Thoughts on Mental Illness and Despicable Hypocrisy

Robbing the Chinese to give to the poor? Ha Vasko, who is facing up to four years in jail on possible hate crime charges
It may not be exactly what the legendary bandit had in mind - but this Vietnamese woman does not seem to care.
Ha Vasko, 68, is accused of pickpocketing. But not just any pickpocketing: Vasko is accused of flying all the way from her $400,000 home in Florida, where she lives with her wealthy husband, to New York's Chinatown, where she then allegedly robs only the Chinese - and gives her ill-gotten gains to the needy.

But it seems, after four arrests in nine months, her alleged one-woman crime spree has come to an end. Vasko is now jailed at Rikers Island, where she could be facing four years in jail on hate crime charges.
Her husband John, she said, is refusing to pay her bail because he wants to teach her a lesson.

Vasko apparently hates the Chinese. 'They cheat, and they are greedy and are on welfare,' she told the New York Post.
The mother-of-two claimed her husband gave her $50,000 to help strangers and friends in need, but that she has spent it all.
She also gets an allowance of $5,000-$6,000 a month from her husband but that, also, is apparently not enough.
'She's very charitable,' Mr Vasko told the Post from the couple's waterfront home in Melbourne, Florida, adding that his wife has 'good intentions'.
Nevertheless, he appeared to feel it was time for some tough love, and is said to be refusing to pay the $124,000 bail to set his wife free from Rikers.
'He's very, very mad at me,' she confessed in an interview with the New York Post, adding that Mr Vasko is a 'good, good man' who could 'get any woman, but he sticks with me'.
Vasko and her husband have been married for 41 years. They met in Hanoi, where he was working as a civilian engineer on military satellites.

Vasko's pickpocketing rampage through New York is believed to have begun last June, when she allegedly stole $500 from a Chinese woman. Over the next nine months she was arrested four times, the last time on March 21.
Vasko admitted that she herself has Chinese blood, and told the Post she does not know why she hates them so much. 
She also claimed that she first began stealing when, at five years old, she saw her mother crying because she was hungry.
At least three times she allegedly walked from appearing in a Manhattan court straight back out on the street to pickpocket again. There are fears she has struck more than 100 times.
After one arrest, apparently worried she would miss her Delta flight home, Vasko allegedly told a police officer she would give him $1,000 to let her get on the plane. Bribery was promptly added to the list of charges against her. 
She has now been labelled a 'persistent offender' by the Manhattan District Attorney, which could prosecute the latest case as a hate crime.
That could see her spend up to four years in prison. 
A date for a psychiatric hearing has been set.

Comment:

1. The lady is definitely mentally unbalanced. Is she aware of her mental state? Does she know what she did was legally wrong but could not help herself because of some persistent urges? Or does she think that what she did was right and beautiful and the laws were just the nuisance that got in the way?

2. If we just look at the What (her violation of the laws and punish her for her crimes) and neglect the Why (she steals and pickpockets from a specific group of people in order to give the proceeds to the poor and needy), we are no longer sentient beings and have been reduced to robots.

3. Despite having Chinese blood, why does she hate the Chinese so much? What is the root cause of this self-hatred?

4. Mental illness is a fascinating field. I submit that most of us are emotionally disturbed and unhinged in varying degrees, as a consequence of coping with life's demands. The most pathetic and  most despicable manifestations of mental illness are those who are afflicted with the lack of self-awareness. There are those among us persistently clinging to a distorted view that they are morally superior to others and thus are inclined to behave in a holier-than-thou manner while conveniently overlooking three things: first, they commit the same offense that they piously and self-righteously attack and condemn in others; second, their views and their expressions of them lack the internal logic; third, their words and deeds are not consistent and congruous.

Wissai