Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
- The episode spotlights America’s growing mental-health crisis and societal inability to address severe psychiatric illness.
- Academic or professional excellence, even at Caltech or elite firms, does not preclude dangerous mental illness.
- Historical offenders like Unabomber, Amy Bishop, and Michael Laudor show elite minds can become violent.
- Deinstitutionalization and weak involuntary-treatment laws hamstring prevention; honest reform and better psychiatric care are required.
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(ThyBlackMan.com) “Shots Fired at Correspondents’ Dinner” dominated TV headlines following the gun attack at the Washington Hilton. Correction: Shots were not fired at the dinner but in the corridor outside. That’s where security had pinned the accused gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, on his stomach and handcuffed.
Some journalists like to overdramatize everything, especially concerning themselves. Sure, the alleged attacker released a manifesto saying he wanted to take down Trump and members of his administration. But even if the suspect had made it inside, he probably wouldn’t have gotten past the guy in back, seen unperturbed and eating his burrata salad.
The most dangerous place that night was inside the assailant’s head. That hasn’t slowed the predictable banter about today’s toxic political environment and how anger at Trump and company apparently set off a would-be assassin. It was more likely only the trigger connected to the explosive device wired in his head.
“This is a person who attended one of the most prestigious stem universities in the country, in technology, Caltech. Got an engineering undergrad degree, got a master’s in computer science,” one commentator said in a surprised voice. “He was working as a part time teacher, but he described himself as a game developer.”
Let us disregard the assumption that academically or professionally successful people have their heads screwed on straight. Someone who talks eloquently in full sentences is not always more mentally coherent than the drug-addled street person hollering insanities at passersby.
Some of the worst killers had what our society generally considers the “best minds.”
The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, entered Harvard at 16, earned a doctorate in math and taught at the University of California, Berkley. He later moved to a remote cabin in Montana from which he ran an 18-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured more than 20. His preferred targets were universities and airlines.
Amy Bishop was a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. When denied tenure, she shot three colleagues at a faculty meeting, killing three. At age 21, she shot her brother dead, an action then ruled as accidental. Would someone never enrolled at Harvard have been let off the hook so easily?
Michael Laudor entered Yale as an undergrad and cruised through its law school. He quickly landed a perch at the highly selective Bain & Company consulting group. But Laudor’s long struggle with serious mental illness developed into schizophrenia. He eventually knifed his girlfriend to death thinking that she was a robot or a doll out to kill him. Laudor’s friend, Jonathan Rosen, tells the story in his book, “The Best Minds.” Rosen condemns the 1960s-era push to close mental hospitals and end most involuntary confinement on the belief that even severe psychiatric illness would be managed through outpatient care.
At night, the Gilgo Beach serial killer stalked young women, strangling eight and dismembering bodies. By day, Rex Heuermann sat in his Manhattan office advising architects and builders on their projects.
Like Kaczynski, whose manifesto claimed that his violence would save humankind from unfettered technology, Allen’s screed pompously wallows in self-importance with florid apologies and thank-yous. He boasts, “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.” And he threatens any participants standing in his way. After all, he adds, most of them “chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapists, and traitor, and are thus complicit.”
Fortunately, the alleged shooter’s efforts led to no deaths, his own included. If they served any purpose, it was not to replace the current leadership. It served as a reminder of America’s mental-health crisis and how hard it will be to confront honestly.
Written by Froma Harrop
Official website; https://twitter.com/FromaHarrop
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