To two great article’s this year about paranoid mental illness inside the surveillance state–Mike Jay’s and Andrew Marantz’s— comes this sad punctuation mark: Miram Carey, who was killed in Capitol Hill yesterday, believed she was being monitored by her own government. And she was, and well all are. And the government in turn is being watched. The prevailing culture feeds delusions, which often aren’t completely delusional–just a scary riff on the truth. It’s not that sick people are “visionaries” or “misunderstood.” No, they’re sick, but so are aspects of the society they’re responding to. It’s not that spying has just begun, but the technology has progressed. We’re new, we’re improved. From Susan Donaldson James at ABC News:

“ABC News’ sources revealed that Carey had started to show signs of mental illness around September 2012, and had a history of delusions and irrational behavior.

She reportedly told the father of her child and 54-year-old boyfriend at the time that she was the ‘prophet of Stamford’ and that President Obama had placed the city on lockdown and had placed her residence under electronic surveillance, which was being fed live to all national news outlets.

Carey told a social worker she had postpartum depression, but Galynker said that postpartum psychosis looks nothing like postpartum depression. Postpartum psychosis is associated with paranoia and delusions, said Galynker.

‘[Her] main symptoms were not depression but were paranoia and delusions,’ he said. ‘But it is all unclear because no one has looked at her medical records. What we have seen is close to a year of psychotic episodes and hospitalizations and [encounters] with police.'”