Neighbors described DePape as a homeless drug addict with a politics that was, until recently, left-wing, but of secondary importance to his psychotic and paranoid behavior. https://t.co/9GK1O0ah5U
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
“What I know about the family is that they’re very radical activists. They seem very left. They are all about the Black Lives Matter movement. Gay pride. But they’re very detached from reality. They have called the cops on several of the neighbors, including us."
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
In the driveway, there is a broken-down camper van. On the street is a yellow school bus, which neighbors said DePape occasionally stayed in. Both are filled with garbage typical of such structures in homeless encampments. pic.twitter.com/hmvYK8f1F6
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
Not all of the news media missed DePape’s history of drug use, psychosis, and homelessness. CNN reported that a woman named Laura Hayes, who said she worked with DePape 10 years ago making hemp bracelets, said he had been living in a storage shed.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
But much of the rest of the news media were swept up in the narrative that DePape was more like John Wilkes Booth, the fanatical but sane assassin of Abraham Lincoln, than John Hinkley, Jr., the mentally ill man who shot Ronald Reagan.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
Wrapped up in their obsession with MAGA Republicans, journalists have missed the real story. David DePape is not a microcosm of the political psychosis gripping America in general. Rather, he’s a microcosm of the drug-induced psychosis gripping the West Coast in particular.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
I am the first reporter to get to the bottom of the story, which has far more to do with drugs, homelessness, and pedophilia than QAnon, anti-Semitism, and January 6.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
Please visit Substack to read the article in its entirety.https://t.co/qfs5zHokni