One of the rules of life is to never underestimate the willpower of a fanatic. The true believer has always been the most dangerous human animal. Throughout history, the fanatic has posed the greatest danger to the established order and society’s leaders. Life is messy and inexact, requiring all sorts of difficult compromises. Fanatics are everywhere the enemy of compromise.

In modern America, we solved that problem by putting the fanatics in charge of the culture. This story is a great example. Black gangsters shooting one another over drug turf is now being called Hood Disease, a psychological ailment. After all, it can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact the gangsters are not middle-aged Irish guys. Race being a social construct and all.

In the inner city, a health problem is making it harder for young people to learn. The Centers for Disease Control said 30 percent of inner city kids suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The CDC said these children often live in virtual war zones. Doctors at Harvard said they actually suffer from a more complex form of PTSD that some call “hood disease.”

Unlike soldiers, children in the inner city never leave the combat zone. They often experience trauma, repeatedly.

“You could take anyone who is experiencing the symptoms of PTSD, and the things we are currently emphasizing in school will fall off their radar. Because frankly it does not matter in our biology if we don’t survive the walk home,” said Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D. of San Francisco State University.

In Oakland, about two thirds of the murders last year were actually clustered in East Oakland, 59 people killed.

East Oakland is the ancestral home of the Black Panthers.

Teachers and administrators who graduated from Fremont High School in East Oakland and have gone back to work there spoke with KPIX 5.

“These cards that (students) are suddenly wearing around their neck that say ‘Rest in peace.’ You have some kids that are walking around with six of them. Laminated cards that are tributes to their slain friends,” said teacher Jasmene Miranda.

Jaliza Collins, also a teacher at Fremont, said, “It’s depression, it’s stress, it’s withdrawal, it’s denial. It’s so many things that is encompassed and embodied in them. And when somebody pushes that one button where it can be like, ‘please go have a seat,’ and that can be the one thing that just sets them off.”

In 2013, there were 47 recorded lockdowns in Oakland public schools – again, almost all in East and West Oakland.

Maybe the Gangster Paradise is not all that.