re: #130 Romantic Heretic

Pretty complicated actually. I’m certain people like these are basically psychopaths. They have trouble imagining others as people or empathizing with them.

But there is also what I term ‘information disease.’ Possibly these people were fed an information diet of the most poisonous type. All the racism and hatred of the formerly fringe Right was all they ever knew. It exacerbates their psychopathy to the point of psychosis.

Also possible that as teenagers, when as all teenagers do, they were desperately looking for an identity. Along came the batshit craziness of The Right and did the ‘power and glory (and victimization)’ seem like a wonderful thing and a perfect fit.

Bur I agree, insane is not the term I would use. Psychotic they might have been but they knew that by the standards of the society they lived in they were doing wrong.

Good points. IMO there’s a big difference between having a reasonable insanity defense if charged with a crime, and having a diagnosable mental illness.

The media tends to conflate these two very different things.