I readily believe that this dude has become a worse person but I’m also pretty sure he held many of these positions for a long time and has simply lost the capacity to adequately mask
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If you’ve ever been close to someone struggling like this, you know what I’m talking about. I watched a committed leftist experience psychosis that turned them against their comrades. That didn’t manifest as “fuck you guys, I’m joining the fash” but “fuck you, I now believe you guys are the fash”
The thing is that he basically said exactly this? That the stroke didn't change anything that he believed, it's just that the experience made him stop giving a fuck whether or not people knew it.
I think it's very possible that he's lost some impulse control and ability to regulate his emotions, which is consistent with some kinds of brain injuries, but I don't think there's any reason to believe he's changed what he actually believed about stuff.
He's always been a self-flatteringly 'maverick' politician - as the piece states, he was already 'crossing the aisle' to support stuff like fracking in 2018 - but he was apparently good enough that his own spouse didn't grasp his desire to kill Arabs
That’s not surprising to me tbh. Lots of people secretly hold really abhorrent opinions that can suddenly come out if you remove the social filters and impulse control. We also have no idea what their relationship has been like or what she might have ignored previously.
The more I learn about this guy, the more it sounds like he’s always been a huge asshole, and also he’s experiencing pretty serious cognitive impairments that he won’t address. And both of those things should be disqualifying— how much they are or aren’t related doesn’t really matter.
Now someone going down that path where they’re becoming increasingly isolated may eventually be easier for fascists to radicalize, but that’s not a quick process and I wouldn’t say the mental health issues per se are the determining factor
More commonly what you’ll see is the person sharing all the opinions they previously were too socially savvy to share. And other people who hold those positions will be friendlier to them, accelerating them down that path. But the mental health issues didn’t implant those opinions.
lll add that I think it’s up for debate how morally responsible someone is for their behavior while in the throes of a neuropsych or mental health crisis, but it’s not helping things to pretend any disease process or disorder can somehow, in and of itself, change your most deeply held beliefs
On the flip side, it’s very fucking annoying as a disabled person for people to insist it’s ableist to question if he’s physically or mentally capable of doing his job even when there are very obvious signs his impairment is making that impossible. No it’s not. That is not what ableism is.
This is a man with incredible power unwilling to be accountable in any way. People like him cause real harm when they refuse to admit— or are incapable of acknowledging— that they can no longer do something. He literally almost killed two people, you absolutely get to scrutinize that.
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