For those of you who have been following the Wisconsin gubernatorial race extensively, you may have known about a TV ad which the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Burke is either currently running or has run which features Erin Forrest, the chairwoman of the Jefferson County (WI) Democratic Party who entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and served probation in order to get domestic violence charges against her dropped.
Normally, I would write a blog post on The Prairie Badger, my blog about Wisconsin politics, and criticize Forrest for effectively blacklisting Scott Michalak, a unsuccessful Wisconsin State Assembly candidate in 2012, over some sort of domestic violence issue that Michalak had in which I’m not familiar with the details of, when Forrest had domestic violence issues of her own not long after the 2012 elections in Wisconsin.
However, I’m going to do something completely different instead.
I’m guessing that nobody who is reading this blog knows about this part of my past, but, when I was 9 years old or so, I spent a little over two weeks in a mental institution in Vigo County, Indiana. I spent a little over two weeks in a mental institution when I was an elementary school-age child because, when I was, if I recall correctly, a fourth-grade student at a public elementary school in Westville, Illinois, I frequently acted in a violent manner toward people around me. Because my behavioral issues were so severe, my parents sent me to Charter Behavioral Health (now known as Harsha Behavioral Center) near Terre Haute, Indiana.
I don’t credit spending two weeks in what could best be described as a minimum-security mental institution with improving my behavior, as my behavioral health slowly improved as I grew older to the point that my only behavioral health issues are ones usually associated with people who, like me, have Asperger’s syndrome, such as being obsessive about certain subjects that I’m interested in and having difficulty properly communicating with people. Additionally, I would never act in a violent manner toward anyone nowadays. However, the fact that I once spent time in a behavioral health institution is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I cannot, in good conscience, write a blog post criticizing a political figure for hypocrisy when it would be hypocritical for me to do so. That’s why I felt the need to admit that I once spent time in a behavioral health institution when I was a child.
The Progressive Midwesterner 