Delusional, Suicidal Right-Wing Middle-Age, Middle Class Men Biggest Terrorist Threat?

From another blog

There are some good points here.

“This is a shame. Apparently the biggest terrorist threat now is delusional, right-wing, anti-government, middle-class, middle-aged men. Ironic that they are the most afraid of “outsiders” when it is their own “sinides” that pose the greatest threat to themselves and others.

The politics of this are likely just rationalizations and delusional self-talk. As I have posted earlier, and will continue to do more on this, these deadly attacks can be seen as symptoms of adverse developmental changes in the adult brain starting in middle-age. These hit men earlier and far worse then women.

This poor soul had a history papered over with the socially acceptable pose of being an entrepreneur. (I have a post I’m writing on the brain disorders inherent in that segment as well. As the statistics show most businesses fail with damage to families and individuals. Impulsivity and compulsivity accompany as well. But that’s another post.)

What seem to cause this break was increasing disinhibition of an already unstable, destructive brain. We [propose then that age changes were critical.

Key factors in the middle-aged male brain include, and let’s hold the technical details for later:
– Increasing disinhibition. The referee, or executive, functions of the frontal lobes erode. Impulsivity and odd behaviors are indicators.
– Drops in working memory. It becomes increasingly difficult to track tme sequences and events.
– Filtering Drop. The ability to ignoring or filter out distractions erodes.

What this leaves is a male brain continually confused, disoriented and often afraid. Feelings become facts and impulses control slips away.

For a small percentage of men this brain erosion triggers hostility and anger. But it’s enough for Fox News and talk radio to continue to gather audiences in the tens of millions and generate billions in profits riding the wave of anger and government hostility. It is THE fastest growing media audience. And for good reason. Add in economic turmoil and the heat just gets turned up on the brew.

As background, there is good evidence that Type-A, left-brain, numbers oriented guys are even less equipped to process emotions without physically taking action. This type of brain often doesn’t “fee” it “acts.” Often aggressively.

The Problem: While the percentage of men that take deadly action is infitesiomnal, the absolute number is growing exponentially since the Baby Boomer age cohort is aging. There will be more and more of these kinds of attacks in our future. It’s acturial certain.

We don’t see evidence that this has much to do with political beliefs or external circumsstances but the aging brain.

Below is the AP item on the Austin attack. I have made notes in bold italics to unpack it a bit.

It would seem both humane and self-preserving to identify these men and protect them, and the rest of us. Ideas? They do seem to use the web.

Tiff

Man angry at IRS crashes plane into building By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer

“AUSTIN, Texas – A software engineer (high IQ does not protect against any kind of mental illness, remember the UnaBomber) furious with the Internal Revenue Service launched a suicide attack on the agency Thursday by crashing his small plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, setting off a raging fire that sent workers fleeing for their lives.

At least one person in the building was missing.

The FBI tentatively identified the pilot as Joseph Stack. A federal law official said investigators were looking at a long anti-government screed and farewell note that he apparently posted on the Web earlier in the day as an explanation for what he was about to do. (Teabaggers beware!)

In it, the author cited run-ins he had with the IRS and ranted about the tax agency, government bailouts and corporate America’s “thugs and plunderers.” “I have had all I can stand,” he wrote in the note, dated Thursday, adding: “I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at `big brother’ while he strips my carcass.”

(The paranoid, florid language and ideation is a sign. The idea of being physically threatened, by a dominating hostile entity. “Kill or be killed” this disordered brain demands.. Inflamed rhetoric does matter. We discussed similar ideas on a post on this blog )

Stack, 53, also apparently set fire to his house about six miles from the crash site before embarking on the suicide flight, said two law enforcement officials, who like other authorities spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still going on.

In the long, rambling, self-described “rant” that Stack apparently posted on the Internet, he began: “If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, `Why did this have to happen?'” He recounted his financial reverses, his difficulty finding work in Austin, and at least two clashes with the IRS, one of them after he filed no return because, he said, he had no income, the other after he failed to report his wife Sheryl’s income.

He railed against politicians, the Catholic Church, the “unthinkable atrocities” committed by big business, and the government bailouts that followed. He said he slowly came to the conclusion that “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” “I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. (His own it appears.) Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well,” he wrote.

(The ideas of “big”, governmental oppression are key triggers. Again see Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.)

According to California state records, Stack had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by the state’s tax board, one in 2000, the other in 2004. Also, his first wife filed for bankruptcy in 1999, listing a debt to the IRS of nearly $126,000.

The blaze at Stack’s home, a red-brick house on a tree-lined street in a middle-class neighborhood, caved in the roof and blew out the windows. “