Those who read this blog as well as my guest blog posts at This Ain't Hell are no doubt familiar with my many blog posts exposing Brandon Bryant as a mentally ill liar. My motivation was simple. He was lying about the drone program and about his part in it to the entire world with his appearances in and on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, GQ, The Young Turks, Democracy Now, RT, and many other media outlets. I knew he was lying and had no credibility. Further, I knew he was being used by foreign and domestic handlers to create propaganda for their own ends. I knew that he was a threat through his mental illness and I was worried that the myth being fabricated by his domestic partisan and foreign media handlers would elevate him to a position to do real harm, not the least being the degradation of a much needed discussion of how to use drone warfare properly in accordance with the law to make America safer rather than more vulnerable.
When I retired from the military I stopped blogging about Bryant. But I did keep tabs on him as I saw his mental illness and his threats of violence against myself and others escalate. The unfortunate reality is that Bryant is so convinced of the mythical and fictional self identity and character created by himself, which he is predisposed to believe based on his intense love of fiction and comic books, and that has been powerfully reinforced by his handlers (Jesselyn Radack being chief among them), that he has no desire to live a normal life, with a normal job, and to normally exist in the world. He believes he should be paid by the U.S. government and should be taken care of and he proclaims that jobs are mere slavery and explains that he is not one of those kinds of people who goes out and labors for money. As a result, as time goes on, he lives the life that such a worldview naturally provides, a life of poverty. Poverty leads to frustration and anger. Combined with mental delusion and an intense victimology, it leads to threats. Threats often lead to violence. Every day Brandon exists is another day older, another day poorer, as the frustration of his reality not matching the myth in his head increases.
It is my belief that Brandon Bryant is a legitimate threat. As time passes, as he makes more videos espousing his "truth" and "The Way" and foretelling messiahs and heroes rising up and "doing something" about the evil world we live in, he is more likely to decide he no longer wishes to live. And in so doing, he will be increasingly tempted to make one final bid for attention that will drive people to finally watch his videos and to see his regular statements about killing himself and killing others.
Then comes the familiar "why didn't people see this coming?" question on mainstream media.
The reality is some did see the threat. This blogger has made that threat clear over the years.
In our Republic where people have rights and we cannot, nor should we, restrict their rights simply because some are in "fear" of others, speech is important for identifying threats to the community. My citizen journalism has attempted to do just that, and to plea with lawyers, activists, and journalists to stop bolstering the myth in Brandon Bryant's head. Here is the trilogy of documentaries from this blogger about the threat that Brandon Bryant poses, presented in reverse order from the most recent video to the earliest.
February 2020:
I demonstrated that Brandon Bryant's mental illness had increased post-military along with multiple threats of violence against multiple people (including this blogger) and frequent expressions of hope for the death of all humanity.
May 2016:
I took a much deeper look into Brandon Bryant's mental illness and made a personal plea to Jesselyn Radack who was instrumental in helping the mentally ill Brandon Bryant construct a false narrative and self identity. I specifically warned Jesselyn Radack that she would be in part responsible for any tragedy that predictably unfolded and I sent her this documentary in 2016.
April 2016:
I demonstrated that Brandon Bryant is a perpetual liar, a professional victim, and hinted at his mental illness.
Brandon Bryant is not a singular figure in today's world. The values of victimology increasingly taught in our society and a lack of value for truth held by many, have met with economic realities and mixed to create a great deal of anger and frustration in our world that is eagerly leveraged by partisan hacks and political machines.
There are thousands upon thousands of Brandon Bryants today and people need to start paying attention to the mental illness that passes off as normal and even fashionable in our current society and that is celebrated in Oscar-winning movies like Joker.
As to Brandon Bryant, I sincerely hope that he gets the professional mental help he requires before he achieves the ultimate attention he fantasizes about. Jail will likely not be helpful for his development (despite Bryant's vocal desire to have government provide him food and shelter at taxpayer expense) and will only lead to further delusions of persecution that he will add to his myth. Indeed, he wasted no time shoehorning his arrest into his fictional status as whistleblower while falsely claiming there were no charges.
There is a real free speech debate to be had regarding whether his threats amounted to constitutionally unprotected "true threats," and the question will require some deliberation in court. It is my feeling that his speech does amount to true threats as a video is made to be viewed by others (as opposed to making private videos) and the internet is the ultimate public bulletin board. Further, while my gut feeling is that Brandon did not make his threats with any real intent to carry them out (he is a mythomaniac in every sense of the term and my non-existent crystal ball seems to indicate it's still too early in his downward spiral for him to commit actual violence), that intention is not relevant to the legal determination of a "true threat" as I understand it. That being said, it would appear that this is not a slam dunk legal issue one way or another and the court will have its work cut out for it.
I wish the best for litigators, judges, and jurors who will have to wrestle with this question. I feel awful for Brandon's mother who made this heart wrenching video pleading for her son's freedom. It's a sad situation all around and no mother should have to suffer like that. For those who share my view that jail is not the proper solution for this complicated problem, Brandon's mother has set up a GoFundMe to try to raise the bail to release Brandon. This blogger will not be donating (on advice of counsel) but hopes that others might consider doing so. We hope the system is strong enough in Missoula Montana to get Brandon Bryant the serious professional mental help he requires. Legal questions aside, Brandon Bryant's mental illness and fantasies of violence are undeniable.
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