They're not trying to be provocative

Prosser acknowledged in March that he called Abrahamson a "bitch" and threatened to "destroy" her during a closed-door meeting.

At the time, Prosser told the Journal Sentinel that the outburst to Abrahamson came after the chief justice took steps to undermine him politically and to embarrass him and other court conservatives.

"In the context of this, I said, 'You are a total bitch,'" Prosser said. "I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted. They (Abrahamson and Bradley) are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing."

--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal with my emphasis

When I read the above this morning, I was intrigued. I have had dealings with a few folks perversely skilled in emotional agitation. Once the other party loses self-control, the provacateur, previously wildly emotional, goes stone-cold, like they were always being cool: 'See? It's you who is losing it!' (I have to say, all my experience with this has been with women, although I don't suppose the behavior is exclusively female.) I've discovered, it's not truly conscious behavior. That is, they're not trying to be provocative and manipulative and duplicious. They really believe they're right. I am not a pedigreed psychoanalyst or anything, just a guy trying to handle life, but it seems to me to be a form of self-justifying, self-deceiving, aberrant psychosis. I have had some success getting a couple of hysterics to do honest self-re-assessment, although it's extremely difficult cognitive therapy, requiring some degree of sincere willingness to admit to error and to change.

If you're not aware of what's going on (it took me a long time and much awful experience to figure out), it's all too easy to become embroiled. So, with nothing more to go on than this, I could sympathize with Prosser's being provoked. I can also understand, if Bradley suffers this kind of problem, she might really believe she was the one attacked, even after first lunging at Prosser.

I read a few of the comments to the original J-S article (before the later revisions started emerging) and I was not surprised to see commenters deriding this as typical of Republican violence. Of course, we all know the other side would never threaten to strangle anyone. Well, maybe the Vice-President of the United States, last October but of course, "He quickly added: 'To the press, that's a figure of speech.'" Right, Joe, right.

Alternatively (to my verbose comment yesterday suggesting unintentional confusion of perception), it could just be simple psychopathy à la Ann Barnhardt’s post yesterday about Obama’s Medal of Honor flub. (Wish Barnhardt had article-specific links… and an archive!)