Fetzer gets a listing in Urban Dictionary: 'Fetzering' is a term for talking balls.

[Charles Drago]

CD :WAKE UP! Jim Fetzer isn't "merely" anything in the research community. He is a prominent figure whose highly visible descent into madness, whether precipitated by physical and/or mental decline, a sinister agenda, or all of these factors, provides immense aid and comfort to the enemy.

This is one explanation.

Does anyone agree with this as an explanation?

I agree with a caveat: Upon being recently briefed with brand new--extremely reliable--information (source to remain anonymous) and coupled with my own personal knowledge of Jim, I now
tend to believe he is not suffering from any physical or mental decline besides that associated with relatively normal signs of aging. There is no loss of memory, irrationality, atypical patterns
of reasoning, or any other symptom normally associated with such decline. That is--none are evident OUTSIDE of his research activities. However, there appears to be a bifurcation, for lack of
a better word, between his private and public personas, where the former is paradigmatic of the "original" Jim Fetzer and the latter is manifest with inexplicable atypical behaviors. Of particular
difficulty is the task of one, such as myself, arranging to experience the prototypical Jim for an extended period of time and then immediately thereafter switching to "research mode" in order to
note unexpected changes in memory, rationality, and affective presentation. However, to the degree available to me for such observation, I would have to say that the anomaly appears to be
restricted to the research activities and only interfere with "private" matters if and when they overlap.

Fatigue is a strange beast. It alone can account for many of the symptoms we see. When that part of the mind has been on overdrive for so long, about so much, for so little in return, it can and
will tend to hasten to the end of the fight--even when it is taking shortcuts onto dead end streets. Some of his recent "projects" such as, the "Oswald Innocence Project" might be likened to a man
who is dying of thirst in the desert seeing what constitutes nothing more than a mirage and being told by his newly found nomadic fellow travelers that it is water.

Perhaps we are witnessing a very untimely critical mass for Jim...a meltdown called: BURNOUT

Deeply perceptive and respectful, Greg.