Even without clinical credentials in psychology, I think it's safe to say that clinical insanity is abnormal. I don't know if the Dallas police assassin was clinically insane or not, but I do know that his actions on their face do not define an abnormal psychological state.
On the contrary, his actions may have been purposeful. It is the historical familiarity of the police assassin's methods that we should not lose sight of in our rage and disgust. More than the Columbine, Orlando, or 'Son of Sam' killers, to me the Dallas police assassin evokes the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, whom I will not name, who killed in a planned attempt to destroy peace.
The police have reported that the assassin said he wanted to kill white people, wanted to kill white officers, and that he was mad at Black Lives Matter. His anger at Black Lives is potentially revealing, and should ping our memory. Was the assassin angry at Black Lives because they are non-violent -- because they use tactics of legal protest and advocacy rather than terrorism? What the assassin saw was a lawful demonstration permitted by the City of Dallas; hence the police presence. The police presence defined the rally as non-violent. After all, police don't escort suicide bombers to their targets.
The police are always part of lawful protest. Their presence means 'we may disagree on many things now, but for a start, we agree on the right to protest.'
Any activist is familiar with the coordination with the police that goes into any permitted protest march. Anyone who has ever marched knows that the police absolutely do protect the marchers from the oppositional crazies who always show up. I recall a march in New York City organized by the Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. As we marched and chanted "Gay Rights Now! Gay Rights Now!", at one point a crazy stood in front of us and spread out his arms in the crucifixion pose to block our progress. Instantly, a woman officer had the crazy on the ground and in handcuffs. We all chanted in ecstasy, "More Women Cops! More Women Cops!"
Did the police assassin see the police presence, not just as a symbol of white power, but also as a defining adjunct to the strategy of non-violent protest? Was he trying to kill both -- the officers, and the very principle of non-violence?
Provoked by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to try to destroy the Oslo Peace Accords, the Rabin assassin picked an anti-violence rally in support of Oslo to kill the warrior-turned-peacemaker Prime Minister of Israel. So I'm struck by the Dallas police assassin's choice of a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally as his place to attack.
Non-violence?
In the Sixties, there was heated debate over the effectiveness of non-violence and the necessity or counter-productivity of riots or armed self-defense.
However, the Black Nationalists never violently attacked the Civil Rights movement, nor to my knowledge, did they ever try to undermine it.** This is a key difference between the Dallas police assassin and Black Panthers or Black Liberation Army. Though convicted of killing a state trooper, Assata Shakur did not shoot at Martin Luther King, nor has she ever tried to destroy a movement with which she has ideological differences. The Dallas police assassin is more like James Earl Ray than like Shakur.
**(I’m not versed enough in Black Lives Matter to place them on the spectrum between Nationalism and Civil Rights. But I do know that their methods are lawful and non-violent.)
Recent Memory
I mentioned above, historical familiarity. Recent history, in fact. The police assassin mirrors the actions of the terrorist al-Zarqawi of Al Qaeda-in-Iraq, either intentionally, coincidentally, or acting in a deranged haze, but to the same end. In our immediate anger, we cannot forget that terrorist attacks are not designed simply to kill; they always have a political goal. Al Zarqawi murdered to aggravate Sunni-Shia hostilities and rip the reforming nation apart. Likewise, I don't believe the police assassin was killing white people just to kill white people.
We know what al Zarqawi was up to, and we should recognize his tactics now at home in the Dallas horror. So there is no excuse for falling into the police assassin's trap. But can we help ourselves? Will we be the reactive puppets of a mass political murderer? With any self-respect, can we be pawns on his posthumous chessboard?