Timothy McVeigh was executed this morning. Everything I've read about him has indicated a zealot of unwavering convictions. A person pursuing a holy cause. From what I've heard about today's events, he expressed no remorse.

The May 28 issue of "The New Yorker" had a very intriguing article about him. Part of the article includes a discussion with a psychiatrist who interviewed McVeigh. He says that several factors, including his parents fights and being bullied at school, may have created psychic monsters for McVeigh. At the same time his early introduction to weapons may have given him some emotional armor. As he grew older, he began to see the federal government as a monster, one that also wanted to disarm him, thus ripping away his armor. Episodes such as Ruby Ridge and Waco only served to make his fantasy more real.

He goes on to discuss McVeigh's depression. "He'd been depressed for a long time ... and this project gave him a focus and enabled him to relieve the depression." By attacking the government, he was attacking the monsters around him. And feeling "better" in the process. (I don't think such a context is unique to McVeigh. It can also be extended to Columbine, Thurston High, etc. A severly depressed individual strikes at a tangible target hoping to dismember psychic monsters.)

On the way home, I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered," which had some brief interviews with relatives of those killed in Oklahoma City who had witnessed the execution. (I can not help but think that such participation is more akin to blood retribution than justice.) Several spoke of the fact that they now knew he could never harm them or their family again.

There is much more than could be said here, but I'm not the one to do it. My interest is with the impact of depression. As I read the article, I immediately thought of several times when I pursued holy causes. At the time, my emotional state was intense, self-determined, quasi-fanatical and volatile. Now, I can see the depression those emotions masked.

I wonder what the outcome would have been had the circumstances been different. Maybe I'm luck that I never had contact with a radical political group.

PAX!