“Insane” in a legal sense means to be incompetent to the point you don’t know you’re doing something wrong. In a general sense it usually means psychotic, delusional, unable to correctly perceive reality.
Kaczynski wasn’t either of those things. He was a really weird man, but he knew what he was doing and he knew it was murder.
The problem is, as a psychologist, I have seen clearly insane people that are logical and know what they are doing.
I also know insanity is NOT a psychological term but a legal one.
This clouds the issue immensely.
IIRC, Kaczynski stated in corespondence with the authorities that “FC” stood for “Freedom Club”. He often wrote in said correspondence in the first-person plural, to make his one-man effort appear to be a movement.
I also remember speculation (possibly by the authorities) that “FC” actually stood for “fuck computers”.
I’ve dealt personally with serial killers and with insane people. IMHO, not a lot of overlap. Deciding that someone who acts really, really badly must be insane ignores most of what we know about both insanity and really bad behavior.
Lots of people find themselves in situations in which the behave erratically, simply because they can. The test “game” would be to return them to a normal surroundings, and see if they still act crazy.
Imelda Marcos is a case in point. She is still alive, free to shop for shoes in Manila’s malls. There is no evidence that she has tortured anyone in decades. But she was once thought of as the most insane woman on earth.
If they had caught Kazynski, and said “Come on, Ted, we.ve published your manifesto, stop this foolishness, and we’lll give you an associate professorship at Montana State”, what are the chances he’d have settled in Bozeman as a model, if eccentric citizen?
There’s a Doper who knew one of the men involved in that case.
Do I think Kaczynski was insane? Mentally ill, definitely. Severe enough to be legally insane? Don’t know.