In the wake of any tragedy like the shooting at a community college in Oregon last week, politicians and pundits of all political stripes come out in force to talk about how best to avoid another occurrence in the future. Though some might call it “politicizing a tragedy,” ignoring the problem won’t fix it. However, when the conversation turns to mental health, it’s a little disingenuous for people who didn’t seem to care otherwise to suddenly jump up and talk about how serious the situation of the mental healthcare situation of the United States is.
First, and most obviously, many of them—you know who they are—are just doing it so they don’t have to talk about gun reform, because they want to continue winning their party’s votes. But it’s also, as Oliver points out in his trademark truthful-research-based-journalisim-disguised-as-comedy way, because mental health and how it’s handled really don’t have very much to do with these events, if anything at all.
Yet that’s not because our mental healthcare system is great. It’s got some pretty big troubles of its own that deserve more deference than being trotted out to distract people for a bit of NRA sleight of hand to make gun control disappear.
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