James W. von Brunn was growing despondent. John de Nugent, an acquaintance who describes himself as a white separatist, noticed the change when they last spoke two weeks ago… "The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."
James W. Brunn does make the white separatist community look kind of bad. And Scott Roeder didn’t do much for the anti-abortion picketers either. Now that I think about it, Adolph Hitler had a real negative impact on the reputation of the German peple.
The topic isn’t the the paranoid person’s choice of objects, though that’s what makes it to the news. It’s the mechanisms operative in the mind of the paranoid person. It’s always the same. "They" are out to destroy "me" "us." In Brunn’s book title, he’s found a line in the Torah -"Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog" – apparently a line of interpretation about the escape from Egypt under Moses. It is said to mean something like, "… when in battle, do not try to spare the lives of those opposing soldiers who are fine, upstanding people. Kill any enemy soldier, regardless of their character." But who cares what it means? James Brunn could’ve found a jillion lines that might explain his feeling that the Jews are out to get him us. In the mind of the paranoid person, "they" are always the same – some group [called in the literature the pseudocommunity] that is specifically motivated to wipe "me" "us" out. Why pseudocommunity? Jews are a real community. Well, Brunn was an equal opportunity paranoid person, he included blacks as well – "the browning of America will alter everything…" And it’s the rule, rather than the exception, that the "they" are unassociated "other-than-me" groups.
I guess we’re in for it for a while. The paranoid people are out there, like they’ve always been, but their hatred is being fed by the republican/religious/right [RRR] at a level we’ve not seen since the heat of the Civil Rights Movement. But I’ll have to admit, even in our tolerant society, I’m awed that someone would say, "‘The responsible white separatist community condemns this,’ he said. ‘It makes us look bad.’" with no apparent awareness of how absurd that sounds.
Moving from the individual paranoid person to society at large, terrorists are frightened people – that’s just that. Sometimes, they are crazy frightened people like this old man, James Brunn, and sometimes, they’re not. Scott Roeder and James Brunn are likely flagrantly mentally ill people, but I suspect John de Nugent, the guy who talks about "the responsible white separatist community" is someone who is more in the range of frightened than deranged.
The Homeland Security report on right-wing extremist terrorists was right on target about the increased risk in hard economic times. The part that evoked such a GOP response was suggesting that stress on returning soldiers from Iraq might be another factor. True, but stated that way it guaranteed to be used as a distraction from the important warning.
But the economic one is right on target: James Braun seems chronically paranoid but apparently one factor in his reaching the breaking point was that he “lost my social security.”
I don’t know how one loses social security, but if it’s true then it adds supports the report’s reasoning.
It also raising questions: for such an anti-govdernment zealot, what’s he doing accepting social security in the first place?