According to Gabrielle Gifford’s husband, the best way to show your support is to make a donation to one or both of the following organizations:
Community Food Bank
3003 S Country Club Rd # 221
Tucson, AZ 85713-4084
(520) 622-0525American Red Cross, Southern Arizona Chapter
2916 East Broadway Boulevard
Tucson, AZ 85716
(520) 318-6740
It now appears that the suspect became obsessed with Rep. Giffords after meeting her in 2007 and finding her answer to his question to be unsatisfying. What did he ask her?
Mr. Loughner said he asked the lawmaker, “How do you know words mean anything?” recalled Mr. Montanaro. He said Mr. Loughner was “aggravated” when Ms. Giffords, after pausing for a couple of seconds, “responded to him in Spanish and moved on with the meeting.”
Another source says his question was: “What is government if words have no meaning?” Frankly, it sounds like someone introduced Ludwig Wittgenstein to a mind that couldn’t handle the maddening implications of his philosophy. Or, alternatively, he may have been influenced by the writings of a man named David Wynn Miller who appears to be nuts.
Whatever his beliefs, they don’t be appear to be conventionally right or left, but of a more conspiratorial bent. One high school classmate said that he had expressed frustration with the Bush administration, but, then, who didn’t express frustration with the Bush administration. By the time he started attending college his behavior was so strange and creepy that both students and one of his professors openly wondered whether he was planning on bringing a gun to class.
In his back yard they have found a strange shrine.
A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others.
Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner’s home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges.
A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal.
Experts on Sunday said the elements are featured in the ceremonies of a number of occult groups.
One of the more desperate efforts at deflection comes from David Frum who would like us to believe that marijuana is to blame for the suspect’s mental illness. Supposedly, marijuana can contribute to schizophrenia. Never mind that the suspect has not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, we should blame pot for the tragedy in Arizona.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who lost her husband in the Long Island railroad massacre, is going to introduce legislation:
McCarthy today will officially announce she is working on a bill targeting the high-capacity ammunition clips the gunman allegedly used in the shooting, as Politico first reported.
“My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow,” she told Politico.
The congresswoman plans to discuss the legislation this week with Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, her staff confirms to CBSNews.com.
“We need to look at how this is going to work, to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass,” McCarthy said. “I don’t want to give the NRA – excuse the pun – the ammunition to come at me either.”
The Glock 19 9mm semi-automatic pistol the alleged shooter used was purchased legally. The gun’s high capacity magazine would have been illegal under the assault weapons ban, which Congress allowed to expire in 2004.
Efforts at gun and ammunition control have been dead for at least a decade as Democrats abandoned the cause, but nothing else could revive the issue more than a member of Congress getting a bullet through the brain from a clip that was banned until 2004.
Finally, he apparently kept a dream journal that will tell us everything we need to know about his thinking.
Jonathan Alter is an asshole for writing this column.
you are on point once again.
Daniel Hernandez “applied triage”????? to Congresswoman Giffords”
Obama has been treading water, doing nothing for 2 yrs but now he has a chance to “lead” by taking advantage of a tragedy to reverse his political fortunes?? if I’m reading Alter correctly he should be fired for writing that.
Westboro Baptist Church really takes the cake for tastelessness.
I saw one person, supposedly a friend, claim that the shooter was once a lefty. Probably because he had the Communist Manifesto on his list of favorite books. But he also had Mein Kampf and We the Living(Ayn Rand’s first book) on there too. Sounds more anti-authority than anything.
OK, I like her. That was actually kind of a brilliant answer to his question.
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I offer this explanation to his posing this question to various people.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."he may be highly intelligent and have serious mental problems. The latter is more evident from his problems relating to other ppl which we learn about from what his teachers and fellow students have said. all the groups you posted about are ppl interacting with each other and operating in groups.
You are right in that it is not unusual at all for a mentally ill person to also be highly intelligent. Difficulties with socialization are typical of schizophrenia. Many will interpret their actions as just “weird”, but it is actually the only way in which many are comfortable interacting with other people in society. If one does not understand how an ill person perceives what is going on around them, then they cannot really develop a realistic reference from which to judge them.
The more I read about this guy and what his friends and acquaintances say about his behavior the last several years, I am tending to think that there is really no political motivation behind his actions. He really has followed an almost classic pattern of descent into a schizophrenic world of delusion. Schizophrenia symptoms generally appear in young adulthood and reading the accounts given by his friends of the gradual changes and the fixations that he developed are right in line with delusional schizophrenia. The fact that he kept a journal is also another aspect common to schizophrenia with delusions.
That is not to say that delusional schizophrenics cannot or will not be influenced by inflammatory rhetoric like we have seen in the political arena the last two years. But in this case I haven’t yet seen anything that would lead me to the conclusion that any of this guys motivation came a source such as that. I am open to any new evidence that might come out, but at this point it appears more likely that this guy was simply following a rationale that he had created in his mind from scattered tidbits of paranoid conspiracy theories along with the types of other deluded thinking that is a part of the disease of paranoid schizophrenia.
Unfortunately, what is going to happen is that the thing which would most help avoid a situation like this again in the future will probably not even be addressed in the political noise that is going to follow this. And that thing is a renewed effort to properly fund and support the proper structuring and services of our mental health system in this country. That is the root cause of how these situations fester for years under everyone’s radar screens. And they only come to forefront of our attention when the final, predicable and tragic event takes place. There will be all manner of people running around over the next few months trying desperately to pass varying legislation that treats only the symptom. And that will be saddest legacy of all to this.
Carolyn McCarthy’s legislation will be a help in prevention of disaster, but I agree with you Richard. In the student situation I mentioned on the other thread, the student was targeting the one student who interacted in a friendly manner with him. As far as marijuana use goes, the student was self medicating with marijuana and that’s how intervention came about before anyone was injured. imo most ppl under the severe mental stress of that kind try to repress and subdue their inner conflicts and avoid a mental blowup (or breakdown). I’m not a mental health professional by any means but I’ve known some ppl like this up close. For example they may have a confused sense of self and talk about suicide, but act it out by violence against someone they [think] they have a relationship with (or vice versa). They may consider themselves already dead – we have no idea what that altar in the backyard was about. Let me say again my observations are totally based on anecdotal evidence. For whatever, I have seen up close some pretty disturbed ppl. The important thing about your point is that the families are not always willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the problems. The more resources available, the more likely someone outside will catch it and intervene. The violent rhetoric context also makes it more difficult to deal with because the context is also unreal.
Speaking as someone who is very close to a person suffering from delusional schizophrenia and who refuses medication, I can tell you that it is a very confusing, complicated and unnerving situation. Society as a whole really is truly ignorant about this disease. Misconceptions and misinformation run rampant, as most people will know the disease only from news stories and tragedies such as this; when someone who suffers goes over the edge and commits a violent or newsworthy crime.
The almost complete dismantling of the national mental health structure over the last generation has gone largely unnoticed, except to those of us who know someone who would benefit greatly. Mental illness is the single most under-diagnosed and under-treated disease in this country. Our mental health system now consists mostly of prisons, which is where most of the ill people end up. It is a national disgrace what we have done.
I see that the questions is at least being asked as to whether or not there is something that can be done to try and prevent something like this in the future. But I’m not holding my breath. As a country we have decided by our actions that we just don’t give a shit about these people. Except to lock them up or execute them after it is too late.
Sorry to hear about your experience in that regard. It is heartbreaking to see the inner suffering and lost potential. Some of the ppl I have known in that situation were not nice ppl, some were/ are sweet, tragic cases. imo cutting mental health resources goes back to the same issue we as progressives are facing in other areas. We in the USA need to combine our culture of individual responsibility with commitment to social “safety net” services. it’s just unrealistic to think the family of someone that disturbed will catch it before the person ruins their li, and maybe the lives of many others, and have the resources to deal with it.
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Includes a bit of KKK, White Supremacists and is Anti-Jewish.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."to come up with an answer along the lines of “If words don’t mean anything you won’t mind me answering in Spanish”. I guess that’s why she’s a politician and I’m not.
Couple of points
“Schizophrenia”, according to the briefing I received when I was to monitor a halfway house of 18 outpatients, is associated with depression and despondency more than rage. A catchall phrase which might more honestly be described as a WTF copout from what I can tell, it is disabling to a person’s ability to hold a job more because they’ do weird shit’ more than anything else.
Medication is available to control it : but is chronically rejected ( would you want to think you needed to be tranked to live your life ? )
Lack of healthcare support ends up with many of the afflicted ending uphomeless and dying. That happens up here in the land of universal government healthcare too.
Just in case you wondered why social workers exhibit symptoms we associate with PTSD.
Taking MJ
Um. What part of the b.s. associated with use of a native medicinal herb which kills pain, works against cancer, and gives people a ‘high’ which makes them placid and laid back works to implicate it in making a madman run amok ?
There’s plenty of guilt to go around…but you can bet the real culprits will never be considered.
Everything about Loughen’s politics that has come out so far fits the ideology of the “sovereign citizens,” a particularly loony offshoot of right-wing weirdness.
The SPLC devoted the fall issue of their “Intelligence Report” to “sovereign citizens.”
There aren’t many of them, but they are real, they are loony, and they have a record of violence.
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See also my recent comments:
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."According to Gabrielle Gifford’s husband, the best way to show your support is to make a donation to one or both of the following organizations:
Community Food Bank
3003 S Country Club Rd # 221
Tucson, AZ 85713-4084
(520) 622-0525
American Red Cross, Southern Arizona Chapter
2916 East Broadway Boulevard
Tucson, AZ 85716
(520) 318-6740