It's All True (Eight Thoughts on Justin Mohn)

“Don’t write about crazy people if you want to say something true.”

That’s what my creative writing professor told me 38 years ago after I had turned in some Southern Gothic, A Rose for Emily-esque short story, and he was totally right. He was right because it’s next to impossible for a non-crazy person to truly get inside the head of a crazy person, and even if you can it’s even more impossible to relate those motivations to an audience of non-crazy people. Unless you’re William Faulkner – and I am not William Faulkner – it becomes a cartoon exercise, like a comic book portrayal of a villain, a depiction of an interpretation, a non-crazy lens on what crazy IS. All of which can be very entertaining, like Hannibal Lecter or The Joker, but isn’t TRUE.

So that was my first thought about Justin Mohn, the 32-year-old in Levittown, Pennsylvania who murdered his father, cut off his head, and made a YouTube video showing off his trophy and saying he did it because his father, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers, was part of the “Biden regime” and was a “traitor to his country”.

Don’t write about a crazy person.

My second thought was after reading some tweets about all this from dependable lefties like Josh Marshall (who I like, btw), writing about Mohn’s “political motivation” here and how this was the real story.

No, no, no. This is a terrible story about a crazy person, and it just as easily could have been the other side’s politics or any other ideology that made him snap. There is no political motivation here!

My third thought was after listening to a CNN segment on the murder, where their expert (John Miller, I think) and host were talking about how Mohn was “copying ISIS” and clearly (to me, anyway) implying that there oughtta be a law against saying horrible things about the Biden Administration in order to prevent this sort of “domestic terrorism”.

OMG, are you really going to twist this into a “we must stop criticizing the government or else the terrorists win” kind of thing? This language of “domestic terrorists” and how Trump supporters and Biden critics are “extremists” is entirely intentional on the part of Biden and his media Renfields, and we should all call it out for the bullshit that it is, even if you’re going to vote for the man.

My fourth thought was about the friends and family members I have who use exactly this sort of language about “traitors” and are increasingly comfortable with the prospects of organized political violence “if it comes to that”, by which they mean (or so it seems to me, anyway) that it will inevitably come to that and it’s already being started by the other side so LFG.

I don’t know anyone who is as crazy as Justin Mohn, but I absolutely know people who are on the crazy spectrum, as it were, and they are ALL using exactly the same language as Mohn was using, and they are ALL being fed this language from the same MAGA and Q-adjacent sources.

My fifth thought was about the stalker I had a few years ago, the crazy guy who thought I was sending him coded messages in Epsilon Theory to harm others and himself, the crazy guy who wrote an 80-page manifesto about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk and I (but mostly me) controlled the world, the crazy guy who went to the FBI with his “findings” but their unwillingness to stop me just proved how powerful I really was, the crazy guy who wrote me to say that he was driving up from Florida so that I could confess and he could “end” this. My stalker was an enormously troubled 40-year-old man who had recently assaulted his stepfather (tried to strangle him). I won’t go into all the details here, except to say that our public safety and mental health systems are entirely, 100%, utterly without exception built on responding to horrible things after the fact and are entirely, 100%, utterly without exception incapable of preventing horrible things before the fact. The only thing we were able to do was to cut him off from Epsilon Theory, with the hope that without the provocation and motivation of WORDS, my stalker would get overwhelmed by the incredible difficulty of daily life for a crazy person and lose his singular focus on me. A few months later he killed himself, which I’ve come to learn is the inevitable outcome here, and that when the time comes you just hope that they only kill themselves.

Words are absolutely responsible for winding up these terribly damaged, terribly dangerous people, and if my stalker had been inundated with words like “traitor” and “patriotic duty” to give him a driving purpose and motivation, if he had been constantly prodded rather than consistently distracted, I believe in my heart of hearts that before killing himself he would have killed others.

My sixth thought was something I learned from talking with security and former FBI guys while dealing with my stalker.

There are SO MANY Justin Mohns out there, SO MANY terribly damaged, terribly dangerous people. I mean, you have no idea.

My seventh thought was the most obvious.

This language of “traitors” and “regime” and “stolen elections” and how your “patriotic duty” is to fight against the “evil” Democrats is entirely intentional on the part of Trump and his media Renfields, and we should all call it out for the bullshit that it is, even if you’re going to vote for the man.

My eighth thought was the most painful.

Hey, Ben, weren’t you the guy who used to say Burn It The Fuck Down?

I don’t know how to reconcile these eight thoughts. I really don’t. All I can come up with is the same thing that Hemingway wrote about religion: it’s all true.

1) Yes, it’s true that there’s very little to be learned by writing about crazy people.

2) Yes, it’s true that crazy people do not have political motivations in the same way that non-crazy people have political motivations.

3) Yes, it’s true that the Biden Administration will cravenly use this murder for political advantage, with less than zero care for the civil liberties that their actions squelch.

4) Yes, it’s true that the words used by the murderer Justin Mohn to describe his own motivations, words like “traitors” and “enemies”, are exactly the same words that pervade every MAGA and Q-adjacent circle, and only pervade MAGA and Q-adjacent circles.

5) Yes, it’s true that words are The Thing that motivates terribly damaged, terribly dangerous guys like Justin Mohn, and increasing their exposure to fighting words like “traitors” and “enemies” absolutely makes a difference in who and how many people they destroy before they destroy themselves.

6) Yes, it’s true that terribly damaged, terribly dangerous guys like Justin Mohn are everywhere.

7) Yes, it’s true that the Trump campaign and its Renfields cravenly use these fighting words for political advantage, with less than zero care that their words motivate murderers like Justin Mohn.

8) Yes, it’s true that I’ve used words like that.

It’s all true.

I don’t expect the malignant narcissists and high-functioning sociopaths at the top of our political parties to change their ways. I don’t expect any of this to change in any part of society, precisely because it’s all true.

But I can change my ways. I can change the truth of my behavior. I can take more care with my words, especially my public words here on Epsilon Theory.

“Don’t ever point a gun at someone unless you’re ready to pull the trigger, and don’t ever pull the trigger unless you’re ready to kill the person you’re pointing at.”

That’s what my father, an ER doc who saw more gunshot wounds than anyone you will ever know outside of another ER doc, told me 50 years ago, and it stuck with me hard. Shooting guns out at the quarry was a lot of fun, and play-acting with toy guns was a lot of fun, but I learned there was a dimension to guns that was not fun and not play-acting at all. When it came down to that dimension, to protecting his home and his family … guns were one thing and one thing only to my father: an instrument of extreme violence. It was a mighty good gun safety rule then, and it’s a mighty good political safety rule now. Because in Fiat World, language is a gun and words are bullets.

I’m not putting down my gun, but I am going to stop pointing it at people. Not to avoid calling things by their proper names – including bullshit when that’s what it is – and not to avoid criticism of those public figures who so richly deserve it, but to avoid using fighting words – even figurative fighting words – when I don’t actually mean to fight. It’s not the path to maximizing rewards like engagement or readers or followers, but maybe in 50 years my children will remember this lesson like I remember my father’s. And that would be a reward beyond measure.