Like What?
I’m still wondering if I should feel slightly offended by a recent New York Times article profiling the abhorrent crimes and mental breakdown of Army Specialist Robert H. Marko. Marko, who believed he was an “alien dinosaur-like creature, and that he would transform from his human form into his Black Raptor form on his 21st birthday”, had a history of neurological problems but was still classified as “deployable” by the Army. NYT reporters Dan Frosch and Lizette Alvarez then chose a somewhat insulting descriptor for Marko’s worldview.
“After joining the Army, his “unusual beliefs” in his Black Raptor alter-ego resulted in his being referred for psychiatric evaluations three times. Ultimately, the beliefs came to be viewed by his mental health evaluators as a religion, of sorts, like Wicca.”
Like what? I’m not sure how I should read this, that a demented philosophy that drove a troubled young man to rape and murder people is somehow “like Wicca”? That “Wicca” is now a easy way to convey a non-typical belief system? Was “Wicca” as a descriptor used by military mental health evaluators, or was it placed there by the NYT reporters?
Whether it was the military who classified a delusional man with a “history of behavioral health issues” as having a Wicca-like religion, or it was the reporters searching for a way to describe someone who thought they were a dinosaur, we have a problem. Either there are Army psychiatrists who feel Wicca is little better than mental illness (which could harm Pagan soldiers needing help), or we have journalists who think describing a mentally ill killer’s worldview as “like Wicca” is acceptable.
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