I agree, Mr. Gibbon. He may have been an exytremist but he was no psycho. However much you dislike his methods - and I sure as hell do - his overheated righteousness was a rational, if hyper-sensitive response to an amoral world and seems to me to have been motivated by genuine - and, as you say, completely justified - disgust at the hypocritical attitude of the human race towards animals.
On the other hand, those scumbags with baseball bats and shovels whom you describe strike me as being genuine psychos, motivated by nothing other than a sadistic desire to bash up some hippies. Psychosis is a relative concept, and there is a srtong argument for the view that there is a latent psychotic side lurking within everyone, which could manifest itself in any human being given the wrong stimuli and circumstances.
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