Deceased Bernie Sanders supporter and attempted assassin James T Hodgkinson was a very troubled man long before he tried to murder the GOP congressional baseball team last week.
While early reports focused on Hodgkinson’s social media comments and his volcanic hatred towards President Trump and Republicans, additional reporting shows that something was very wrong with this man for quite some time.
A former foster parent, Hodgkinson had a 17-year-old foster daughter who committed suicide over two decades ago. But the manner in which Wanda “Ashley” Stock too her own life was a window into the living hell in the Hodgkinson house.
She set herself on fire in her car. It was hardly your ordinary suicide.
Links to all of the BND's coverage of the congressional shooter, James Hodgkinson: https://t.co/05aTkiE8cb
— BND.com (@bellevillenewsd) June 17, 2017
According to the Belleville News-Democrat’s timeline entitled “James Hodgkinson’s life from home inspector to congressional shooter”:
The Hodgkinsons’ foster daughter, Wanda “Ashley” Stock, killed herself at the age of 17 by dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself on fire inside her car on a rural road south of Belleville. The Hodgkinsons spoke to the News-Democrat at the time, saying they did not know what triggered a “very practical, level-headed girl” to kill herself. Later they discovered there had been a previous suicide attempt before Ashley came to live with them, and that hours before she completed her suicide, her boyfriend had broken up with her.
Another story on Hodgkinson’s past via the New York Times, “Before the Gunfire in Virginia, a Volatile Home Life in Illinois” provides additional details on the character of the man who has come to exemplify the so-called Resistance.
One of James T. Hodgkinson’s foster daughters killed herself in a gruesome fashion: by dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself on fire. Another described herself as “more of a hindrance than a daughter.” And when Mr. Hodgkinson dragged his grandniece by her hair and tried to choke her, the police were called in, and he was charged with battery. In previously sealed court papers obtained by the local newspaper, she described him as an abusive alcoholic who hit her repeatedly.
AND
By April 1, 2006, according to police records and interviews, the young woman was seeking refuge with the Hodgkinsons’ next-door neighbor. On that day, her friend Aimee Moreland called her boyfriend, Joel Fernandez, to the Hodgkinson home and said Mr. Hodgkinson had been beating Ms. Putman.
According to a police report, Mr. Hodgkinson had forced his way into the neighbor’s house, screaming for the young woman. When she hid in a bedroom and locked the door, Mr. Hodgkinson broke into the room and dragged her by her hair, the report said.
Later, as Ms. Putman got into Ms. Moreland’s Honda Civic, Mr. Hodgkinson opened the car door, turned off the ignition, slashed her seatbelt with a pocketknife and ultimately tried to choke his grandniece, the police said. When Mr. Fernandez tried to step in, he said, Mr. Hodgkinson came at him with a shotgun and hit him in the head with the butt of his gun.
To sum it up, this guy was already a walking time bomb who was particularly susceptible to the hateful propaganda of the far left as spewed by the likes of Rachel Maddow of who Hodgkinson was a big fan.
Libertarian Justin Raimondo’s Monday column at Antiwar.com “Hodgkinson’s Disease: Politics and Paranoia in the Age of Trump” theorizes on what set this drone on his murderous mission.
Hodgkinson clearly believed that the President of the United States was an agent of a foreign power. He had signed on to the idea that Trump not only benefited from a Russian campaign to discredit Hillary Clinton, but that he is engaged in a war against his own country. As Maddow put it in one of her more unhinged broadcasts:
“If the presidency is effectively a Russian op, right, if the American Presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian Intelligence Services, and an American campaign, I mean, that is so profoundly big. This is not part of American politics; this is not, you know, partisan warfare between Republicans and Democrats. This is international warfare against our country.”
“International warfare” – and Hodgkinson, a soldier in that fight, saw it as his duty to use the sort of weapons that are commonly used in international warfare. That’s why he sprayed that baseball field with a hail of gunfire – over fifty rounds. And when his rifle ran out of ammunition, he took out his handgun and continued firing. Because “this is not, you know, partisan warfare between Republicans and Democrats. This is international warfare against our country” – and it’s the obligation of patriotic citizens to take up that fight and take out the enemy.
It’s a very sobering piece to read, especially when you consider how many others are out there just like Hodgkinson whose unstable minds have been poisoned and who see themselves as soldiers in a great war against a foreign usurper.
I knew Ashley. She was disturbed before she ever came to live with him. Her killing herself had nothing to do with him.