I think the guy was nuts - but a very high-level nutcase, as we can see from his calculation of angles that was in the note in his hotel room. He considered himself a mathematical genius, and he probably was, since he was able to beat the mathematically based gambling system many times and had become wealthy on gambling.
While a the mass killing was the ultimate challenge, I suspect that ISIS was definitely the thing that weaponized him. Because once he had made contact with them, they realized the potential and he also realized that if he converted to Islam, he’d be instantly important. He probably converted through his Filipino contacts, since one of the recently arrested or at any rate NYPD-pursued participants in last year’s disrupted mass concert venue bombing in NYC was a Filipino doctor with the first name “Russell.” So Pollock thought he’d get a lot of support and a lot of media attention from the Islamic world, and he thought he’d go out in a blaze of glory - probably on behalf of his paranoid schizophrenic criminal father.
It reminds me of Le Carre’s novel “A Perfect Spy,” about a son going crazy on behalf of his father, although now John Cornwell, aka, John Le Carre, is a totally unreadable elderly leftist who fantasizes about chicks falling for older lefty ecologists, anti-Americans, etc. And now Islam, which is indistinguishable from madness, is the way these people express it.
No reason to kill except his own "opinion" on something.
I'd say the Unabomber's motive was totally construed.
I don't think of that as a fact.
You are on target about LeCarre being “totally unreadable,” FRiend Livius.
I’ve tried to read maybe three of his novels, and couldn’t get much past page 50.
It’s not just his politics and anti-American bile. He’s just flat-out boring — and I don’t bore easily, knowing there are many books that are going to make demands on your attention but will pay off nicely in the end.