There's Easy Money in Broken People

Another shooting in America. Another round of finger-pointing, false flag theories, and the short-lived conservative outcry for “mental health.” And as much as I know it’s bullshit, my standards are so low that just hearing the words feels validating. Because they rarely care otherwise.

This American life is stressful. Sure, we know today’s society looks nothing like that of our ancestors. We’ve all heard the cliché: anxiety was meant to help us escape predators, and now it’s about escaping a paper jam at work.

I’m not arguing against technological progress. I’m arguing against how we’ve normalized extra stress; stress designed to profit someone else.

We’re drowning in manufactured pressure. Over half of Americans are one missed paycheck away from financial ruin. That paycheck controls whether we keep a roof, food, or healthcare. And because of that, we tolerate abuse: customers screaming, managers drunk on power, companies bragging about record profits while shrinking our benefits. When your worth is tied to productivity, it’s no wonder so many feel broken.

And it doesn’t stop there. Convincing scam bots. Apps engineered for addiction. Corporations legally targeting recovering addicts with the very products they escaped from. Algorithms that keep us divided. News that stopped being news. More ads than friends. More bots than friends. The same apps that isolate us then sell our attention to the highest bidder. They become our only “community,” and then politicians weaponize them with propaganda. Before long, every purchase becomes political, and even the president wears a hat claiming he’s “always been right” just to taunt his enemies. Or maybe he believes it. At this point, who knows?

Deep down, most of us just want something simple: drink enough water, sleep enough hours, feel accomplished in one personal project. But before we can get there, we fight through the noise, every day, until we’re too drained to enjoy any of it. Then another day comes.

I think it’s clear where I stand politically. But honestly, I don’t see how anyone who cares about mental health could support the GOP.

And to be fair, this isn’t just about one side being cruel. it’s about decades of fear-mongering. Since the fairness doctrine died in the late ‘80s, Fox News has been flooding people with manufactured emergencies. It validated old prejudices. Remember the “Haitians are eating our pets” panic? Treated like a state of emergency. Now the same man who amplified that is president, firing off dozens of opinions a day so his supporters can’t keep up. Yet, they still feel obligated to defend them.

That sounds incredibly stressful for them, too.

This is the country we share. Different experiences, different values. But I don’t see how anyone survives America 2025 without some form of mental health support. And I’m not just talking about the “woke agenda.” I validate everyone.

The lonely men destroying themselves. The silent self-medicators. The families torn apart. The shooters. The victims. The overworked. The underpaid. The ignored. Those without purpose. Those with purpose but no energy. Christians. The disabled. People who chew with their mouths open. Aggressive drivers. From the unhoused to Donald Trump. Everyone is carrying something real. And we should all be taught how to process that in a healthy way. Because even if you think that screaming stranger has nothing in common with you, the harm they cause might be impossible to ignore.

Yet mental health only trends when it shields guns from blame. The same lawmakers who cry, “It’s not the gun, it’s mental health” slash suicide hotlines, close clinics, and float bans on antidepressants just to scare people who rely on them. They don’t want solutions, because solutions aren’t profitable. Looking at mental health honestly would expose how much of our pain is man-made.

When media giants fight to let gambling apps and liquor companies target recovering addicts, mental health loses again. The outrage fades as fast as the headlines. And by the time the victims are buried, so is the urgency.

Then we turn back to the information firehose to catch up on the five other “emergencies” we missed while we dared to be human for a weekend.

Almost all of us have needed help at some point. But the system keeps feeding us stress until we break. And those who need it most rarely know where to start. I only found answers because I refused to quit. And it still took me decades.

I grew up in small-town Missouri, where “mental health” sounded like a made-up phrase. Depression was a joke for when you were tired or lazy. The school counselor was for “problem kids.” If you went there, everyone knew. I had no idea what it meant to need help. I just thought I was broken. I blamed myself for everything. I told myself I was weak. I sabotaged relationships for self-preservation. I numbed my body with junk food because I hated it. All while thinking, “Why can’t I play this game of life right?”

I ran blood tests, hormone panels, allergy checks—convinced something was killing me. But it wasn’t a character flaw. It was something no one explained. And even knowing that, it still took me 15 more years to get real answers.

That persistence saved me. But persistence shouldn’t be the price of survival.

So when politicians talk about mental health while cutting programs that save lives, I wonder if we’re all suffering memory loss. If you think banning medication or closing clinics to “own the other side” is okay, then you’ve put politics above being human. And you clearly don’t understand cause and effect.

If you truly care about mental health because you want to keep your children safe, then stop voting for the party that votes against mental health. Otherwise, you’re choosing the problem.

I had a thought the other day that I posted cryptically on Facebook. My Millennial brain still loves dropping deep quotes without context. It’s nostalgic.

“There’s a bittersweetness in ending the war within through healing—only to realize the real war is with those who thrived on your struggle.”

I thought about all the years I felt misunderstood. The junk food. The self-loathing. The exhaustion. The constant sense of failure. The big moments I forgot and the small mistakes I still remember.

A lot of that pain was avoidable. But instead of learning how to cope, we’re funneled into systems built to profit from our dysfunction. The sicker, lonelier, and more disconnected we feel, the more we spend. The more divorces happen. The more things we break and replace. There’s easy money in broken people. A healed patient is a customer lost.

Is anyone else feeling this? How many shootings or suicides could have been prevented if real help wasn’t just a privilege? How much earlier could I have felt better? What about you?

And yet, the only numbers that seem to matter are record profits.. And who voted for what.