I’ve been following the Paul Pelosi/David DePape story closely. I watched the left-wing narrative build up and am now witnessing its collapse, all while the facts on the ground remain bizarre and unexplained. But what is also inescapable about what happened, as Michael Shellenberger explains, is that DePape is the end point of California’s ideologically radical climate combined with the drug abuse the West Coast tolerates and even encourages.

First, the bizarre and inexplicable facts: Nancy Pelosi is third in line for the presidency, yet we’re being asked to believe that her house, in a super chichi neighborhood, had no 24-hour federal or city security. It also appears that Paul slipped into the bathroom to call the police, which implies that, whatever else DePape was doing, he gave Paul freedom of movement.

I’ve read, too, that a third person voluntarily opened the door to the police. Two other apparent facts: The two men were struggling over a hammer, so we don’t know who had it first. We do know, though, that the police witnessed DePape attack Pelosi at which time they intervened. I’ve read, too, although I cannot find the link, that DePape had injuries even more serious than Pelosi’s. It remains a mystery whether he received them from Pelosi or the police.

Image: Marijuana by Wirestock.

Both sides have their theories. Democrats instantly blamed “right-wing” rhetoric, Donald Trump, and the January 6 “insurrection.” To help promote this theory, they pointed to two websites filled with tropes about “censorship,” “big brother,” and pedophiles, along with antisemitism and a call for violence. In other words, these sites perfectly embodied leftist stereotyping about conservatives. Both sites were fakes.

Meanwhile, based on emails I’ve received, conservatives have been wondering whether Paul might have been partying in Nancy’s absence, including gay partying, a theory that aligns with long-standing rumors that Paul is gay. [This theory has since been revealed to come from a hoax website and is as discredited as the left's hoax websites.] Others speculated that bad actors, recognizing that DePape was crazy, weaponized him by feeding his madness to accord with stereotypes about the “far right,” and then pointed him at Nancy’s house.

Frankly, I don’t know whether anyone needed to weaponize DePape. Michael Shellenberger points out that DePape lived in a world of crazy that seemed to have ties primarily to leftist conspiracy theories, along with a few recently-added conservative theories. Some of DePape’s mental debilities seem organic, but much of it is apparently related to chronic drug use:

Neighbors described DePape as a homeless addict with a politics that was, until recently, left-wing, but of secondary importance to his psychotic and paranoid behavior.

[snip]

Not all of the news media missed DePape’s history of drug use, psychosis, and homelessness. CNN reported that a woman named Laura Hayes, who said she worked with DePape 10 years ago making hemp bracelets, said he had been living in a storage shed. “He talks to angels,” she said, and told her that “there will be a hard time coming.”

Another woman, Linda Schneider, told CNN and Bay Area NBC TV affiliate, KRON4, that she got to know DePape around 2014 and that he was still homeless, living in a storage unit, and using hard drugs. “He (was) likely a mindless follower of something he saw on social media because I don’t think he had the courage to be part of any political or terrorist group,” said Schneider. “His drug use began again and he went off his rocker.”

[snip]

David DePape is not a microcosm of the political psychosis gripping America in general. Rather, he’s a microcosm of the drug-induced psychosis gripping the West Coast in particular.

Speaking of the West Coast, I just visited one of Oregon’s smaller cities. The most obvious thing was that, wherever you went, the air was redolent of the (to me) revolting smell of marijuana, which is legal up and down the West Coast. We know that in pot-legal states, people are using marijuana at unprecedented rates and THC strength, and at much younger ages.

Alex Berenson compellingly argues that the facts are incontestable: Marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs, and it literally makes people crazy. DePape is Exhibit A for the results flowing from the West Coast’s passive and active support for marijuana and harder drugs.

As for DePape’s politics, crazy people have no politics. They reflect the zeitgeist. In the pre-modern era, they thought they were witches or devils. After WWII, they thought they were communing with Martians or had been abducted by space aliens.

In the internet age, with madness flowing from the heart of the Democrat party and the far fringes of the conservative movement, the crazy ones embrace it all. But the important thing is that they’re crazy and leftist policies helped drive society to this madness.