October 29, 2022

Watching Out for the Loonies

The premise of Minority Report always seemed farfetched. Especially incredible was the mechanism, the insights of a trio of clairvoyants, by which authorities determined who was going to commit a crime. I was reminded of the 2002 movie after learning about the activities of David DePape, the 42-year-old attacker of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.

Apparently, DePape is an all-too-common angry, right-wing loony. According to Matthew Gertz,  he has a blog that Getz says “reads like a standard case of right-wing online radicalization. QAnon, Great Reset, Pizzagate, Gamergate are all there, along with MRA/misogyny, hatred of Blacks/Jews/trans people/‘groomers,’ and anti-vax conspiracy theories.”

The question that comes to mind is whether violent action by such a person was, if not completely predictable, at least probable. Did authorities know about this guy beforehand? Should they have? We shouldn’t have sent Tom Cruise to arrest DePape, of course, but perhaps DePepe needed a visit from one or more specialists trained to suss out his present or likely future intentions and perhaps turn his mind to more productive pursuits.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Anonymous comments are not allowed. All comments are moderated by the author. Gratuitous profanity, libelous statements, and commercial messages will be not be posted.