I don't think you can advocate for universal mental health care without universal health care. Mental health care is health care.

There's a reason where I am that a mental health clinician is part of the cancer team. Having just the therapy aspect covered would do nothing for people unable to treat their physical illnesses.

Promoting better accessibility of mental health care is reasonable- even places with universal coverage mental health lags behind. The tricky thing is that some people will refuse to access care even if its available. Its more visible in cases like this but happens all the time with other chronic illnesses like COPD and diabetes where it gets out of control and the person succumbs quietly.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I wish he had sought help and I wish that help was available. I'm glad no one else lost their lives in this case.

While I do think that we do need universal mental health care (and universal health care in general), I'm not sure it would have helped in this situation. The thing about mental health care is that you can't force it on anyone, they have to want it themselves. He had friends who tried to get him help but he wouldn't take it, and there's only so much that can be done if he refuses. It's like the old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

"so you're saying we need a fire suppressant grenade launcher? we'll get right on it."

His manifesto is at https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside

He was clearly mentally ill.

It should be noted that for-profit media companies will play dumb on any protest critical of the types of people that own and run for-profit media companies.

During the "occupy" protests, it was common to see reporters staring into the camera and asking "but what are these protests about?" in front signs stating exactly what the protests were about. They knew if they fairly reported on the movement, their audience might start agreeing with the protesters. So both "left wing" and "right wing" media companies held hands and united to undermine it.

But without that reporting, fuck knows. If he's posting on reddit conspiracy subs, they've become a place for extremists to recruit the stupid and the clinically paranoid.

His Instagram tells a really sad story. He was an infrequent poster of perfectly ordinary content. No sign of any mental illness: pictures of his sisters wedding, some jokes, nothing concerning.

Then, some posts about the death of his mother and almost right after, his sharp decline in mental health becomes apparent.

Yeah if you really wanted to send a message, you'd set those evil billionaires on fire not yourself.

Or just "Don't kill yourself." Unless maybe you're about to be tortured into revealing secrets that could get innocent people harmed and you have a cyanide pill. Otherwise, suicide is pretty much always going to be too much medicine for the sickness. Things are bad? Killing yourself guarantees they will never get better.

I realize it's easy to simply say this, but it's still true...

Azzarello: You'll pay for this, with your kleptocrats' blood!

Establishment: Oh right, how you gonna get em, skeleton power?

Sounds like, on limited info, he went where he knew cameras would be.

"did not appear to be targeting Trump"...."A pamphlet angry at evil billionaires"

I could see Trump being triggered that the guy coming to protest rich people was not there for him.

Give a man a fire and keep him warm for a night; set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Plot twist...he was their best.

Basically a manifesto asserting that everyone with power is colluding to mount a fascist coup d’état on America; Bush v Gore was a fake double team to get Bush the presidency, The Simpsons is some kind of propaganda meant to dupe us into being slovenly dopes forced into doing the bidding of billionaire overlords, um, I think there was some accusations levied against the Epstein victims for being pawns of some greater scheme, et cetera and whatever. Oh, also a crypto Ponzi scheme.

From the limited info I heard, he was a normal, decent guy, but he had some kind of psychotic break a couple of years ago after his mom died; that said, if anyone has more/better information, please feel free to correct me.

I’m not sure but he had a few printable pamphlets with wild shit on his substack:

https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside