they believed she was in. In hindsight, it is likely that they had quickly accepted the idea that she was dying. At least this is what they were saying.

She was beyond exhausted, agitated and confused as they tried unsuccessfully and excruciatingly to get her to participate in normal conversation.

Thank God a nurse was scheduled to arrive in just a few hours that next morning, who insisted, against my mother’s general doctor’s previous direction to keep her away from hospitalization’s negative potentials, to indeed return her immediately back to the hospital.

After she was readmitted, it was conclusively determined that she had been released and sent home while in the state of renal failure!

The importance of family members being present to swiftly and deliberately figure out the best choices in these crucial moments—those members who are able to care and are equipped with mental clarity– cannot be overstated.

The ensuing week in the hospital was a blessed one for my mother.

Our great fortune was having Dr. Stanley Salinda, Internal Medicine, oversee a team of other doctors and fine nurses, most notably nurses Linda Beebe and BabyLynn Hynes at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Zion Avenue in San Diego.

When discovered in time, renal failure can be 100% reversed.

I thank God again for the brilliance and superb care of Dr. Salinda and his entire team in bringing my mother back.

Finally, there is a time and place to privately peruse and investigate every feeling you have about your parent’s harrowing near-death.

There will be time to privately address what it means to be alive and to love, and time to acknowledge the hurt and anger you, yourself, have survived by your own biological family.

This was discussed in a February 11, 2010 New York Times article by Paula Spans, where she introduces veteran journalist Francine Russo’s book, “They’re Your Parents Too!: How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents’ Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy” and points out that “family dynamics—old roles, rivalries, resentments—are slow to change, if they change at all”.

A snippet from Russo’s book: “If you have been regarded as the successful outsider, admired yet seen as aloof and resented, your family is unlikely to stop thinking of you this way even if you rush back and try to be more involved now. Each person has a stake in seeing you the way you have always been. They’ll probably resist your help even as they complain that you’re not helping.”

This is an understatement that only grazes the psychological issues that arise in family emergency; the ancient dynamics in family warfare commonly resting unresolved for decades.

And yet, when a parent almost dies, there it all is, freshly baring its yellowed fangs.

Generally, much is made of “family” in this country, each of us in our family presumed to adore one another in that quintessential Hollywood picture.

Family is assumed, not just celebrated, in every song, on every commercial.

We are in the midst of the holiday punctuation of this family promotion with not only “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”, but also “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”.

Similarly, we see at this very moment how political campaigns use “family” as code for “legitimate” Americans living “normal” lives.

Here’s the stark truth: as a psychotherapist, I know that often people, given the choice, would honestly not choose to share their lives with those very same family members with whom they share biology (and perhaps holiday dinners). I know, because they’ve been telling me for years.

For some reason, we are made to feel shame if we do not enjoy loving, honest relationships with biological family members.

This idea is ever-present in America, all year round.

Perhaps this is ordained to emotionally control the masses.

Maybe even more simply, family is the most obvious American business strategy to ensure that we are bound to shop on various holidays.

No matter the origin of this demand of family, it seems that society judges each one of us as a failure if we do not feel and share real love with our family. If we are not fortunate to naturally have this, then what?

I suspect the genesis of this judgment to be Biblical; beginning with the commands of the Bible, then reflected in commercial societal psychology, and imbedded in each one of our psyches.

In turn, I have spoken to many people over the years—some extremely celebrated—who harbor negative, shameful self-images because of how it feels to not belong to a loving family.

In this American promotion of “family”, it is Ozzie and Harriet gone hideously awry, slapping us doubly across the face if we are suffering from lack of such fortune.

We need finally to fling this societal shame away and understand that if there is just one beautiful, loving biological connection in one’s life, it is a true and rare blessing.

If this is not the case for you, and you would like it to be, there are ways to sustain authentic fragments of connection with select relatives, without cheapening your personal integrity or deleting who you are.

That’s a subject for another time.

When a parent almost dies, the immediate state of emergency often springs forth some very regrettable replays of long-forgotten grudges, bringing out the worst in everyone.

If your family story is anything like mine, there is time to reflect and the opportunity to update your vision in the following days, weeks, and months of your parent’s recovery.

I am filled to the brim with gratitude for my mother’s continuing strength, recovery, and survival.

I am starkly and intimately reacquainted with my role in the family and relationships with my sister and father.

To those of you with similar family conditions, my wish for you is the miracle of recoveries, and the personal freedom that true understanding from this event so powerfully delivers.

Finally, gay is politically popular!

Not only is gayness the core subject in the news, but now every Republican simply finds gays irresistible.

Political strategy aside, those candidates who return, again and again, to the subject of gays, whether it is their quest for marriage equality or their civil rights in general, have an interesting repetitive obsession, don’t you think?

Freud would have a field day.

Thank you, Rick Perry. You have repeatedly returned to your rabid remarks against gays. The psychoanalytic interpretation of your message clearly broadcasts your unconscious lust, and not only for political gain, sir.

(Hope that eventually turns out well for you personally).

As for you, Michelle Bachmann, you are nothing but a parrot hoping to win favor with white bigots while remaining brain dead about any subject other than winning an already lost election.

Yes, you got nailed by an 8 year old, but that’s the intellectual age of the people who take you seriously.

Thanks for the shout out.

As they say, any publicity is potentially helpful.

In that regard, eternal thanks to the cardboard vocals of Ann Coulter.

Ann can always be counted on to illuminate our world with wisdom on gays and babies, offering a yearlong infinite cheap candy box of assorted wild imaginings.

Thank you, psychotic sports coaches of little boy teams.

Although you are specifically guilty of acting out heinous pedophilia sex crimes, the public simply reads this as “gay”.

You are perfectly illustrating what the denial of homosexuality can lead to.

You are the true poster men of homophobic hatred.

Thanks again.

Thank you, terrified heterosexual married people.  You embody something far greater in your insecurity than fear.

The paranoia that gay marriage will taint or hijack the status of your own relationship or threaten your union in any way is a leakage of tremendous mental disturbance.

Support your medical community and get some help with that.

Let me not forget to mention the add-on transgendered alignment with gay people, LGBT.

Thanks a lot.

If indeed gay people needed to be a stronger minority target for disgust and hatred, we hit the jackpot with the transgendered appendage.

It is a gift that keeps on giving.

Transgendered people need their own classification and deserve one, too, in my opinion.

There is just too much confusion to begin with in the cultural brain about what “gay” means. People are overwhelmed and overly busy, as it is, trying to decipher what is on the gay agenda for American society, as well as for their own heterosexual marriages.

One befuddling identification at a time, please.

When Obama won the election, he repeated the ecstatic claim, “It is our time!”

Whoever he was aiming to include in this benediction, chances are, based on his Inaugural pick of buddy Rick Warren, it’s a good bet that he wasn’t dreaming on behalf of all good gay citizens.

Surprise, Obama!

It’s gay time in America.

The gay strategy in American politics may be an election year gift in disguise.

In a symbolic way, the homophobic slurs from political cartoon figures are so extreme that it is tempting to imagine their temporary appearance on the national stage as a deliberate—or cosmic– act of shedding Americans of their homegrown stupidities and hatreds.

Even Hillary Clinton’s equality speech in Geneva on Human Rights Day is being attacked on the basis of her choosing the world as an audience for the message of acceptance over hate and bigotry.

Now there’s a media content stretch.

From every conceivable angle, gay is today’s civil rights synonym.

Gay is the new black.

So thank you, American media, whoever and wherever you are.

I’ll say it again.

The gays are not only popular.

They are irresistible.

What does it mean to practice acceptance in our closest relationships?

Acceptance, like its blood relative, forgiveness, is a matter for serious study.

One of the largest realities showcased in the news today is a profound lack of acceptance in our society.

This is a time of fighting celebrity headliners and the media’s obvious obsession with public brawling. Black Friday? A cheap invitation to blood and chaos in this economy.

The lust is on for nastiness ratings booms.

We couldn’t witness a more shallow and non-accepting time.

It is reported that even President Obama and John Boehner have stopped speaking. Wait a minute! Isn’t this relationship necessary for the country?

The media is going more and more tabloid, heavily featuring examples of just about everyone fighting.

The Republican candidates are at it against the Democrats and each other, Obama’s anger directed toward someone specifically matched by his personal ratings requirements du jour, David Letterman vs. ABC on behalf of Regis, various reality show Housewives pitted in teams against each another, the women representing a number of unfortunate cities in catty combat.

The extreme absence of “acceptance” between people is everywhere highlighted for us to swallow, digest, and repeat in our own lives.

I know, I know. It’s easy to blame the media for presenting the worst in human behavior, calling it “news” or “entertainment”, boldly role-modeling the bad and the ugly.

Of course we are responsible for our own behavior at all times.

And yet, how many people care to be deliberate in word and action?

How heavy is the impact of reality shows and celebrity fights screeching the decline of the reasonable human?

As the Dolby sound movie theatre commercials say, “The audience is listening”.

I believe it.

Many people tell me stories about not being able to accept the people in their lives. They often stop answering the phone or telling the truth about it.

I’m happy to encourage communication in these cases.

It’s always worth a try to see if a troubled relationship is fluid and made of quality stuff. At least the quality of being able to respectfully discuss hurtful differences.

This lack of acceptance of what is, from what I can see, is currently playing out as a new normal of extreme emotional disengagement in our private and public lives. People are exhausted and disinclined to go deep. Disagreement is too deep, and the effort to avoid the ugly has ushered in a silencing wave of Political Correctness.

This has led to the big yawning of America.

When people stop talking about what is real, it’s a society yawning.

Political correctness is a dangerous snore.

The fear and control against any degree of discord or confrontation, as if that’s the worst experience, seems to be exhausting the public psyche.

Is this the result of people going unconscious by marinating in television faux relationships gone haywire?

Is it fatigue brought on by constantly hearing virtual clashes between other people?

Perhaps all of this hateful non-acceptance has become the wallpaper of our lives, narcotizing us to not get involved or be too close.

Whatever the reasons, rejection and confrontation phobia means that people have stopped talking.

They have figured a way to be around people but not with them.

Acceptance is tricky.

Acceptance requires knowing another person, apart from who I am.

It means clearly seeing, not spinning or hoping to polish, the character of the other to fit what I want.

Sometimes what you will face between you and someone close is a mild difference of opinion, be it political or personal.

Mild enough if you are able to discuss and listen to one another’s differing take on a matter.

This is not goodbye. In this case, the differences fold, whether neat or sloppy, into the recipe of that relationship.

In other cases, the sad truth may be that the relationship is no longer possible.

In other words, to accept is not always to continue.

I suspect this is the core fear that keeps us from knowing, and wanting to know, another person in an intimate way.

Knowing brings a relationship crossroads, where people may choose to become mute and unreal, while continuing in a pretend way to walk a shared road.

To embrace a distance that is numbing yet avoids the sharp pain of loss is a common choice.

What is acceptance of another person?

Acceptance is inconvenient.

It demands honest thought and feeling when it doesn’t feel great.

Acceptance is essential for emotional clarity about ourselves, but is no guarantee of an ongoing relationship outcome.

To accept is to see.

To see is to respond.

To respond is to choose.

Do I continue to choose this relationship?

Theoretically, Obama and Boehner are working together, so they have to choose, accept, and maintain the relationship.

Apparently they need some help with that.

In our personal lives, there is no chance of having real relationship without acceptance.

The risk is, with acceptance, there is the possibility of not wanting to choose it.

We have all sadly heard the one about the Super Committee flunking economics.

I don’t know about you, but I would certainly not cast the first stone at any of them.

Who among us was superb in every scholastic subject?

Who can honestly report whipping brilliantly across the entire intellectual or even, geographical map? (Herman Cain is here with me now, nodding and obsessing about whether his tie color was a good choice).

Please, before this story vaporizes to nothingness on the manic media screen, let’s seize the fast aging news moment.

The super committee members undeniably had been entrusted with one mission, in spite of not knowing much about that subject they allegedly were gathering to fix, the economy.

Okay, but this misses the point.

Our job these days is to read into the news. We must investigate mentally everything being said.

For those of you who do not commonly practice this, I now offer a myriad of inescapable facts. Call it my holiday gift to you.

First of all, the super committee has been personally appointed, not by congress, but by the President himself, in between campaign stops to usher in (drumroll!) Thanksgiving.

Anti-climatic for the country, yet not a surprise.

There is more than a streak of Turkey Madness in, on, and around the air.

Turkey Madness is everywhere! Every time you turn around, there is a picture of a cooked turkey. Have you noticed?

The turkey is the symbol of America.

The super committee was, for a brief, shining moment, the symbol of hope for the American economy.

For those of you who think this is all a mere coincidence, and how silly to mention it, have another eggnog and think more deeply.

This exercise is also terrific practice for welcoming back brain cells and surviving our times!

You’re welcome. My pleasure.

Next week: The Unveiling of What Black Friday Is Really About.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes a shocking episode from life’s infinite collection of bizarre experiences knocks rudely on the door of your heart and your life.

Helloooo! You might answer, consumed with milder matters, more than likely amidst the stupor of your favorite denial strategy.

Sometimes it is possible to immediately identify what this outrage is and what it simultaneously means.

At such a time, it may even be possible to instantly return, without missing a beat, to the road that is familiar to you and get back on track with what is recognizably sane and comfortable.

But sometimes, life presents something so extreme and unfamiliar, that after closing and locking the door in its aftermath, you find that nothing will ever be the same.

Such has been the case recently in my life.

Hence, these thoughts I offer.

It occurs to me that we live in strange, even shocking, times.

And maybe I should add, times of strangers.

There is a ghoulish censorship and silence among people who call themselves “friends” when it comes to traumatic experiences and feelings.

Don’t get me wrong.

I am blessed with over a handful of people who know very well what goes on today with me, as I know well their daily lives.

I’m lucky.

However, I find it impossible to turn away from the reality of disconnection we are led to embrace.

How are we led to embrace disconnection?

We are scared to death by streams of television and radio commercials outlining our possible diseases and imminent deaths. There is no popularity, nor has there ever been, in turning to one another about how this terror impacts us or leads to sleepless nights, if we are under the age of, say, 80 years old.

Here’s another example. No one likes to outline a negative narrative about family.

Americans are supposed to belong to a loving family. Period.

End of discussion, but it shouldn’t be.

Commonly, the truth in our families is checkered with grief, not a billboard for The Happy American Family. People confide things everyday to me, and I am astounded about how ashamed many feel with the truths about their own family conditions. Even in therapy, it is a long time coming for most people to reveal toxic family experience.

Stand-up comedy aside, bad family is a societal censorship that is heavier than the image of the late Iron Curtain.

I wonder if human beings in this 21^st century are wired to the public, “It’s all good” personal promotion for survival reasons.

In the past, I have been judgmental about the “It’s all good” and “No worries” wallpapering of relationship design and construction.

Yes, I am a baby boomer. Guilty as charged, I do remember when simple truths were the necessary fundamentals of any worthwhile relationship.

So laugh at my nostalgic vigor.

I’m saying more than “it was so much better then”.

I’m saying it is time to talk.

Time to expose the hurts and the angers over true personal abuse and injustices of all hideous varieties.

Not in a tabloid, reality show way. That’s too cheap.

This truth-telling I’m talking about belongs in personal relationships with trusted people.

In other words, for a healthier you and a healthier society, it is time to Share the Shock.

As I read the heart-warming tributes on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and the beautiful words of hope and encouragement for our future, I can’t help but revisit the truth of the social images from these last 10 years in America.

I’m talking about personal and social behavior in America; what has changed and become the norm in our society during the aftermath of terror.

Understandably, in the days, weeks, and months immediately following the attacks, America was depressed.

In spite of George W. Bush’s advice, I don’t know many people who went to the movies.

Instead, practical life did limp along. There was an undeniable connection between strangers that lasted briefly. We all shared the extraordinary shock that such violence had happened in our country, and we felt it personally.

The colorful, carefree piñata of invulnerability and security that floated above the lives of Americans since the end of WWII was savagely smashed. No one knew what that would mean for our lives going forward.

Further, we didn’t know anything about the level of hatred others in the world harbored against us. I remember countless people telling me that they didn’t know anything at all about what seemed to be the urgently, newly discussed parts of the world; Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, places that we would soon be asked to understand intimately.

Country music swiftly raised the American flag against enemies after 9/11, notably in rabid patriotic revenge songs penned by Toby Keith.

Sample lyric aimed at any would-be terrorists against America:

“We’ll put a boot in your ass

It’s the American Way”

Notable also, if less threatening, is singer Alan Jackson’s musical response, “Where were you(when the world stopped turning)”, an anthem of both sorrow and ignorance, including these lines,

“I watch CNN but I’m not sure I can tell you

The diff’rence in Iraq and Iran”

I wonder if even in these last 10 years, in spite of daily television coverage, many of us really know much more now than we did then.

What was initial shock and terror for Americans became what I believe is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, an epidemic that has created a new society and way of being in America.

PTSD as a psychological disorder first appeared in 1980 in the DSM-IV-TR, the bible of psychological illnesses.

According to MedicineNet.com, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an emotional illness that is classified as an anxiety disorder resulting from a terrifying, frightening, life-threatening, experience characterized as having long-lasting problems with many aspects of emotional and social functioning”.

America’s onset of PTSD was aided heavily by the repetition of televised Twin Tower footage that seemingly went on forever.

Understandably, we couldn’t see it enough; it was so shocking.

The media looped it and looped it, until it was engraved in us.

What does a society of people suffering PTSD look like?

It is not surprising that a new form of depression became the norm for Americans, many of whom were depressed to begin with.

It is hard for us to speak about this, mainly because we don’t choose to, but the PTSD new normal includes public acts of out-of-control rage, which has become the hallmark of what our social experience often includes.

We see symptoms of PTSD everywhere in urban life.

Some easy to spot symptoms are entitlement, inappropriate public acting out of hatred and rage, rudeness, inability to consider social decency. These behaviors are considered so common and normal today that it appears to be not just unpopular to discuss them, but conversationally shorted with a big “duh”.

Some people say that reality television cheers on this lack of civility.

Judging from the popularity of the reality “invasion” on television, we do remain enthused and amused by ever-increasing trashy human behavior on constant display.

Perhaps this links up with taking this behavior to the streets, or perhaps not.

What is undeniable, post 9/11, is that the entitlement to act out uncivil behaviors in these last 10 years is off the charts.

I’m not saying that the entire problem with narcissism and anti-social behaviors in America was created on 9/11, but I believe 9/11’s violence was extreme enough to break an already-fragile social dam.

In my opinion, we have not admitted, let alone addressed, our emotional unwellness in this decade following 9/11.

The truth is, there is very little self-awareness psychologically among our people.

While psychotherapy is no longer an exotic or shameful secret, the deeper emotional truths we personally live with are too often undisclosed, and not even known to exist by the people themselves.

And so, undiagnosed and untreated, the American People have become a case study in what happens when dis-ease is left untreated.

The neighborhoods and streets of our cities broadcast these results in anti-social behaviors and scenarios which are also shocking.

The financial impact of this last decade is met without the famous resilience America was once known for.

People are pitted against each other financially, socially, and emotionally.

This is what we could be looking at on the anniversary of 9/11.

Instead, we are given a headline involving an alleged terror plan to occur on the anniversary of 9/11.

I can’t help but wonder whether political maneuvers somehow align with the media presentation of this headline.

Why would we have to be loudly introduced to a theoretical, potential rerun of trauma and terrorism, I wonder.

I find it troubling that the American public would be given this Breaking News piece that dangles menacingly over our heads when we are helpless to respond protectively.

If we do have a national PTSD from 9/11 itself, the only impact of this news alert is to re-energize our fears.

Here are a few anniversary prayers. Hopefully you will add your own.

Give us a government whose job it is to protect and preempt any such attacks, and let them succeed.

Let us be awake and responsible for our own inflammatory actions in this country—toward each other and other countries.

Stop terrorizing us with terror!

Rather than focus on the healing of a PTSD society, we have been encouraged to deny our feelings and be “treated” to the pharmaceutical anti-depression industry’s campaign assaults.

Having studied personal changes in American behavior over these last 10 years, I am reminded that depressed people are easily manipulated against their own best interests.

As FDR famously instructed, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

As fear continues to be a tactic used against us, either in the form of a terror headline without a story, or simply as a warning for us to be “vigilant” with no further instruction, let us individually be awake to where we allow our minds to go.

Let us not forget 9/11 while we deliberately choose to heal, not deepen, our worst fears.

Of course, you know by now that almost every television commercial is a drug company selling prescription anti-depression drugs and repeating the mantra tag line of this new century in advertising, survival, and mass hypnosis: “Ask Your Doctor”.

What you may not know is that this is a benevolent campaign that is saving us all from the horrors of feeling anything bad or even slightly irritating, and we should all get up out of our chairs right this minute and thank the sponsors who care so much about how we feel.

Whoops, before you get up, call your doctor, of course, just in case there is a drug that could help ease the transition from sitting to standing. You just never know, but your doctor certainly does!

I remember a cloudy day many years ago when I could have used this guidance, but it was nowhere to be found.

Can you imagine having to bear the anguish of a shy moment? Well, I’m here to tell you it wasn’t pretty.

Thank God for science that  has delivered us out of the awkward, the agitated, the excruciating darkness of unavoidable contact with discomfort—and other people.

Since there are two sides to every penny, let us also admit that it was the very lack of silencing the soul that produced great works of art and artists, including singers and actors and painters who moved us to our depths, unimpeded by medication.

Or perhaps that was our medication.

Anywho, what’s a little empty space between friends when the upshot is lack of emotional pain?

Professional polls report time and time again that The American People would gladly exchange intimate moments for the sheer bliss of blankness, and who can argue with that?

If you are not among the lucky A.D.D. sufferers who have a faithful, legitimate stash of speed, you might catch a confusion at the end of those commercials for emotional/mental disorder drugs.

This is where the side effects flood forth from a paid actor/actress sotto voce like a train out of control. Don’t be afraid if you find yourself asking out loud whether you should ask your doctor if it’s cool to possibly die in order to partake in the cornucopia of worry- erasing pharmaceuticals.

Again, I urge you to Ask Your Doctor for something to quiet those nerves which apparently have just sprung out from the medicated mattress of your psyche upon hearing that you are on a drug that may, without warning, take away your ability to swallow or breathe.

No worries. Just Ask Your Doctor how he feels about your having the occasional seizure.

It’s all about your being comfortable, which is why the good people at the biggest pharmaceutical companies are thinking about you.

Yes, they are!

They are so concerned that they are developing right now new drugs to take with the ones you already have when the regular drugs don’t work!

Now that’s very nice, don’t you think?

What’s that? You can’t think? You can’t hold onto a thought?

Now that’s something you should ask your doctor about.