Henry Hamilton, Key West resident distraught over election results, kills himself

[Bucky]

16. No, the man was hurting, and obviously mentally ill.

When Thomas Jefferson proposed reforming Virginia's law codes in the 1780s, one of his first reforms was removing "murder" as a cause of death when someone committed suicide. In the 18th century he still had the wits to conclude that "it ought to be considered as a disease." If they could get that back then, without the benefit of 14 decades of modern scientific exploration of the workings of the diseased psyche, surely we need to be compassionate rather than petty toward people who sink to these depths in our society of today.

Certainly this man was suffering other real forms of distress--whether environmental or just chemical inside his own head. If you're going to scorn anyone, get angry at the right wing noise machine that irresponsibly eggs on this man and people like him, driving wide swaths of the American public deeper into dispair, heedless of whatever harms may come to the loyal, gullible audience--and do so solely for the chance to sway a few votes and scare up a few more fundraising dollars. They may not have made him suicidal, but they sure as hell exploited his illness and sucked off his fears to drive him to the edge.