Warner Robins teacher accused of threatening to kill student over comment about his Israeli flag
Warner Robins teacher accused of threatening to kill student over comment about his Israeli flag
WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — A Warner Robins teacher is accused of threatening to behead a student after she made a comment about his Israeli flag, according to the Houston County Sheriff's Office.
This really has nothing to do with religion or politics - that’s just the trigger.
This person needs to be put into psychiatric care immediately and given the appropriate treatment as they are a danger to themselves and others. They should not be allowed to post a bond and leave custody. A medical evaluation should be performed, obviously, but this is clearly a psychiatric case.
It's "fringe" but if this was our response to every time someone did this shit our mental healthcare facilities would be overrun like it was peak COVID. Plus, if this were some kind of treatable mental illness they'd be going absolutely nuts about curing it being some kind of liberal brainwashing. But it is an epidemic.
That would not be the case if ineffective resources dedicated to the prison system were properly redirected in an evidence-driven program designed to isolate people from larger society when they constitute a danger and effect whatever treatments are possible to fix the actual issues, not some misconstrued notion of good and evil. I believe that it is legitimate and moral for society to protect itself from people like this man. You’re just not going to fix anything by sticking him in a dark abusive hole for five years, much less letting him out on parole for a few grand.
This man’s brain is in the exact same condition that it was in when it caused him to react to a child’s statement as if he were sieging Fallujah. That same guy is still walking the streets. Having received some consequences for his action may have attenuated those signal pathways, but may have also exasperated them. He needs a combination of medication to reduce his reactivity and coping mechanisms for realizing when it’s happening. He may never be safe for society, but he’s certainly not safe because he was able to take $5k from his savings to pay bail.
I agree.
Seriously, what the flying fuck are you talking about?
People who commit acts of violence like this are quite clearly psychotic - whether it’s a mother murdering her children, a teacher threatening to murder a student, a gunman on campus, or someone who gets into fight after fight in bars. There is something broken in their brain.
Let me walk you through this, since your background in the subject is lacking. I will bet you $1000 dollars that if we were to do a neuroimaging on this man, we would see that his amygdala - the part of the brain that senses threat and engages the rest of the brain in a threat response is hypertrophied. His limbic system, which controls emotional response, is primed to react to a level of stimulation so small that probably neither you nor I would notice. His prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for pushing back on those signals through rationality and long term planning is hypotrophied. It is decoupled and unable to do its job. This is the same as we see in violent individuals throughout the prison system.
There are a number of ways this can happen. Having been abused as a child is one. Having been malnourished. Having grown up experiencing social abuse and rejection. It’s more likely than average he suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point in his history. TBIs are about ten times as common in the violent prison population as in society as a whole.
This man’s clinical condition dictated his interpretation of himself, which includes his religion. It’s the same for the gunman. It’s the same for the child abuser.
You will find the same in the brains of Hamas and IDF combatants. You will find, in a time series study, that these conditions become more extreme as a result of combat stress and ptsd. The Palestinian children who are being subjected to this massacre will display these same symptoms. The inner city kids in the US who grow up in a culture of systemic racism and violence show these same symptoms.
If you’re the kind of person who ascribes this kind of behavior to someone being an “evil” person or having an “evil” ideology, I strongly suggest you read some textbooks on neuropsychology and behavioral science.
Honest question: are you in favor of all (spontaneous?) violent crime being treated as a psychological problem, rather than a judicial one?
It sounds like you might, which I'm not necessarily against. I'm mostly asking because it I and probably others initially read your first comment as this being an exceptional case that should be treated differently. That made you sound to me like you were explaining things away. But from reading more of your comments I'm not so sure that's the case, it seems to me like you may just have some underlying principles that do not align with the current system. This would be a very different interpretation of your comments, that if true, I'd like to understand.
Edit: I just read the only comment of yours I hadn't read when I wrote this, which seems to confirm that you want it in general. I'm all for rehabilitation being the main goal in the justice system. Apparently I just didn't get that that was what you were arguing for to begin with.
Thank you.
Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. Violent crime is a brain thing, not a moral failing. It is true in every case.
In this man’s case, his condition latched onto his self identity as Jewish. If this man, same brain, same background, same genes, had been raised in Alabama, he’d instead be carrying an AR-15 to church and threatening to shoot up drag shows. He might have driven his SUV through a crowd of protestors. He might even have shot up a synagogue. If he were born black in Detroit, and had the same issues - and again, I am talking about physical brain issues because there is nothing psychological that does not have a physical manifestation in the brain - he’d probably be dead before he hit 18.
He reacted to the words of a preteen girl as if it were a violent and existential threat. Those words hit his brain and it went into fight mode instantly. It wasn’t a conscious reaction. The “sane” response, the one we’d expect if we were to put ourselves as a teacher into that situation, would have been to sit down with the girl and talk to her. If she said something like “Israel is a racist nation,” he could have talked to her, acknowledged the complexity and need for understanding and compassion, and used it as a teachable moment. If she said “All Jews should die,” it might have merited a trip to the principal, a visit with parents, and so on. Instead, he reacted with absolute fury. It’s the behavior of the vet with ptsd who becomes physically violent in his sleep. It’s the behavior of a person who tortures animals.
You can’t punish a person out of having a hypertrophic amygdala. You can’t do it to a Jew who hates Palestinians, or a Muslim who shoots up the Pulse nightclub, or a white guy who shoots up a synagogue or black church, or the white woman who tries to cause death by cop because a black family is having a barbecue.
We get a dopamine hit when we have revenge fantasies about things like that. I have that, too. It’s tough to see a video with homophobia or transphobia and not think “I’d like to beat that guy.”
The right way to fix it, though, is to go after the actual causes. We know - and I mean that in the scientific sense of the word - that child abuse leads there. We know that poverty leads there. We know that malnutrition leads there. We know that societies that reward toxic masculinity and honor culture lead there.
And if you can’t solve it there for all cases, you can at least acknowledge that the condition is phenomenologically closer to an epileptic seizure than demonic possession or an “evil” person choosing to do evil. They need their brain chemistry evened out. They need self-detection and coping mechanisms.
They certainly do not need to be out on the street, nor do they need to be locked up in an American style prison.
I wouldn't blame it on Judaism (religion) but it's pretty clearly a political thing.
It's a pretty normal reaction for a Zionist.
It seems to me that he's getting the perception that the status quo now normalizes with the things that Hamas has done, in light of the Palestinian protesters around the world.
I would not comment on this, however, as I am not legible enough to know whether his characteristics are of psychiatric disorders or high levels of neuroticism. I cannot fully judge this person, as I am not to claim that I was present in his environment where this happened. [Edit: (see next posts in the comments, as I have arrived at a different conclusion)]
I can tell, however, he may be triggered, but he's not the triggerman.
And yes, put that man in a ward or with a therapist.
When I use the name of a disorder like “psychotic” in this context, I’m using it as a colloquial term. I was a little more specific with the neuropsychological components because that emphasizes my point. I’m a biologist and not a psychologist, and I think that the neuronal bits are more important than the clinical classification. The latter might help with treatment, but the former is what I’m proposing as causal.
We can certainly reasonably speculate that he was following the news. We can make a pretty well educated guess of the slant given by the news he was following, and how he interpreted it. His brain, having taken in the violent imagery and internalized it as an existential threat to himself, his ego-identity, and those with whom he identifies, was primed for this response. The involved physical neurons were in a hypersensitive pre-triggered state, just like yours would be if you sensed you were being stalked by a tiger.
The resulting signals bypass the deliberative brain (which is a whole subject in itself), and moves straight to flight/fight/freeze. These are things we can view diagnostically in people who have committed violence, and they’re ones we can trigger by specific electrical stimulations of the brain.
If you want to fix a problem, you have to identify it and address it. You can’t beat schizophrenia or epilepsy out of someone.
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful insights. Your perspective adds depth to the discussion, and I find your analysis intriguing. It has given me valuable insights.
And it's great that we align on this matter. I value the exchange of ideas, and it's reassuring to find common ground in our views.
Who knows what new understandings we might uncover in the future ?
When I read the news I had conflicting emotions of pity but also understanding for his behaviour, in a manner of speaking (hence my initial comment, and my stance in disbelief). "What if he's only a single piece of pieces that are being moved around by various factors ?", including his environment. For instance, if his post immediate environment is presenting a supportive attitude towards ALL Palestinians, that could actually be wrongly perceived.
Exuding highly reactive aggressive behaviour is often correlated with high levels of neuroticism and emotional factors at play, from my understanding.
Here is an interesting excerpt from psychologist expert, Arlin Cunic, "A smaller-scale study found that after viewing unpleasant images, people rating higher in neuroticism had lower oxygen levels in their lateral prefrontal cortex than those with lower neuroticism ratings..", https://www.verywellmind.com/how-neuroticism-affects-your-behavior-4782188
I have come across these concepts before from documentaries and vast inputs, but your insights has driven me to do a brief research about it; specifically about neuroticism. Quite fascinating.
It is indeed of most import to address these complex cases, without having to leave them at the wits of those who prefer idleness.
But make sure they can still vote Republican, right?
I’m going to pretend your question was serious.
Should we allow people with diagnosed psychoses to vote? People with schizophrenia or other psychological conditions?
In the traditional good-and-evil model of the prison system as it exists in the US today, I am very much in favor of allowing prisoners to vote both while in prison and after having served their time. I believe that because I believe that the prison system is fundamentally unjust, that innocent people are jailed, that there is significant racial prejudice constantly driving the system, and that there’s no scientific evidence driven justification for what we do and how we do it. Rubin Carter should have been able to vote. Leonard Peltier should have been able to vote. Until we fix the criminal justice system, I think it’s wrong to deny prisoners the right to vote, and I think we need to make sure their votes are made without coercion and properly registered.
But should we allow someone with a clinically diagnosed psychological condition like schizophrenia to vote? They are wracked by delusions, what does their vote mean? For me, it goes down to the assumption of rational agency being part of the justification of a democratic system in the first place, versus the obvious fear of weaponized medical diagnoses being used for political purposes.