The owner of Twitter just suggested executing roughly half the people in the country.

It might be a confusing mixture of ill intent and mental illness or an acute crisis.

If it is mental illness or an acute crisis, usually that isn’t an excuse in the sense that it doesn’t relieve moral or social responsibility. It’s especially true if it’s caused by your own actions (taking drugs or overwork to whatnot), or has a pattern you can anticipate but ignored addressing. That would be my position in this case, unless there are extenuating circumstances.

Presumably he sees tons of posts that say “you’re a bad person” and ignores them (or if anything, they feed him). I hope by his own lights, regardless of his intent, he’ll catch on that something isn’t well with him. Or anyway, I hope people close to him will jump on that. It’s for his own good but also the good of everyone else, since he has so much power and influence.

If he really does have bad intent, I don’t mean anything I’m saying to mitigate accountability for it.

If what you mean is that what I am interpreting as irrational behavior really just is bad intent in its entirety — there is no crisis — then I hope he’ll realize that being so far afield that he seems distressed is not a good look to adopt on purpose, and is harmful in a way that even with bad intent isn’t within his interest.