The high cost of denial.

Under a strict, unregulated open market, Lufthansa would have dropped Lubitz [its suicidal pilot] like a hot potato after he dropped out of flight school because of raging depression and certainly after he forged a clean bill of mental health on an FAA form. But if they tried that in today’s society, they would run up against all kinds of rules: medical confidentiality; rights of mental health patients; civil lawsuits for discrimination.

And in that last one is the real reason for the Lufthansa 9525 tragedy: we are so afraid of discrimination that we tie our own hands against real threats.

I have infinite sympathy for Lubitz. Paranoid visualizations, hallucinations and crippling psychotic depression cannot be anything but misery. I do not know how to treat him. I know however that someone in that unstable state should not be responsible for the health and safety of others.

We see the high cost of tolerance in other areas too. We cannot notice that the Third World people have different abilities and inclinations than ours, or that their need is not to come here, but to improve There. We cannot point out that most people are selfish and short-sighted and so democracy is a failure.

Equality, tolerance, non-discrimination and the rest were sold to us as “harmless.” How true is that? Like the shattered remnants of Flight 9525, our society lies shattered on a mountain,

"The high cost of denial, mental health edition." By Brett Stevens, Amerika, date uncertain, probably c. 2/25/16.