"er provisional numbers released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics, the United States hit a suicide record in 2022: 14.3 suicides per 100,000, or nearly 50,000 total. Throw in overdose death numbers—105,000 and change—and a grim picture of last year emerges. (We’ll have to wait on the National Institutes of Health for alcohol-related death numbers, but the trend there isn’t good, either.)

These are the famous deaths of despair. Candidates all have to recognize them now—Trump on American carnage, Biden on suicides. Everyone’s stump speech or prepped debate monologue has a glib line about opioids or the mental health crisis or loneliness.
....
It is not clear what can be done. Tearing down is easy; building is hard. Religious revival probably has something to do with it. An economy that guarantees a shot at material prosperity and security probably has something to do with it, too. Yet a nation is, in the final analysis, a subjective thing; so is a human life. You have to want it.

Next week, for the last time this year, the Republican party will undergo the tedious exercise of a presidential debate. (Your humble columnist will undergo the tedious exercise of writing it up.) The candidates will bicker and snipe about particulars of voting record and business history, they will tout unrealistic plans for cutting federal bureaucracy, and at least one of them will call for direct military intervention in the Middle East. The question every American should ask is whether any of the people on the stage is anything but another line in the national suicide note, another senseless fixture that is there because it’s there, another grinning mask draped over a very deep hole in the ground. Do you think they make sense? Do you think any of that spectacle makes sense? Or is it another emanation of the void, a distraction from the thin, small voice of reason and a way out, far from the gleaming hall and glittering screens?"

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dream-baby-dream/

On Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 2:29:09 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> "er provisional numbers released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics, the United States hit a suicide record in 2022: 14.3 suicides per 100,000, or nearly 50,000 total. Throw in overdose death numbers—105,000 and change—and a grim picture of last year emerges. (We’ll have to wait on the National Institutes of Health for alcohol-related death numbers, but the trend there isn’t good, either.)
>
> These are the famous deaths of despair. Candidates all have to recognize them now—Trump on American carnage, Biden on suicides. Everyone’s stump speech or prepped debate monologue has a glib line about opioids or the mental health crisis or loneliness.
> ...
> It is not clear what can be done. Tearing down is easy; building is hard. Religious revival probably has something to do with it. An economy that guarantees a shot at material prosperity and security probably has something to do with it, too. Yet a nation is, in the final analysis, a subjective thing; so is a human life. You have to want it.
>
> Next week, for the last time this year, the Republican party will undergo the tedious exercise of a presidential debate. (Your humble columnist will undergo the tedious exercise of writing it up.) The candidates will bicker and snipe about particulars of voting record and business history, they will tout unrealistic plans for cutting federal bureaucracy, and at least one of them will call for direct military intervention in the Middle East. The question every American should ask is whether any of the people on the stage is anything but another line in the national suicide note, another senseless fixture that is there because it’s there, another grinning mask draped over a very deep hole in the ground. Do you think they make sense? Do you think any of that spectacle makes sense? Or is it another emanation of the void, a distraction from the thin, small voice of reason and a way out, far from the gleaming hall and glittering screens?"
>
> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dream-baby-dream/

Unfortunately, the multi-billion dollar ritualistic show called "Presidential Election" does not appear to contribute to any solution.
Hence the lamentation:
"The question every American should ask is whether any of the people on the stage is anything but another line in the national
suicide note, another senseless fixture that is there because it’s there, another grinning mask draped over a very deep hole in
the ground. Do you think they make sense?"