Democratic Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke wrote a short story as a teen about killing 38 people and described the murders as “acts of love.”
“The more people I killed, the longer my dreams were,” O'Rourke wrote. “I soon quit my job, and stayed at my house in an almost comatose state. My dreams grew longer and more vivid. They kept me alive and proved to be the only thing to live for. I had killed nearly 38 people by the time of my twenty-third birthday, and each one was more fulfilling than the last.”
In the story, O'Rourke writes that the notion for the killing spree came to him during “dreams and visions.” Eventually, he writes, the desire could no longer be suppressed.
“Recognizing this fact, my one and only goal in life became the termination of everything that was free and loving,” O'Rourke wrote.
The first victims of the killing spree described in the story were two children. O‘Rourke wrote that as the children crossed a road they looked happy. But their “happiness was mine by right,” O’Rourke wrote, before describing the killing.
“As I neared the young ones, I put all my weight on my right foot, keeping the accelerator pedal on the floor until I heard the crashing of the two children on the hood, and then the sharp cry of pain from one of the two,” O'Rourke wrote.
O'Rourke then described being fascinated and having “sweet visions” fill his head until an old man with a cane interrupted him knocking on his front window.
“He might have been a witness to my act of love. I was not sure, nor did I care. It was simply ecstasy,” O‘Rourke wrote about the old man. “As I drove home, I envisioned myself committing more of these ’acts of love,' and after a while, I had no trouble carrying them out.”
O'Rourke wrote the stories under the pseudonym “Psychedelic Warlord” as part of a prominent early hacking group called Cult of the Dead Cow.
O'Rourke apologized for the violent writings on March 15 and said he is now “mortified” by the violent fiction.
O'Rourke is one of 15 Democrats who have officially announced their candidacy for the 2020 presidential race. In early polling, he is among the handful of the top candidates, but far behind socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has not officially announced his run but is widely expected to do so.
Similar to most of the Democrats who have announced their candidacies, O’Rourke is embracing the socialist Medicare for All and Green New Deal policies. While most of the candidates have publicly distanced themselves from socialism, O’Rourke refused to denounce the ideology, even under repeated questioning by the BBC.
Democratic socialists Sen. Ben Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sponsored the Medicare for All bill and the Green New Deal resolution in Congress. Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the United States, and Communist Party USA are fervently backing both the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
