Comment on Dr. Sanity: FASCIST PIGS, FANATICAL IDEOLOGUES, AND DELUSIONAL ILLNESS

Dr. Sanity: FASCIST PIGS, FANATICAL IDEOLOGUES, AND DELUSIONAL ILLNESS

Dr could you offer to us a ballpark estimate as to what percent of the population in the United States is capable of acting with irrational violence such as we have seen in Arizona? My question is not how many are capable of violence, as I believe that almost all are capable under some circumstances. Nor am I asking how many are criminally violent, as there are undoubtedly large numbers of rational and functional criminals who choose to lie cheat steal and even kill without suffering from the progressive biological deterioration that you described. Also if I understand you and what most therapists are always at pains to express, most persons suffering from schizophrenia are not likely to be violent. Finally I take it that there is some environmental determination, whether physical or cultural or genetic, that produces different results in different societies. Given all that how many people are walking around in the United States who might explode into violence as the Arizona assassin did? Is it 1:25000 or 1:5000 or 1:1000 or 1:200?

jeff,
So you think it was okay for Sarah Palin and her cohorts to use gun imagery every chance they got?

I do not speak for the Dr or anyone else but my two cents say Yes it was a normal political expression such as healthy adults in a bloodless contest have used for over a hundred years. Ms Palin communicated no threat to anyone and issued no instruction to anyone to commit violence. Others, mostly on the Left cannot say that.

There is a need for a study as to whether the Left having isolated itself from the reality of traditional cultural mechanisms for understanding and controlling violence might be more likely than the Right to fantasize about violence and communicate wish fulfillment signals that the disturbed may act on. For the Right violence and the use of firearms are a reality that they are trained to respect and the consequences of which are understood as a grim reality. For the Left violence is a theatrical expression that affirms the value of revolutionaries is distant times and places. H. Rap Brown said, “Violence is as American as Cherry Pie." Some quote it as apple pie. In either case he was correct. That is why an American conservative is usually, I do not say always as there are occasional threats issued intentionally or not by persons from all sides, unlikely to advocate violence by strangers.