Dr. Keith Ablow on Binghamton Massacre

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," April 3, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: We have Keith Ablow, psychiatrist, good friend, FOX News contributor. Doctor Keith Ablow is with us.

And by the way, before I go to Keith, let me just — let me just say this and I know this isn't popular to say on radio or on television, but I don't really care. You know, there is a lot of stuff going on in our nation right now, and quite frankly, I think a lot of it is because we have un-pegged from God. Say a prayer for our country, and say a prayer for obviously everybody in Binghamton.

All right. Keith, are you there?

DR. KEITH ABLOW, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Glenn.

BECK: How are you, sir?

ABLOW: I am, my friend. I'm OK, buddy.

BECK: OK. I want to ask you a couple of — a couple of questions. First of all, is this a service to our country to cover this? What are we doing?

I watch all of the cable networks down here. Everybody is covering it and I think to myself, I'm fascinated by it, but I think, OK — I'm thinking, OK, well, what does that mean, what does that mean, what does that mean?

Is this healthy for us to do this or is this — I don't know — is this some sort of game that we all just think we have to do it?

ABLOW: Well, Glenn, first of all, I think there can be a point at which it becomes unhealthy, that there is too much focus on such an event, but I think we're involved in a very human process. You know, this kind of an event, the reason that people do stop their cars and look at a tragic scene by the roadside is because we keep our mortality at a distance.

We think of our lives as rolling into the future. We wake up the next morning and don't necessarily, although we should, thank God for the opportunity of a new day. This kind of an event, it makes you look at how chaotic, how unpredictable life is, how your life can end at any time.

There are 13 families — my heart goes out to them tonight, I know yours does because I know your heart — who couldn't have possibly fathomed that their lives would change in the way that they have.

BECK: My gosh. Can you imagine...

ABLOW: That's why we watch this.

BECK: Can you imagine — I mean, you're taking the citizenship test today, can you imagine, somebody who came through the country through the right door, came and did everything — somebody, if you come through the right door in this country, if you come through the front door and you're doing everything, it's because you believe in something, it's because you want a piece of that dream.

Can you imagine the butterflies you had when you sat down and you were taking that test and you were thinking, man, I am doing so well — and it ends for you?

What a tragic day.

ABLOW: Absolutely tragic. And think of Mr. Voong himself. Believe me, not born to this world for this kind of heinous act or this kind of end. Some series of calamities befell him that he then symbolically reproduces. What does he do? He barricades the exit. There is no exit.

And I promise when we learn more about his life, we'll learn that he saw no exit for himself, that his life as he saw it had come to an end. And then what happens, Glenn, is that people take that and they project it on to others. They lose their humanity and their empathy and they symbolically dramatize it in this awful way 13 times over.

BECK: OK. Hang on for just a second. I have to take a break. I want to talk to you a little bit more about — quite honestly, I want to talk to you about March 29th, March 29th, March 10th, March 14th, December 5th. There has been a lot of this. What it means and quite honestly, I think some more politically incorrect ideas of mine that I feel compelled to share with you.

And we'll do that, coming up in just a second.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: OK. All right. I want to shift gears here a little bit. But I want to talk to you a little bit more American-to-American on things. Because I think our country — as you know, if you watch this program, I think our country is in trouble. And this is the kind of stuff that I worry about.

Quite honestly, when I first saw this, and I saw that there was a shooter at a place where immigrants met — I can't lie to you. I honestly immediately said, "Oh, dear God. Please don't let it be somebody who is like, 'And all these illegals, they're...'"

I have warned on this program over and over again the reason why I talk about disenfranchisement on this program and the program I was on in another network for over two years is because I fear what will happen.

We have a giant fuse just burning in this country, and we have to do everything we can to not deny the reality, not to deny what's causing that fuse to be lit or people to blowing on the fuse. But actually talk about the bomb at the other end and make sure we cut that fuse, not to ignore the fuse.

But there is something that is going on, and I want to go back to Keith Ablow here. He's a psychiatrist and a FOX News contributor.

Keith, I saw on — let's see, we have March 29, Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in North Carolina. On March 29, another 42-year-old guy shot and killed his two children and three relatives and then killed himself in Santa Clara, California — upscale.

March 10, Michael McClendon, 28, killed 10 people, including his mother, four other relatives and his wife and child. February 14, former student, 27 years old, opened fire in a lecture hall in northern Illinois. December 5, 2007, Robert Hawkins, 19 opened fire with a rifle in Omaha, Nebraska in a mall. Do you remember that?

I mean, there's been a lot of these lately. Is it just that I notice these things more maybe because I'm in the news? Is the news focusing on this more? Or is this the beginning of, God forbid, people not knowing how to deal with new added stresses in their lives?

ABLOW: Well, God forbid, indeed, Glenn. I have to say, I have said it for a while, I think we are lingering near flashpoint as a society psychologically. I see it in my practice, I'm telling you, 16 years that I have done this work.

I have not had people coming in as anxious and depressed and counting the number of days that they can literally pay their bills, keep their homes and even more importantly, fulfill what they see to be their roles in the world, you know — as fathers, as employees, as people with a trajectory in life.

Counting it in days, I can go 30 days, I can go 45 days. This is a whole new game. I think people are tremendously stressed.

BECK: How do you defuse that?

ABLOW: Well, in a one-to-one situation, you defuse the same way that you would do it in a cultural sense which is that you bring people back as you have tried to do, my friend, to what really matters that these things are indeed tests of character. That if you do get up every morning and you can relate to your kids as a strong parent that that counts ultimately more in the bank account of life than whether you missed three paychecks. It even counts more than whether you have to move out of your home.

The other thing you do is you do deploy resources and you make them available to people. You know, there should be community meetings about depression and groups where people can talk to each other. As we talked about just days ago, it isn't a Web site that's thrown together haphazardly by the federal government that says: "Hey, by the way, this economy can cause people to want to kill themselves."

You've got to do a lot more than that.

BECK: OK. Keith, we'll talk again.

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