That's not a professional diagnosis, but the sheer level of warped perspective he demonstrates is pretty clear.
Like you. I think you're wrong about almost everything on politics, but you have some semblance of internal consistency to your thought, and are capable of recognizing something is literally physically true.
Terthna, I disagree with about what happened in Ukraine in 2014, and he is more distrustful of the Ukrainian government than I am, but he still recognizes the war is a horrible thing, and Russia has committed atrocities during it.
But History Learner?
He will reference one image on Twitter from a year or two ago that claims Ukraine was producing millions of artillery shells for Russia, and claim it's definitive proof that Russian military industrial capacity utterly overwhelms not just Ukraine's, but also the West's.
Yes, that's right, he will quote that Ukrainian industry that used to supply the Russians, is proof that current Russian industrial capacity outstrips Ukrainian capacity.
He is a very clear case of the thought process where once he's made up his mind, all data, information, references, sources, etc, will be interpreted in as warped a way as necessary to support that conclusion. If a source supports his conclusion, it's good. If it doesn't, it's bad. If it says things that partially support and partially oppose it, then it's a definitive trustworthy source in one part, and utterly untrustworthy deceit in the other.
Further, he kept coming back and humiliating himself with shit arguments month after month after month, and treating past rounds of argument about Ukraine that he'd lost like arguments he'd won. When people pointed out he was full of shit, he'd bring up the exact same articles and talking points he had before, and people would point out that even his own sources contradicted his points a lot of the time, and he'd just ignore that.
It's fairly clear that at some point Agent23 just is trying to amuse himself by poking others. Some people, like me, have a harder time letting go of arguments on the internet than we should. Some people, like Marduk, are just implacable and will hammer you with the same points and arguments over and over again because they don't know any other way to be.
But History Learner, his behavior was pathological. To the level where I'm genuinely worried about his mental health, and suspect he has a serious habit of sabotaging his own IRL relationships, and his periodically returning to this forum in spates of activity is related to him burning out his IRL relationships for a while.
It's hard enough to deal with someone who absolutely refuses to admit they're wrong. People who will actively warp their perception of reality to service their wrong conclusions, who will unflinchingly step further and further into self-delusion every time evidence piles up that they're wrong?
They aren't just hard to deal with, they're outright dangerous. And usually come to tragic ends, often total social isolation and living in a proverbial basement as they concoct more and more elaborate conspiracy theories rather than admit they were ever wrong about anything.
en.wikipedia.org
www.theguardian.com
