About "Exit the Cuckoo's Nest"

Pictured above is a hallway in the Buffalo State Hospital, which was designed and built in the late nineteenth century to be an insane asylum, and which has since been abandoned for that purpose. It was considered to employ the best psychiatric treatment of the time, but is rumored to be haunted from all the pain inflicted there. I posted it to represent the failed institutions of our age. They still exist but have been corrupted and can't honestly be said to serve the people. We need a way out of them. In the photograph, the window looks possible but one might fall to one's death, and there's an arrow painted on the wall pointing in the opposite direction. So the question is, how to exit the cuckoo's nests of our times?

This is largely a political site but not a partisan one. Whatever a person's ideological leanings, there are things we can agree on. My personal conviction is that we peons are made all the more powerless when we fight among each other, and those in power have made a concerted, conscious effort to give us opportunities to do so. It has worked very well, unfortunately.

I usually post several articles a day that I find of interest. Do not assume that these are in accordance with my views. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, and sometimes I'm not sure what to make of them. These are meant to be topics for discussion, and if somebody wants to post in strong disagreement or finds certain opinions objectionable, be my guest. I won't be offended. 

I advocate free speech; however, in terms of posting here, I mean this in terms of freedom to express one's opinions on the OP in question – although I don't expect threads to remain rigidly on-track. Personal attacks and harassing behavior, particularly when a poster indulges in them chronically, will not be permitted. Those who can't manage to stick to ideas and persist in abusive behavior will be banned. I realize how difficult it can be to remain calm and civil when discussing controversial matters, and how easy to resort to name-calling and such, so I'll give three warnings before any ban.

Contributions of articles from readers/posters are welcome; I'd really like this to be a site where everyone contributes. These can be anything you'd like put up as an OP with a thread for discussion; it could be your own writing or an article you'd like others to discuss, a video, music, short fiction, poem, image, meme – all good. Unless contributions are truly beyond the pale, I won't vet them. Just write me a post including “Please post this as an OP.” If it's something that can't be posted via a link, you'll have to either post it in a comment to me, or send it to me by email, and the Blogger will only accept Google emails (gmail, outlook, hotmail, and probably others I don't know about).

Elizabeth Hayes (EH)