re: #7 Buck

Get it?

Yes Buck, we do get it. Your knee-jerk reaction is to deflect even the possibility of shame by running with this new meme. The one that crazy people are just crazy and can’t be comprehended, influenced, or accounted for. However, it isn’t true.

As someone with a close family member that works in mental health, I would say crazy people can be comprehended. In many cases a delusion is internally consistent with itself, just not consistent with external reality. Delusion can be internally logically consistent and only break down when traced back to the first assumptions/perceptions. Fortunately a mental health professional trained in the appropriate skills can help a mentally ill individual work through delusions/fears/etc. While mental illness is a major source of violence, the good news is that mentally ill individuals are NOT more violent than the general population with appropriate medication and/or therapy.

Mentally ill people can be accounted for. In America up to 46% percent of the population will suffer from a mental disorder sometime in their life. Fortunately, most are brief episodes that will be recovered from or successfully managed. But with that proportion in mind, it would be wise to assume that not everyone listening to you is totally sane when you are choosing the words for your public speech, television monologue, demonstration signs, etc. It would also be wise to keep that number in mind when deciding support/funding for various mental health programs.

Mentally ill people can definitely be influenced by the words/actions of others. Mentally ill individuals can indeed dream up entirely new ideas out of thin air. But they don’t live in a vacuum. They can just as easily latch onto ideas that come from external sources. Loughner, for example, talked about Truther ideas, NWO, faked space missions, mind control through grammar, 2012, and was affected by the movie Zeitgeist. As we know, none of those ideas originated with him. It is possible Stockham dreamed up the mosque bombing himself. But if he didn’t, where do you think he got the idea from?

We get it, Buck, that you are just reflexively deflecting any possible blame from conservatives. But the fact is that when you start talking violence, hatred, revolution, etc there is a good chance that some individuals will take it seriously and might not have all their marbles. That’s why I think conservatives should tone down the violent/crazy rhetoric being spread around lately. I condemn it from liberals all the same. If some liberal rhetoric sparked Stockham’s threats against Bush, for example, I condemn it wholly. Why can’t you guys just man up and admit that violent rhetoric isn’t a good thing?