Could you give any examples? It is definitely true that people are often portrayed as "weird dudes acting alone", however it is much rarer that that is actually true.
The assassination of James Garfield and attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan are both very clear evidences of "weird dudes acting alone." I don't know enough about McKinley's assassin to know if he would also qualify, although that was part of an era where anarchists assassinating notable political figures was relatively common. I also don't know enough about Teddy Roosevelt's attempted assassination.
Indeed, if you look at attempted or successful assassinations of US presidents, excluding JFK, only Lincoln's assassination involved a conspiracy.
I don't think not being part of an organized conspiracy and being a weird dude acting alone are the same thing. Especially in recent years the term "stochastic terrorism" has come up a lot, where people become part of a group where acts of violence are not explicitly ordered but nontheless tacitly encouraged. I think most so called "lone wolf" attacks fall into that pattern.
Sirhan Sirhan & RFK. Here there is no elaborate story of defections to the USSR or meetings with the KGB head of assassinations or anything. Just a dude who really wanted to kill RFK for his support of Israel, who put his mind to it, and then did it.
Yes, Sirhan Sirhan, the man who conveniently "forgot" everything leading up to and including the shooting itself.
Strangely enough, years later his attorney's argued that he was framed. Even RFK's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes that Sirhan Sirhan was framed and did not actually conspire to kill RFK. He actually wants Sirhan Sirhan released [0].
Multiple witnesses saw him approach RFK with a revolver and fire it three times at him. Nobody really denies that. What his son (and others) allege is that one of RFK's bodyguards used the assassination attempt as cover to actually assassinate him.
Nobody argues that Sirhan conspired to kill RFK and shot a revolver at him, and very few people question the leadup to that attempt.
Point taken, however, that RFK's assassination is not an unquestioned case of a single deranged individual.
Murray was (among other qualifications) formerly a military intelligence officer, conducting horrendous, abusive, and unethical psychological experiments at Harvard, and Kaczynski was a 17 year old victim of his.
MKUltra was also a series of horrendous, abusive, and unethical psychological experiments conducted (in secret) by the CIA.
Ethically, Murray wasn't, unfortunately, much of an outlier; lots of psychological experimentation in the US during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was horrifying. Although Murray's background and professional history is suggestive, there is no evidence that he or his experiments on Kaczynski were actually part of the MKUltra program.
The lsd could well have broken him in a way that led to the murder and mayhem, but he was destined to be an asshole. His brother's description of his life is a tragedy of misanthropic disaster - how not to raise a child.
