Societal arrogance, prejudice, and exploitation are never more evident than when a formal court trial is used to declare a person's competency. Judges who preside over these trials are in no way believing that the sentence they issue has anything whatsoever to do with the persons ability or lack of it, to act appropriately or provide for themselves. This process is strictly an extension of the psychiatric industry and the institutional mentality. It reflects how the corporations/insurance companies have been able to trade what is still described as the service they provide in exchange for these customer referrals.
It is practically impossible to dispute the corporate ties to governmental agency in these matters but no one directly involved ever tries. The way that society strictly enforces competency judgments in the informal ways dictates to the judicial system as well as the industry that there is no reason to be concerned that their deceit and miscarriage of justice will ever be challenged.
It really won't matter much if people who are more widely recognized refrain from using terms such as retarded or even retard if we continue to recklessly toss about ridiculous and unfounded allegations of incompetence the way we do with terms such as idiot, moron, stupid, and uneducated. All of these terms were created to support the glorification of a very narrow standardized scholastic achievement test. This is a system of ranking and the goal of those who benefit from this is for people to take their focus away from what they are learning and what they don't know, and ignore the discouragement they get from trying to understand their environment in order to instead remain hostage to the social games for cutting each other down and tearing apart each other.
The earliest recorded use of the north American continent being used by Europeans for institutionalization date back to shortly after the invasion of 1492, which is flatteringly referred to as when the "settlers" first arrived. The plantations were set up to use slave labor, and the slaves were brought or natives were captured for that purpose. This was the beginning of a political and judicial system that depended on an institutional mentality.
One example of how this is continuing is by laws, which are made for status offense.
"Status offenses may include consumption of alcohol, tobacco smoking, truancy, and running away from home.
These acts may be illegal for persons under a certain age, while remaining legal for all others, which makes them status offenses.
Status offense may also apply to other classes, including laws forbidding ownership of firearms by felons, where such ownership is otherwise legal.
Laws that prohibit certain actions to certain persons based on their sex, race, nationality, religion, etc., are also status offenses. A law that prohibits men from using public toilets intended for women, or a law that prohibits the use of a drinking fountain by people of a given race, or a law that sets a curfew for people below a certain age, are examples of status offenses, although they are not always thought of as such."
In similar fashion:
"During the mid-1600's, the colonies began to pass laws called slave codes. In general, these codes prohibited slaves from owning weapons, receiving an education, meeting one another or moving about without the permission of their masters, and testifying against white people in court. Slaves received harsher punishments for some crimes than white people. A master usually received less punishment for killing a slave than for killing a free person for the same reason. Slaves on small farms probably had more freedom than plantation slaves, and slaves in urban areas had fewer restrictions in many cases than slaves in rural areas."
I see no indication that the laws in the United States are ever relaxed so that any person with any class distinction can be judged more fairly. Instead when there are nuances in the laws it typically indicates a contradiction and provides more authority to the law enforcement which supports oppression.
It says here of a formal competency evaluation:
"In the United States criminal justice system, a competency evaluation is an assessment of the ability of a defendant to understand and rationally participate in a court process.
Competency was originally established by the Supreme Court of the United States as the evaluation of a defendant's competence to proceed to trial.[1]
In a subsequent ruling, the Court held that that an prisoner facing the death penalty must be evaluated as competent to be executed, meaning that he must be
capable of understanding why he has received the death penalty and the effect that the penalty will have.[2] In further rulings, competence was also enlarged to include evaluation of the defendant's competence to plead guilty and competence to waive the right to counsel.[3]"
AND
"The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards stated in 1994 that the issue of a defendant's current mental incompetence is the single most important issue in the criminal mental health field, noting that an estimated 24,000 to 60,000 forensic evaluations of a criminal defendant's competency to stand trial were performed every year in the United States.[4] Although estimates vary, a 1973 estimate put the number of competence evaluations at 25,000 to 36,000 each year. There are indications that the number of evaluations of criminal defendants is rising. One comparison of estimates between 1983 and 2004 suggest the annual number rose from 50,000 to 60,000 criminal competency evaluations respectively.[5]" "
Mental health agencies in the United States worked very closely with drug enforcement agencies in order to justify the class war falsely labeled "the war on drugs". The newest agency being used to confuse the distinction between recreational drug use which is not sponsored by a government approved and subsidized pharmaceutical company and criminal activity is SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).
This agency has been used to promote the recovery model which blurs the line between self-improvement and the responsibility that accompanies being an individual and that of mandated responsibility from a judicial agency which is used to permit corporate irresponsibility. Although several recent court hearings have found compulsory attendance for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a condition of parole to be unconstitutional, this continues to be a typical practice for judges.
In the same way that Henry Ford used publications for spreading anti-Semitic propaganda and socialist values that aided his company, Randolph Hearst used similar means for settling labor issues by publishing false information about the dangers of marijuana use and its relation to racial minorities and crime.
That's described in this article:
A highly disproportionate number of black and Hispanic people in the United States are tried, convicted, and sentenced for drug charges and are similarly abused by the psychiatric system. The scholars in Europe such as Sir Francis Galton encouraged this miscarriage of justice. Galton defined race purification and population control as eugenics based on the work of his cousin Charles Darwin. Drapetomania is the name of the psychological disorder which shows the intentions of the most revered American doctors such as Benjamin Rush. Samuel Cartwright, a student of Rush, established psychiatric label, Drapetomania:
"Cartwright described the disorder — which, he said, was "unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers"[4] — in a paper delivered before the Medical Association of Louisiana[5] that was widely reprinted.
He stated that the malady was a consequence of masters who "made themselves too familiar with [slaves], treating them as equals."[6]
"If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away." [7]
Psychiatry evaluates the degree to which someone is behaving normally based on statistics from people who accept a list of character flaws that comes with a psychological label and enables them to receive medication and therapy.
This says of the classification of mental disorders:
"The widely used DSM and ICD classifications employ operational definitions.[1] There is a significant scientific debate about the relative validity of a "categorical" versus a "dimensional" system of classification, as well as significant controversy about the role of science and values in classification schemes and the professional, legal and social uses to which they are put."
To whatever degree, any of this is discussed within an academic environment, it does not change how the labeling of the persons intelligence quotient, psychological profile, and heritage are used to determine a person's human rights as well as their potential liberties.
Judge Rotenberg had a behavioral treatment research facility named after him based on his ability to use his position of court judge to show how autistics would seek aversive treatment to cure their malady if only they were competent enough to do so.
It says here:
"While this litigation was taking place, in late 1985 and early 1986, JRC brought one of its seriously self-abusive, autistic students before the Bristol County Probate Court for a substituted judgment hearing that was held by Chief Judge Ernest Rotenberg. After hearing testimony on both sides of the issue, Judge Rotenberg determined: (1) that the student was incompetent to make her own medical treatment decisions; and (2) that the child, if competent, would have chosen treatment that included the use of the aversives that JRC had been employing, prior to the decision by the administrative judge. This substituted judgment hearing was the same type of hearing that was required in Massachusetts for individuals for whom agencies wished to employ psychotropic medication (or other intrusive medical procedures) and who were incompetent to make their own treatment decisions."
What had to happen is that in order to sustain the belief that children are born broken and need fixing by state-sponsored institutions psychological labels need to be used in the same way that they had previously been used on slaves based on the claim that the means for their treatment was justified by the end result and that they were not competent enough to choose what was best for their own welfare.
When people today think of combating autism it would be helpful to remember that:
"In 1961, President John F. Kennedy created the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation and called upon America to address the significant needs of people with intellectual disabilities and their desire to be a part of everyday life in America. The Panel submitted its first report, “Combating Mental Retardation,” which led to Congressional action to establish new programs for people with intellectual disabilities, including hospital improvement programs."
This article decribes very well a trend that has occured since then:
New Down syndrome test could increase ‘eugenic’ abortions
"Studies in the United States and the United Kingdom have claimed that as many as 9 in 10 unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.
Carol Boys, chief executive of the Down’s Syndrome Association in Great Britain, recently told the BBC that the less invasive blood test will make pre-natal testing safer and more common."
AND
“In the 1960s, we were told that legal abortion would be a rare tragic act in cases of exceptional hardship. In the ‘70s abortion began to be both decried and accepted as birth control. In the ‘80s respected geneticists pointed out that it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise them. By the ‘90s that observation had been widely put into action. Now we are refining and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests and abortion as our central tools.”
Surveys of primary care physicians indicate that very few doctors encourage women whose unborn babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome to continue their pregnancies."
When describing Autism Speaks Eugenic Agenda, ABFH wrote this:
"But for the most part, they've managed to put up a somewhat plausible pretense of being a mainstream charity that just wants to prevent suffering, and so forth. Most of the material on their website is carefully designed to keep the public unaware of their close ideological affinity with the white supremacist agenda of creating a master race through eugenics. A casual reader might not notice a page featuring the views of Dr. James Watson, with whom Bob and Suzanne Wright had a friendly chat regarding autism genetic research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory:
autismspeaks.org/inthenews/wrights_cold_spring_harbor.php"
The Rottenburg center has aided other school's in providing them with the authority which encourages an atmosphere of abuse by being examples this kind of regulation manipulation:
"The Department of Education has the authority to approve private school programs for the purpose of providing special education to publicly funded school age students with disabilities. Under this authority, the Department reviews the program’s educational components as well as its compliance with general health and safety standards. Judge Rotenberg Education Center (“the program” or “JRC”) operates a program for students with significant disabilities in which it utilizes a behavioral modification program of rewards (positive reinforcers) and punishments (aversives). The aversives used by JRC include restraint, electric skin shock (“GED”), and the delaying or withholding of food in order to decelerate problematic behaviors.
Although JRC is licensed by two state agencies, the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and the Department of Mental Retardation (DMR), it is under DMR’s authority that JRC’s use of aversives is regulated. In addition to DMR’s regulation of JRC in this regard, JRC’s use of aversives with an individual student must be authorized by the probate court under a “substituted judgment proceeding.” This means that for each student for whom JRC wishes to use aversives, it must submit to the probate court a behavioral plan that the court must approve and annually review. In addition, the court appoints an attorney to represent the student’s interests in the court proceeding and the student’s attorney may request an independent clinical review of the behavioral plan submitted by JRC regarding the student."
Behavioral programs such as Applied Behavioral Analysis would never be considered an educational approach if it weren't for the school system equating appropriate and sophisticated behavior as equal in importance to the acquisition of knowledge. Nothing is more relative and practically useless than the labels society uses to declare a person's competence.
However, JRC is not the exception to the rule (although more is known about their abuses). This behavioral treatment center/mental institution/juvinille punishment and rehabilitation center can't be
penalized or effectively requested to change until we look at how their methods are in keeping with the goals that progressive education has always maintained.
This describes John Dewey's aspirations for
compulsory schooling:
John Dewey: Education Was Never About Learning
"(Makow) – No one has had a more pernicious effect on American education, and by extension the corruption of American society today than John Dewey. Born in 1859, John Dewey turned historic American values and logic upside down.
In Dewey’s view, the individual existed only to serve society. “Socialization” (i.e., the individual’s conformity to a group) was seen as more important than factual learning. This twisted view of education infected all of his work, resulting in a century of ever diminishing American academic achievement, with the resultant corruption of American society."
AND
"Incredibly, Dewey ridiculed the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, declaring that knowledge was only valid and worthwhile if “society” decided so.
If the Powers That Be (“society”) decided literature, or geometry, or chemistry is no longer a valid pursuit, but multicultural studies, minority oppression, and remedial basket weaving are, then the individual should have no alternative to that course of education.
Every virtue, including curiosity, resourcefulness, competitiveness, ethical conduct, right reasoning, rhetorical skills, logic and inventiveness — could be considered to be “vices” overnight if the Powers That Be (“Society”) decided they were no longer desirable."
I can only imagine that within a week of the introduction of compulsory schooling, parents began to compete with each other to show which of them, by producing offspring, had created a superior product. I'm sure that almost immediately one mother rushed out to put a bumper sticker on the rear of the horse that drew the family carriage which said," my kid made the honor roll." The neighboring parent chose to advertise, "my kids got autism, but I love them anyway." It must not have been long after that when some parent told the news reporter, "I would've driven my carriage off the side of a bridge if it weren't for my competent kids which would also be destroyed in the accident." It may have taken a little time, but I'll bet similar behavior began fairly soon after this age appropriate ranking system began.
People involved in progressive education politics often frame discussions in a way, which encourages the false belief that they are all looking for the best ways to include and provide for the majority of the public. It has never been this way and in the same way that the US political system is falsely defined by two parties in competition with each other, our involvement in these meaningless debates supports the myth of everyone being involved in a noble effort.
It's silly to consider someone to be superior (which is what positive labels of achievement or ability ultimately do) without considering the validity of the standard of measurement. If there is an agenda to provide some people with positive labels, they can then use to their advantage at the expense of most others that receive negative ones, then it's silly, arrogant, and a way to support and mimic corporate values to present your own label or that of someone close to you as being valid due to a fair standard of evaluation.
The people who are behind government decisions that use a person's success and achievement along with another person's lack of it as a means for keeping them hostage don't care about your abilities or your achievements and only present glorified labels to dissuade the public from looking too closely at the flaws in the system and challenging it.
The system can change. Diversity can be encouraged, and we can learn to empower each other. However, this will not happen pursuant to continuing to honor the system and its values which has been used to prevent our empowerment. The system itself was designed and is sustained as an end unto itself. Until we find an appropriate means to encourage our own individual creativity and redefine institutions as a means to our individual goals everyone (whether formally involved in the system or disenfranchised by it) will remain hostage to the inappropriate values it has taught us.
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