Tuscon Tragedy

On Saturday, Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Roll, and a 9 year old girl, among at least 15 others, were shot by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner1. Roll and the 9-year-old girl were killed, and Giffords herself had sustained significant brain injuries.

A firestorm ensued on both sides: Rightnetwork.com had tried to pin the shooter as a liberal by using his favorite books as evidence. There is a signoficant problem with this strategy, however:

"Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno"2.

We the Living, The Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf; Rand, Marx, and Hitler. It would truly be impossible to try to pigeonhole the rest of these works as Liberal or Conservative, and get any kind of reliable motive from them. I have read most of these books (save for Mein Kampf, Aesop, Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Peter Pan, Pulp, Gulliver's Travels, or the Communist Manifesto), and I have a far greater respect for human life than Mr Loughner.

Furthermore, it would make absolutely no sense, if it were true that Loughner was a Liberal, for him to target Mrs Giffords because she is a Democrat.

On the other hand, a Facebook page called Americans Against the Tea Party, of which I am a part, has been chomping at the bit to place the blame on Fox News and Sarah Palin. AATP has a point that Sarah Palin's rhetoric has been grossly irresponsible, but there is a major problem in constructing a convincing case that Mr Loughner is connected to the Tea Party.

Here is where I personally stand; I will be upfront about this: I am as excited as the rest of my fellow Democrats to crash the Tea Party. I have previously explained what a threat it presents to our society. HOWEVER, I (we) do not have the compelling evidence required to make any accusations. The only evidence we have of any kind of motive rests on his Youtube account, in which Mr Loughner discusses "Conscience Dreaming" and a "currency" that seems to only have a passing connection to actual money3.

"Conscience Dreaming" only leads to a man named Robert Moss, and is commonly understood as lucid dreaming, which means to simply be aware that one is dreaming.

Now we're getting somewhere. A reader wrote to columnist Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic that his writings indicate that Mr Loughner is severely emotionally disturbed, and suggested evidence of paranoid schizophrenia4.

With at least a rudimentary knowledge of psychology (having taken classes both in high school and college, and have expressed much interest in it during my depressive phase), I would have to concur with that assumption.

Loughner expresses a fear that we are being controlled by grammar, something that, as an English major, appears to me as absolutely absurd--as language is designed to expand means of expression, not contract them (place counterargument from Orwell's Ingsoc here)--and he spoke incoherently of some issue of currency, which some supposed to be libertarian, but it was too inconsistent and not worth using.

Mr Loughner appeared in court today (1/9), and allegedly he was coherent and was able to answer the questions he was asked. Also according to CNN, "...court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event"5.

Psychologically, the case is starting to make sense from the point of view that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia as substantiated by some bizarre personal obsession with the target. Also of note is that the family had been uncooperative with the FBI6. I would surmise from Bloomburg News that authorities had made it into his home and have found his writings that describe Saturday's attack. Also according to that same article, Loughner does have some history of psychological problems and strange behavior7.

These are the major points of the case at the time of this writing, and in my personal opinion, the political angle of the case can be ruled out.

1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html

2) http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4&feature=share

4) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html

5) http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/10/arizona.shooting.investigation/index.html

6) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2011/01/10/arizona-republic-the-loughner-family-is-barricading-themselves-in

7) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-10/loughner-s-writings-actions-analyzed-for-clues-in-arizona-shooting-case.html