But then again

I just remembered something this morning:

11 years ago.

At the time, I thought they were a nutso anarcho-environmentalist group, but after consultation with a friend who had done research into the Holocaust and the history of nazi groups....turns out it was probably a white supremacist type group.

So, they've been out there forever, it's just, it's reaching a boiling point right now.

I'm so sick of the ugliness. And I'm sick of feeling mostly impotent even though I try to be a "good person" and all that business.

I have to get back to work - to my distress, I find that the last material I need to prep (Endangered Species Act, Lacey Act, and other resource-protection type acts) don't have a chapter in ANY of the books I have so I'm having to go to all the primary sources which means a lot more work for me.

***

Also, in my usual obsessive quest to "understand why" I read this article about a former supremacist

one of the things he said in there, though: he talks about "broken places" in people causing "potholes" that lead them to go into these kind of extremist groups.

And again, I feel myself feeling like I feel about the shooter who is described as a "loner" - there's a little bit of BS to that. Because I know I have some specific places in which I'm pretty broken, I know I have potholes in my soul because of stuff that's happened to me or my particular brain chemistry - but I'm revulsed by any ideology like this.

I don't know. Sometimes I think people go into too many contortions to avoid saying "This is evil and this person chose to do evil."

And yeah, like I said before: it takes work and effort and thought not to be selfish, but even someone with as many broken places as I have can see that and can try to put in that effort, so it seems too facile to say "oh, they had a hard childhood so they're this way now"