Two well-known recent British murderers, Raoul Moat and Mohammed Emwazi (aka “Jihadi John”), demonstrate the modern tendency to make excuses for even the most monstrous behavior:

…they resent strongly but incoherently; they blame their conduct on others; they use their frustrations to justify their most outrageous and vicious acts. They pity themselves to the exclusion of all others; they use their own minds as echo chambers for the wrongs, real or imagined, that they have suffered. Like Moat, they have a grossly inflated sense of their own importance.