I think the problem is that: well regulated =/= have sane objectives. We now have a bunch of people organizing around radical causes. This IS their norm and reality.
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A couple of years back I read “Fantasyland” by Kurt Andersen. It’s a 500 year history of delusions in America and the precursor colonies here. It was a great read, and very eye-opening for me.
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From reading the output of the case, that was the decision. Rest of his life in a mental hospital.
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Kind of like Nazis…
One is reminded of the Voltaire quote: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
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I’m just guessing that there may not have actually been any sooper sekrit neuro linked tablet messages…
Just a guess here, but I highly suspect that random batshit rantings on Qanon boards may have been read into a bit by this guy.
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Luxury mental institutions for people found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity do not exist. These are not pleasant places. If you were entirely sane and ended up in one of these places, you would be in for a rough ride.
To all the people thinking this guy is faking it: faking a mental illness serious enough to render you legally incompetent to stand trial for murder is all but impossible. Also, this was a plea agreement reached between prosecution and defense, and agreed to by the judge. Most prosecutors are loathe to agree to an insanity plea, because it doesn’t help them politically. Ever since Hinkley, insanity defenses have become extremely difficult to successfully argue. The standard is very high. For this prosecutor in this case to agree to that plea rather than go to trial is a pretty solid indicator that this guy is in really bad shape, mentally. He didn’t “get off scott free”. There’s no way he’s getting out any time soon.
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That was kind of my point.
It’s highly unlikely a sane person could successfully fake mental illness to escape prison, but even if they did a lifetime in a mental institution on a forced regimen of anti-psychotic medications would hardly be a pleasant alternative.
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Yeah I don’t think most people realize how high the bar is for an insanity defense. It was lower when Hinkley was tried, and that verdict was deeply unpopular with a good portion of the country, probably because Reagan was so popular and Kennedy’s assassination was still fresh in the national consciousness. So after that trial, Congress raised the bar. Hinkley would not be able to plead insanity successfully today, because he knew what he did was wrong. He just felt compelled to do it and couldn’t stop himself. The current standard requires that a defendant not know right from wrong. Having irrational thoughts, hearing voices, experiencing compulsions to do things that you cannot control isn’t enough. You have to not realize that what you’re doing is wrong. And that’s hard to prove. So for this prosecutor to decide this guy is so clearly legally insane that they don’t want to go to trial…
And I’m not targeting this response to you, really, but to all those above who think this guy is faking. He’s not.
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Any attempt to escape the scene or deny having done the crime is used as evidence that you knew that it was wrong.
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I blame especially Batman comics to keep the myth alive, where a whole ranged of themed criminals get put into Arkham-Asylum again and again even though though the state Gotham is in has the death penalty.
Yes, I understand the reason. In “reality” Joker would get killed during a no-knock warrant after having killed dozens of cops – again, and again, and again. Or shot while still being bat-cuffed, during an escape attempt. 15 shots in the back by three guns, the most defensible self-defense the jury agreed on.
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In The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson tells the story of Tony, who beat someone up, claimed (falsely he believed) to be insane and ended up in Broadmoor where he was diagnosed as a psychopath. Broadmoor really isn’t a fun place to end up:
“I arrived here when I was seventeen,” [Tony] said. “I’m twenty-nine now. I’ve grown up in Broadmoor, wandering the wards of Broadmoor. I’ve got the Stockwell Strangler on one side of me and the Tiptoe Through the Tulips Rapist on the other. These are supposed to be the best years of your life. I’ve seen suicides. I saw a man take another man’s eye out.”
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The stochastic terrorism is working.
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Q sounds like stone soup. There is no limit on what people can drop in the pot. Is there any reputable journalist keeping track of what is and is not Q? Whenever I see “a common Qanon belief” I have to wonder how this is fact-checked-- how do we know it’s a common belief?
Also, aren’t a lot of the people monkeying around in Q forums just doing it for the lulz? If a jackass adds to the forum for the lulz and it becomes a meme, does that count as a Q belief?
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The only real world case I know of someone actually using the insanity defense to get off scot free is that of Issei Sagawa.
But that was the case of a legal loophole that had absolutely nothing to do with him coming from a filthy rich family or anything…
…
It was fascism, right? When yeats wrote it? And here it is again!
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Believing that establishment politicians are paedophiles and child traffickers is certainly a fundamental QAnon belief.
As to people doing it for the lulz, the Rule of Goats applies: if you’re spreading Q memes ironically, you’re still spreading them and other people will spread them unironically. Think of all the harm that has already been caused by people doing QAnon for the lulz.
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Written in 1921, so possibly? Yeats was very into the occult and his own vision of how the universe functioned, so not sure it maps directly onto actual world events, but in the immediate aftermath of WWI, anarchy and uncertainty would be pretty easy to see. Honestly, when i read poetry, i tend to view it as a living document and just let it speak for itself, to me, at the time. That said, i find Second Coming both prophetic and terrifying.
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Except their own politicians of course. Nobody has done more to fight the scourge of child abuse and sex trafficking than Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz…
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My take is that the USA is and always has been an extremely racist country, but people were secure in the knowledge that, despite the civil rights movement, discrimination is alive and well and they don’t have to do anything personally to keep it going. Then a Black man was elected president and they absolutely lost their fucking minds, descending into a frenzy of fear, hatred and backlash that they’ll continue for the rest of their lives. Obviously Obama isn’t the sole catalyst of what we’re experiencing right now, but I doubt Trump would have been elected if not for the racist backlash against him, and Trump paved the way for the widespread acceptance of violence, treason, bigotry and ignorance, which led to people feeling comfortable spreading their belief in moronic QAnon conspiracy theories that are so laughable they would have been seen as parody a decade ago, and feeling confident they can constantly get away with open bigotry, Karen behavior, blatant calls for the lynching of their political opponents, etc. Maybe “tiny snowflake brains couldn’t handle the concept of a Black president and went into 24/7 testosterone rage mode forever” is too simple an explanation for what got the ball rolling, but the consistent pre-civil-rights nostalgia, white fragility and cowardice displayed by Republicans makes me think nothing else was needed.
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As long as white people are the majority, they don’t have to choose between democracy and white supremacy. Once the end of the white majority is on the horizon, they do have to choose.
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