ASHLEY TODD'S POLITICAL MARTYRDOM LITE

I may not be the first person who's said this, but it occurs to me that what Ashley Todd did was just a lite version of a jihadist's suicide attack -- she didn't kill herself for a higher cause, but she did wound herself. She's the right age for that kind of zeal, and female suicide attackers certainly aren't unknown. If you can wrap your mind around suicide terrorism, then Ashley Todd isn't hard to understand.

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Another thought from Aimai, iin the comments to the previous post:

... I think the rash of "its really liberals who are violent" stories follows on the rash of "its really liberals who are racist/not environmentalists/not feminists" stuff has gone to their heads. On some level people like this GOP girl really believe that its just kind of accidental that they haven't been attacked already by big black men--like everyone else says happens all the time. I think they don't even really grasp that it *didn't happen* to them. It makes such basic sense to them....

Certainly, once you've persuaded yourself that an opponent (Democrats, liberals, black Obama supporters) embodies unimaginable evil, you might have a psychological need for that evil to manifest itself. Whether, on some level, you could actually project the infliction of a wound on yourself onto a knife-wielding other, I'm not sure. If so, that would be truly disturbing.