As the trial gets underway against David DePape, who has precious little chance of selling his "not guilty" plea to a jury ....
It occurs to me that what is going down in that trial could possibly present an archetypical presentation of new techniques of defense and ?what? (punishment? rehabilitation?) for defendants who have become completely consumed by conspiracy theories, particularly since it is taking place in San Francisco - a fertile environment for progressive thinking.
The underlying dilemma, of course, is what can we, as a society, do about (and/or do
with) the very large number of delusional people who have dived headfirst into the fantasy world of conspiracy theories and come to believe that any or all of them are absolutely true? And, crucially, have convinced themselves that it is worth killing, or dying, or both, to "take out" a few of the "evil ones". Because many of them have come to believe exactly that.
From the outside, rational people hearing truly irrational claims that stretch all the way to believing that all left-leaning political leaders (and maybe even voters) are cannibals, aliens, whatever else, and that their intended victims and enemies are
always white American Christians (
and whining "what about the children?"), can only shake their heads in puzzled disbelief that this could have become "a thing" in the modern world.
If it was only a small number of rare and isolated cases, an obvious defense strategy would be an "imperfect self-defense" case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperfect_self-defense but when it is ocurring with the excruciating regularity that we see today, the sheer number of delusional malcontents would completely overwhelm the capacity of prisons and mental institutions - if that was where they were ultimately sent.
Maybe this is just an intractable conundrum that reason and logic are incapable of "solving" ....
Are any of you following this? And do you have constructive thoughts on possible solutions?
Thanks
