Stop trying to clearly distance yourself from abusers by calling them narcissists or sociopaths or psychos. It’s time to face the facts and swallow the harsh truth that literally everyone has the potential to do harm - not just a specific subset of mentally ill people.
Demographically, it simply does not make sense to look at how incredibly common and normal abuse is and blame it on rare personality disorders as opposed to our twisted social norms reducing children to parental property and treating authoritarian parenting as morally and socially good.
A minority of ill parents would not be able to create and maintain the current situation.
Human trafficking was legal until 158 years ago. The vast majority of the human traffickers were not mentally ill.
There are police officers who beat handcuffed people and still insist that they’re the good guys. The vast majority of them are not mentally ill.
There are rich CEOs who profit from people’s deaths by charging ridiculous prices for lifesaving medications. The vast majority of them are not mentally ill.
There are parents who genuinely believe that they’re doing God’s work by beating their children for talking back, even though there are countless studies proving that spanking is abuse and not a single shred of evidence of any good results. The vast majority of those parents are not mentally ill.
as always whenever people in positions of power do things the system doesn’t want to bother justifying it uses mental illness as a scapegoat