The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | April 5, 2015 | 79 Comments

Attorney Paul Pfingst said Thursday: “My client has a history of depression and has been undergoing treatment for some time.”

Before we talk about Mr. Pfingst’s client, let’s talk about the fact that for decades, liberals have tried to convince us that the mentally ill are victims of society’s unfair prejudice. If only we were more compassionate and understanding, liberals say, we could alleviate the suffering of these pathetic nutcases.

Yet these pleas for compassion and understanding have an effect of blinding us to the fact that mentally ill people may pose genuine risks to public safety. Think about the Creepy Little Weirdo who committed the Sandy Hook massacre. Think about the Creepy Little Weirdo who committed the Isla Vista massacre. It was after Gus Deeds stabbed his father, Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds, in November 2013, that I put it bluntly: Crazy People Are Dangerous. And since then we have seen numerous stories that confirm this basic truth, including the German co-pilot who killed 150 people when he crashed a plane into a mountain.

Every time we see this kind of story — the murderous lunatic with a known history of mental illness — the media goes into hand-wringing mode, reporting on the “warning signs” that were overlooked before the kook committed his atrocity, yet at the same time striving not to stigmatize the mentally ill. It’s important not to hurt the delicate self-esteem of the deranged, the demented and the disturbed, you see, and then one day we see the headlines about Paul Pfingst’s client:

Police in Southern California say the son of a San Diego Padres minority owner attempted to kidnap a 7-year-old girl at an elementary school last week.
Jack Doshay, 22, was arrested late Wednesday night by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office and charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment with violence and child cruelty.
Doshay’s father, Glenn Doshay, is a philanthropist and former investment manager who maintained his minority stake in the Padres after the franchise was sold to a new ownership group in 2012. Sheriff Bill Gore said at a news conference that Jack Doshay has been living with his parents.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has more on Jack Doshay’s arrest:

The arrest of Doshay came nine days after the brazen and violent midday incident on March 23 at Skyline Elementary that put the Solana Beach community, particularly parents of young children, on heightened alert.
According to sheriff’s officials and the girl’s parents, the intruder on campus lured the girl to the back of the school through a tree-lined courtyard, then tried to wrap packing tape around her head, and was attempting to pick her up when she kicked and screamed, alerting teachers. . . .

Jack Doshay’s lawyer, Paul Pfingst, helped coordinate his client’s arrest and said he’s suffering from depression.
“My client has a history of depression and has been undergoing treatment for some time,” Pfingst said in a telephone interview with the Union-Tribune on Thursday.

Oh, he was undergoing treatment before he tried to kidnap a 7-year-old girl. Guess the treatment didn’t work out so well, huh? Perhaps this Creepy Little Weirdo can get effective help with his “suffering” after they convict him and send him to state prison.

Here’s an idea: Crazy people are dangerous. Maybe we should try locking up more of these lunatics before they hurt somebody.

 

Category: Crime

Comments

79 Responses to “Crazy People Are Dangerous”

  1. Wombat_socho
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:24 pm

    Jonathan Swift, you aren’t. But that’s not grounds for a smack with the banhammer.

  2. Wombat_socho
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:24 pm

    Okay, that’s enough lame attempts at humor out of you.

  3. Wombat_socho
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:26 pm

    Not nearly as easy at it sounds.

  4. Zohydro
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:42 pm

    AVE VVOMBATICE EX FODINARVM TRIBUTARVM

  5. DeadMessenger
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:52 pm

    That statement applies to stopping any sort of sin. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

  6. DeadMessenger
    April 5th, 2015 @ 9:54 pm

    Porn addiction is my guess.

  7. Daniel Freeman
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:11 pm

    I think the AMA regards alcoholism as a disease.

    They do — both medical and (since 1991) psychiatric, which is more to the point here — but there are issues with the disease model.

  8. Bill Nickless
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:17 pm

    How many people should we lock up who would have never hurt anybody, in order to lock up everyone that might hurt someone?

    The classic “better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer” is a judgment along those very lines. That philosophy has real costs; people are robbed, raped and killed every day because predators “got off on a technicality”.

    Let’s teach potential victims how to maintain situational awareness, watch each others’ backs, and defend themselves with deadly force if needed. Let’s not create victim disarmament zones that serve only to concentrate easy prey.

    When a crazy person actually does try to abduct or assault someone, let the potential victim bring the hammer down hard.

    It’s not hard to tell someone is dangerous when they’re threatening, stalking or assaulting you. But until someone steps over that line they deserve the same right to liberty as anyone else.

  9. Daniel Freeman
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:36 pm

    Yes, and “carceral feminism” is already a thing. We would do well not to empower it.

    Note: This article is an example of an internal critique within feminism. In order to see how it’s actually a big bag of crazy — albeit not completely wrong — you have to read between the lines.

    Note that where they do not ignore female perpetrators, they excuse them, and male victims are entirely erased. They are incapable of dealing with the fact that it is entirely conventional for DV to be reciprocal, which is exactly why mandatory arrest policies lead to more women being arrested.

    Since they can’t accept reality, the only solution that they can imagine is a less carceral approach — but given the massive blind spot in their ideological lens, one can reasonably surmise that they intend it only for women. I think they would be completely comfortable with a carceral feminism that only hurts men.

  10. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:41 pm

    You’re correct, quitting drinking is easy. People do it every day.
    Staying quit…that’s the problem for the alcoholic.

  11. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:47 pm

    They do but there is still much debate. Just because the AMA or APA regards something as a disease or mental disorder doesn’t necessarily mean that it is or will remain so.
    Take, for example, homosexuality…

  12. Daniel Freeman
    April 5th, 2015 @ 10:48 pm

    Whatever his other deal is, I’m not sure we can assume that he is “suffering” from it. Some demons are welcome guests.

  13. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:04 pm

    ” then define voting Democrat as a mental illness. ”

    Well, a person does have to be some kind of lunatic to do that.

  14. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:14 pm

    +1 for mentioning gluten in a discussion about crazy.
    I knew a gal once …:-

  15. Adobe_Walls
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:17 pm

    Then they didn’t quit.

  16. Adobe_Walls
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:19 pm

    Maybe not easy, but that simple.

  17. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:25 pm

    People can talk themselves into pretty much anything.
    Rationalization.

    A reasonably sane person can recognize that he is doing this and will have an easier time stopping himself from going ahead.

    Such is the case with many alcoholics, it is what helps them stay sober until they become recovered alcoholics.

  18. theoldsargesays
    April 5th, 2015 @ 11:28 pm

    Sure they did. I’ve known guys who quit for years.
    They were quit right up until they had their next first drink.

  19. Grandson Of TheGrumpus
    April 6th, 2015 @ 7:10 am

    You are correct, irregardless of what the lefty-aligned AMA or APA state.

    Any first-year med student can tell you that if you can’t “catch it” it isn’t a disease.

    Just as when people in ear-shot start calling diabetes a disease, I ask: ‘who’d they catch it from?’

    So, the question is (or should be…), who’d the alcoholic/paranoic/kidnapper catch his condition of drinking to destruction/violent hallucinations/stealing people from?

    If they didn’t “catch it”, they must have had the seeds of it within themselves prior to the expression of symptoms.

    While that, depending on circumstance, might mean that we shouldn’t be punitive in our actions, it is a cruelty to both the instigator and his victims to do nothing… our inaction arising out of a self-aggrandizing or mis-placed sense of “kindness”.

    As the template question shows, getting the question in the proper form, (which the people w/political agendas refused to do at the time…) goes a long way towards defining a direction of search for a solution.

    ;~)?

  20. Art Deco
    April 6th, 2015 @ 7:21 am

    Clinical labels are for the convenience of the mental health trade. They’re not of much consequence otherwise. Few people given these labels are ‘crazy’ and few are dangerous. You have schizophreniform disorders, autism spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, manic-depressive behavior, and various sorts of dementia. This is a small part of the territory the mental health trade aspires to claim (and that aspirational claim somehow excludes sexual perversion except the sort that horrifies the legal profession, go figure).

    I suspect Clayton Cramer’s writings on this matter are colored by personal experience, inasmuch as his brother was not only schizophrenic, but one of the minority of schizophrenics who are abnormally violent. (Something Fuller Torrey said would apply here: “stark staring mad is a great deal more common than stark raving mad”).

  21. Southern Air Pirate
    April 6th, 2015 @ 7:28 am

    I would like it noted for a matter of record that there is one cavate to the liberals idea on crazy people. That is as it relates to crazy people and political parties. They are more than willing to put down like Old Teller with rabies or lock away GOP or conservative folks who they feel are crazy and dangerous in the sake breath. While the rest of the crazy in the world they want out and free.

  22. samhall
    April 6th, 2015 @ 7:58 am

    In Texas, a jury is required for involuntary commitment . I served on one.

  23. K-Bob
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:10 am

    Well, just before going into hand-wringing mode, the media plays the ghoul card and uses the blood and body parts to castigate Republicans and gun owners.

    Then when the inevitable discovery of the lunatic’s lunacy is made public, that’s when the hand-wringing begins.

    But yeah, we need to lock them up. And spend some of that wasted climate research money on helping to find a cure for mental illness. (Which might have a side benefit of curing climate alarmism.)

  24. K-Bob
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:12 am

    According to popular culture, it depends on your skin color, and who you voted for.

  25. K-Bob
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:19 am

    As Wilfred Brimley might say, It’s the right thing to do.

  26. Art Deco
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:32 am

    There are some honest men among talk therapists and counselors. I’ll wager you, though, that 60% of that trade are ruining the reputations of the other 40%.

    The one result you can generally expect from the talking cure is … that the therapist / counselor gets paid. Any benefit to the ‘client’ is kinda random.

  27. Art Deco
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:35 am

    It worked for Brian Manning, a flawed but capable man after a certain age. He hoped it would work for his son. The rest is unhappy history for Brian Manning and many others.

  28. Daniel Freeman
    April 6th, 2015 @ 10:52 am

    Since people are more likely to share stories of their bad experiences, it would not take more than 20% to ruin the reputation of the profession. But I will not take your wager.

  29. trangbang68
    April 6th, 2015 @ 11:27 am

    I hate to go all non-therapeutic on you, but how about the little dirtbag was jacked up on pornography of some depraved sort (is there any other kind?). Even his rich daddy’s money couldn’t get him a date with a real flesh and blood girl, so he decided to torture a poor innocent child?
    I say, screw the therapists, psych wards, selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors and antianxiety drugs.Give him a twenty year intensive therapy with Dr. Bubba the Impaler. It will work wonders and keep the kids safe to be kids