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there’s a deeper discussion to be had about schizophrenia and right wing rhetoric in America

This guy was maybe schizophrenic. Maybe a lot of the other right wing people that go to extreme violence to. Not all of course.

It is important to preface this by saying schizophrenia does not make you violent. It actually makes you more likely to be the victim of violence, statistically.

But delusional thinking processes, grandiosity, and religious or political hallucinations are schizophrenia symptoms. Again, these on their own don’t create violence. But delusional thinking processes can and often are shaped but cultural contexts and social narratives.

So dominant political themes - good vs evil, governmental control and surveillance, authoritarian power structures with strong hierarchy, become amplified. Qanon, racial purity, savior complex, etc.

Where this becomes extremely irresponsible is that it’s then very easy for someone who has this line of thought to then enter a place, many places even, where their delusional thought is not only challenged but encouraged. “You are correct, trump will save us, the democrats are going to kill everyone, you are being watched”.

It doesn’t help that government corruption lends credence to validate these delusions in some ways. While you’re not being watched 24/7 there likely is some kind of info on you in a database if you live in America. Whether it’s a social credit score or simply identification (facial recognition, demographics, etc), is unclear, but its increasingly clear this is the case (and more worrying the data is likely held by 3rd party contractors like palantir and amazon)

So then a mass shooting happens and people go thoughts and prayers (except not really anymore) or they say we need better mental health supports (except again not really anymore, we’ve kind of abandoned the song and dance). The improved mental health supports thing is true but that can’t counteract groups that actively seek out people like this. Lonely, isolated, angry, and unstable. They then amplify that persons bullshit by feeding them conspiracy bullshit and every once and a while they pop off

This could happen in a leftist space, the process is the same, but they appear to do a better job of policing themselves or supporting each other when someone is getting too far gone (at least based on the statistics of political violence in the USA).

Thank God there are liberals to hug and kiss the magas and protect them from the overwhelming force of the marxists running our country.

Its gotten really scary how much power marxists have been given in this trump presidency but lucky for me I've got someone in every thread reminding me that maga is just as bad as marxism. I can catch my breath and hope one day maga might overpower the Communists besieging america.

Communism, of course, is the only real threat outside of trump himself. Donald trump, singularly, by the way. Only that one single man and absolutely nothing else about our country.

Yep, equal threats. Glad I'm here. ("Leftist extremist" is a nazi talking point btw, real cool to make that joke here)