CO man shoots up Planned Parenthood clinic injuring many...

[Indy]

[Philly]

[Indy]

OK "dual" wolves, whatever. A pair. IIRC though they weren't part of a cell that was then activated and dispatched by a larger organization. They were acting on their own.

[Philly]

Yeah I don't think they were deranged.

[Indy]

See? It gets really murky, really fast.

[Philly]

What's murky to you about this situation?

[Indy]

The different, contradictory explanations depending on to whom you speak.

[exploited]

Before you guys continue, you may want to define your terms.

I'm interpreting Philly's use of deranged to suggest a more severe, psychotic episode. So some nutcase is travelling along with his gun and the voices tell him to head to the nearest PP, and on a whim, he does so. He has been harbouring delusions forever, but he can't really control how or if he acts upon them. Most times this type of person does nothing, and it's through the sheer Grace of God that nobody gets hurt. But sometimes... sometimes things get so bad that they do act.

The opposite of that would be the people who committed the Paris Atrocities. They have a mental illness, but their mental illness doesn't prevent them from acting rationally. So they seek out others who are like them, and delude themselves into an ideological position that supports violence. Then they execute with caution and calculation, either trying to escape or coming to terms beforehand that they will die. Always they plan, though. Always there is foresight and deliberation.

It's the difference between some crazy guy holding a gun to a hostages head and raving, and some terrorist purposefully pretending to negotiate in order to buy more time to kill people. Very different profiles. When people refer to terrorists, they are typically referring to the latter group, not the former.

[Indy]

Right, and I appreciate you laying it out like that but I'm not sure I'd say the Paris guys are mentally ill.

Mentally ill to me means a diagnosable (sp?) actual mental sickness which is either untreated or unsuccessfully treated resulting in, say, the guy hearing voices shooting up the the Walmart because he's bipolar or borderline, or schizo. The Colorado shooter, for instance, seems like a textbook case. So in those instances we can apply the insanity defense because these people were literally impaired and not by choice.

With the ISIS guys these people are simply cynically using an alleged religious moral cover because they want to either lash out in the world, or indulge in what we'll call the dark side of human impulse: the desire to kill, rape, torment and oppress others. I don't think I'd call that mental illness because mental illness isn't a choice, whereas they all chose to join this movement.

I don't think you have to be insane to commit atrocities. In the latter case, that's just what they want to do, and religion's the excuse they use for it. As one of you said, there are just some people out there who want to do bad things, and always will be. Army of God is no different--they claim they're doing God's work. But of course.

[Philly]

Religious fervor and delusions/dementia often go hand in hand.