The Other McCain

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Arizona Shooter ‘Seems to Be Someone Desperately Needing Mental Health Care’

Posted on | January 8, 2011 | 45 Comments

That quote is how Dan Gibson of Tucson Weekly describes suspected suspected gunman Jared Loughner, based on the 22-year-old’s Internet rantings. And that’s just about all we can say at this point.

Last year, Loughner was photographed smiling while working as a volunteer at the Tucson Festival of Books. His own list of favorite reading seemed to be heavy on childhood fables – The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver’s Travels, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, to name a few – but also politically themed fiction including George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ayn Rand’s We the Living. So far as political non-fiction was concerned, Loughner’s favorites included Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto.

Ask yourself: What’s missing from that list? And the telling answer is: History, biography, political science, economics, current events — the kind of books that someone who is really into politics would read. So you can undertand Michelle Malkin’s ire this afternoon:

There is NO indication yet of the gunman’s identity, agenda, or motives, but my Twitter feed is already filled with Tea Party-bashing, Palin-bashing recriminations and accusations that I have “blood on my hands” for advocating border security and 2nd amendment rights.

Now that Loughner’s personality is coming into focus, we see that he wasn’t really into politics at all. His crime targeted a politician and, once he began his descent into madness, his online rantings had what might be called a pseudo-political aspect, but it is impossible to categorize his beliefs according to any normal political spectrum because, as I said before, “crazy” is not an ideology.

When people go crazy, their sick minds may fixate on any number of things. John Hinckley fixated on Jodie Foster. Mark Chapman fixated on John Lennon. Trying to blame Loughner’s pseudo-political obsessions on the Tea Party or Sarah Palin is like blaming Taxi Driver for Hinckley’s murderous madness.

UPDATE: The Arizona Republic reports that Loughner lived with his mother:

Neighbors said they were shocked by the shooting. They described Loughner as a loner and outcast with a tendency to dress in all-black “goth-type clothes.”
Grant Wiens, 22, attended Mountain View High School in Tucson with him and then Pima Community College. . . .
Wiens described him as “kind of an interesting character” who kept to himself.

Loughner has been described as a left-wing pothead in high school and, quoting a Tweet by novelist Walter Kim, the Politico‘s Ben Smith writes:

Loughner seems in a line of disturbed lone gunmen, whose political views typically don’t explain much: “Stoned. Lonely. Excitable. Half-literate. Politically incoherent. On the the thin side. These lone gunmen are one brain sharing bodies,” [Kim] wrote.

That Loughner had a history of substance abuse (reportedly having dropped out of school after suffering alcohol poisoning) is not surprising in the least.

UPDATE II: According to Rusty Weiss at Newsbusters, Markos Moulitsas Tweeted, “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin” — before there was any evidence of the shooter’s beliefs — and CBS turned that theme into a dubious “news story.”

Good Lord. Calm the hell down, people. Don’t you see how crazy this finger-pointing is? Look: Ace of Spades has a post about how Loughner was an atheist who didn’t like “In God We Trust” being on U.S. currency. Shall we play the guilt-by-association game to blame every atheist as complicit in Loughner’s crime?

UPDATE III: This just in — Jane Fonda is nuts!

UPDATE IV: More background on Loughner:

A former classmate of Loughner at Pima Community College said he was “obviously very disturbed.”
“He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts,” said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College’s Northwest campus. . . .
He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident. . . .
“WOW! I’m glad i didn’t kill myself. I’ll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow …. why doesn’t anyone talk to me?..” he posted on MySpace Dec. 14.
On Dec. 13, he wrote: “I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it.”

Yeah. A wannabe cop-killer. Forget about blaming Sarah Palin. Let’s blame Bill Ayers!

UPDATE V: Just to be clear, I’m not blaming liberals for Loughner’s alleged crime, merely because people who know him have described his beliefs as “left wing.” Nor am I blaming all politically-obsessed, deranged potheads for Loughner’s alleged crime.

UPDATE VI: Here is a Tweet from Loughner’s high-school classmate Caitie Parker:

The actual evidence and testimony about Loughner’s motives seem to point away from any sort of “blame Palin” scenario. If the portrait of Loughner continues to develop along these lines, at what point will Markos, Paul Krugman and others who jumped to conclusions be obligated to apologize for their unsubstantiated and defamatory accusations?

UPDATE VII: More pieces of the puzzle:

Loughner dropped out of high school in 2006, after his junior year, said Tamara Crawley, a spokeswoman for the Marana United School District in suburban Tucson. Court records indicate he had been arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia in 2007, but the charge was dismissed.
In 2008, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army. The Army rejected him, and privacy laws keep the military from disclosing the reason, the service said in a statement to CNN.
He also enrolled at Aztec Middle College, a partnership between Tucson schools and Pima Community College that helps high school dropouts transition to community colleges, PCC President Sylvia Lee told CNN. He took classes at the college from 2005 until October 2010, when [he] withdrew after five contacts with police “for classroom and library disruptions” at two campuses between February and September, the school said in a statement issued Saturday night.

This is becoming a portrait of a young man’s slow-motion slide into mental illness. High-school dropout, Army reject, drug and alcohol abuse, failing at community college, disruptive behavior, weird and sometimes violent ramblings online — and not the slightest suggestion of any involvement with GOP politics or the Tea Party movement.

Still, liberals want to label this guy as a right-winger of some kind, trying to ram this square peg into a round hole.

UPDATE VIII: Instapundit:

If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?

UPDATE IX: “Speculation Is Not Reporting” and “Text of Memo From the Department of Homeland Security on Arizona Shooting.”

UPDATE X: “Two Sicknesses on Display in Arizona.” and “Unbalanced People … Respond to the Vitriol That Comes Out of Certain Mouths”

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Category: Arizona, Crime

Comments

  • JeffS

    “Crazy is not an ideology”.

    Truer words I’ve seldom heard. It’s too bad that some people just can’t accept this. If they could, we’d be seeing a lot more genuine bi-partisanship.

  • http://twitter.com/Dandapani Dandapani

    The story needs boots on the ground, Stacy!

  • http://twitter.com/lonelycon lonely conservative

    So true. But the left will pounce upon any tragedy to score political points. So very sad.

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  • http://twitter.com/dustbury Charles G Hill

    “Crazy is not an ideology”.

    Then again, there are some ideologies which qualify as crazy.

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  • Joe

    If you need an addition to your reading lists, try Ron Chernow’s Washington. None of that George Washington bashing that Gore “Bitch Slapped” Vidal was infamous for. Chernow does a fabulous job showing what an amazing man George Washington really was. Washington’s job as commander of the Army during the Revolution was simply amazing (think the Seahawks victory today, but lasting for eight years, with “hits” being cannon balls and 50 cal. musket shot).

  • Joe

    My guess this guy was nuts and not a “tea partier.” But we will see.

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  • Anonymous

    Interesting how all the books you list as being books he read are also the very books that the psychiatrists and psychologists who study and fight mind control list as the very books used by mind control groups. The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have all long been known as an MK Ultra mind control books. Maybe he’s not so crazy. Google the Wizard of Oz and mind-control. Scary stuff.

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  • Terry in Georgia

    Unless someone can convince me that a wanna-be cop killer who likes to see the American Flag burning, then I say it is NOT EVEN REMOTELY connected to any tea party person I’ve ever seen!!

  • JeffS

    “…at what point will Markos, Paul Krugman and others who jumped to conclusions be obligated to apologize for their unsubstantiated and defamatory accusations?”

    You forgot your sarcasm tags, Stacy! :-)

    Still, they’re already obligated to at least caveat their original remarks with something like, “Sorry, I spoke hastily, let’s see how this turns out before we speculate any more.”

    But they don’t have the grace nor courage to do even that. Especially not Markos “Screw Them” Moulitsas.

  • JeffS

    PS: Jane Fonda has been nuts since forever. This is not news.

  • Buchnan_wbrian

    What I would like to know is why everyone is eviscerating Palin over this when there was an article in The DailyKos two days ago about this very congress woman “Being Dead” to one of her constituents.

    http://wpc.281e.edgecastcdn.net/80281E/s/s/14/media14/2011/Jan/8/LiveLeak-dot-com-5ba931f594e2-1278130537_689cae05c8_copy.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bbde924842d2d144a6&ec_rate=130

    And don’t tell anyone but the left used targets on a map in 2004.
    http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/gasp-democrats-used-targets-on-map-too/

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    I’m not one for making excuses for criminals, but I really think he’s schizophrenic. He’s at a prime age for a psychotic break. His videos talked about “conscience [sic?] dreaming” which might be referring to hallucinations. The drugs and alcohol indicate self-medication.

    If you haven’t seen it yet though, the liberals are indeed tying “hateful rhetoric of the right” to his actions though. Apparently crazy people wouldn’t act crazy if we didn’t put those ideas in their heads, or something.

  • Sgide

    The press has jumped the shark.

    The insinuations, speculations, and accusations was THE STORY today.

    It was a colossal failure of journalism and reporting. Six people were killed today and almost to a man, from the Sheriff of Pima County to democratic operatives, the story was politicized and innocent people were accused of being responsible for their deaths.

    Just terrible.

  • Aussie54

    I agree with your comment. I have known a few kids who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic and he has a lot of the classic symptoms of the disease.

    What most people do not understand is that pot smoking by certain individuals who are prone to schizophrenia can in fact set off the illness.

  • Zoe_Brain

    As for the perp -
    Grade 1 Crazy : Obama/Palin is planning to install a Communist/Fascist Dictatorship
    Grade 2 Crazy: The Jews/Lizardoids are planning to take over the world
    Grade 3 Crazy: The White House has been infiltrated by Daffodils

    He appears to be type 3. Left, even ultra-Left, and Right, even ultra-Right, have no meaning in this context.

    The problem is that type 1 is a major part of political discourse in the US at the moment, with outliers of type 2. It’s accepted that “they don’t really mean it” by all sane people, but there’s a lot of less than sane people who take it as being The Truth That Is Out There.

    We need to dial back political fanaticism so that neither Bush Derangement Syndrome or its Right-wing equivalent are acceptable.

  • Buchanan_wbrian

    They scrubbed that article off of Kos, imagine that. Just google “My congresswoman is dead to me”

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  • http://twitter.com/PatinMichigan RightWingMole

    What I don’t get is…where do these nutty people get the money to BUY the guns to kill people?!?!?!

    I’d like to hear where the money came from. Old rule of investigations — follow the money trail.

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  • The Osprey

    This guy on Chris Tingles show a few weeks ago is Mark Penn of public relations firm Burton-Marsteller. Listen to what he says. Penn is the one who used psychological testing questions in polls to discover the “soccer mom” demographic which was used by Clinton against the Republicans to derail the Gingrich Revolution in ’94. Obama is lost in 2012 without the “Soccer Mom” vote. The Black vote alone will not carry him to victory. Psychopolitically, this event could not have been more perfect for riling the “Soccer Moms” up against the Right:

    * Woman congressman targeted
    * Girl child killed
    * Crazy white guy perp

    I’m not claiming it is a “manufactured” incident yet…but the circumstances are sure creepy. It couldn’t be more perfect a catalyst for the Dems to reverse their recent electoral fortunes and beat the Republicans over the head with their “hate”.

  • The Osprey

    Okay, I’ll try embedding it this way.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmSFOIBgT0A

  • The Osprey

    Well the embedding does not work. Follow the link in my first clip to the youtube video.

    If it’s been memory holed, as I expect it will once people in the rightosphere begin referring to it, let me know, I have a copy of it for reposting.

  • http://alanye.com Dai Alanye

    Note the similarity with blaming the Kennedy assassination on Birch Society types. Even the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court went down that alley.

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  • Mark A

    This will make our ‘Representatives’ insulate themselves even more from us ‘constituents’. Not good. They will all want a pope-mobile and an armed escort now.

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  • Lusence

    Crazy is a crazy term. To just say a man does this stuff cause he is crazy is stupid. Guy hated life, wanted to kill him self, changed his mind and decided to go out of “life” and be famous at the same time, sure fire way to get famous and ‘commit suicide’. Everyone is crazy. Political agenda? No way.

    In a sane world the guy that did this stuff would be dead now. And all details withheld.

  • Anna Jo

    It’s amazing that when white, seemingly “boys/girls next door” types commit heinous and senseless massacres like this, everyone immediately wants to blame is on the perpetrator’s mental health. Listen, this guy wasn’t anywhere near crazy. He’s just another disgruntled and arrogant American who has poor social skills, low ambition, and political paranoia syndrome (I just coined that term lol). Anyway, crazy people don’t buy guns in November, take a cab to a specific location to kill a specific individual in January, etc… That’s not crazy, that’s a cold blooded criminal.

    It doesn’t matter that he flunked out of college, has a lot of problems, etc.. a LOT of people have those same problems. He’s like so many other “doomsday, the illuminati and evil empire is taking over the world” zealots who think that the world owes them something. He thinks that he has a right to kill whatever poses a “threat” to him whether that be politicians, minorities, or anything else. He murdered a 9 year old innocent girl and so many others.

    Stop making excuses for these type of thugs who don’t want to do a thing except live in their fantasy world. Life isn’t a video game and swines like this guy need to grow up and learn how to live like human beings in the world.

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  • http://www.chrisahickey.com Chrisa Hickey

    It is as inaccurate and dangerous for everyone from the Pima County Sheriff to the average Twitter user automatically assuming he is – words I’ve seen and heard this past weekend – crazy, paranoid, schizophrenic, bipolar, insane, mentally unbalanced – as it is to assume Sarah Palin and her map are to blame.

    The automatic assumption that a senseless, violent crime MUST have been perpetrated by someone with a mental health condition is what furthers the stigma that ALL people with mental health conditions are in some sense dangerous. Which is very, very far from the truth. Tim McVeigh wasn’t crazy – no history of mental illness before or after. He was just angry.

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  • Titusalone77

    THE LEFT?????? You have it completely backwards. How much shameless political mileage did conservatives get out of 9/11???? “If you’re not with us you’re against us”, “opposing the President is un-American”, blah, blah blah. That kind of thinking has proved disastrous again and again and again.

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