Once we had mental institutions in this fair land, places where people whose minds didn't work right could be separated from society. A substantial number of people were housed therein, at substantial cost to the state.
Then two things happened. The left decided we were interfering with the civil rights of the mentally ill, believing they had a right to be behaviorally different. Society had no right to lock them up.
Coincidentally, the right decided we could save a pile of money if we did away with mental institutions, if we stopped warehousing people whose minds didn't function properly. We'd take care of them in community outpatient clinics, using psychoactive drugs.
So an evil bargain was struck between the left and the right, each would get what it wanted. The left would get the freedom to be as odd as you please, the right would get to stop spending all that pointless money.
Many of the mentally ill refuse to take their prescription meds, preferring alcohol or street drugs. Some live under bridges and urinate in doorways, a blight on society pushing a stolen shopping cart full of "possessions" along a roadside. Others are less obvious.
Occasionally, one of these sad, lonely people does something horrific. They float along as society's loners, harboring desires for revenge against the rest of us, almost always later described as "quiet, shy men" nobody dreamed would do something awful.
