That's exactly why it's even more important to identify what Loughner is trying to say and to point out it has next to nothing with a more respectable, coherent and thought-out political stance. Like I said, We The Living meets the Republic in a chance encounter on the Animal Farm... Means to me next to nothing. "Grammar control" sounds like paranoia. The only discrete politics I can recover are an anti-federalist sentiment (Articles of Confederation?) and a hard-money stance... both of which are among the low-hanging fruit of American political discourse. They're not "fringe"--and not, really, that respectable.
Canadian_watcher wrote:Stop with the left/right, for the love of all that is beautiful & joyful. Please.
/rant
I only learned about this story just now, so I must have missed it when I left work at 5PM EST and stopped being exposed to CNN, which was ATM doing shaky-cam vids of Northeast in DC: "Anonymous terrorizing radical fundamentalist lone nut anarchist sends more foul-smelling envelope to locations in the two shittiest cities in the world IN THE MAIL!!!" (Seriously. Seriously. Northeast and Baltimore have got bigger fish to fry than a stink-bomb letter campaign)... So I don't know much and my thoughts aren't really assembled.
There is this, though, with a quote from the William F. Buckley of the racist right, Jared Taylor.
This comes as a law enforcement memo based on information provided by the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by Fox News suggests that alleged gunman Jared Loughner — accused of killing six people, shooting Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and wounding 12 others — may have ties to the American Renaissance group, though it's unclear if he was directly affiliated with the publication or group...
The memo states that there is "no direct connection" between Loughner and the group, "but strong suspicion is being directed at AmRen / American Renaissance. Suspect is possibly linked to this group..."
But Taylor, a 1973 graduate in philosophy from Yale University, told Fox News on Sunday that he had never heard of Loughner until Saturday and has checked the group's records going back 20 years and has not found any subscriptions for Loughner to American Renaissance publications.
He added he has no indication that Loughner ever attended any of the group's events, which have been held on the East Coast where the organization is based.
Taylor also denied references to the group as being "anti-ZOG."
"That is complete nonsense," he said. "I have absolutely no idea what DHS is talking about. We have never used the term 'ZOG.' We have never thought in those terms. If this is the level of research we are getting from DHS, then heaven help us," he said.
Read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/09/arizona-suspected-gunman-no-stranger-to-trouble/#ixzz1AZg9hVLU
There's a lot more at that link, and it looks like there's a lot of contradictory details going around. E.g., Faux says he was kicked out of school for being "disruptive" and having trouble with the admin; a bandmate says he quit school. He lived in a neighborhood with a lot of stash houses but the reporter from Fox 'quotes' someone saying that the police have "never" done anything like come to the neighborhood. Etc., etc.
The Lone Nut Angle:On Saturday night. Caitie Parker, a singer-songwriter from Arizona, said she had known Loughner when they were both teenagers and that he dropped out of school in 2006 after developing alcohol poisoning.
"I went to high school and college, and was in a band with him," she said on Twitter. "I can't even fathom this right now."
Describing him as a "political radical" and a "loner" who was "very philosophical" [DANGER SIGNS, PEOPLE!], Ms Parker claimed Loughner was "oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy", which predicts the world will end next year.
So... he's in a band, but is apparently he an orphan who was raised by handgun-toting wolves? I haven't looked at press stories ATM but it seems, well, bullshit.
Why is there so little information on the accessory/co-conspirator? I'm finding this the most interesting part and leaning towards an actual-nut/handler relationship. Judging by the guys' writing, it is really freaking incomprehensible. It reminds me of the old "notes" I would email to myself when I was at work at two AM, which without fail would mean next to nothing to me a few days and then a few months or years later. IOW: it's not the work of a cogent mind... more on that shortly.
The Shooting:What I gather is that he managed to hit between twelve and nineteen people with a pistol (apparently a 9mm semiauto), reloading at least once (20-30 rounds means 2 or 3 clips), or using an extended clip by one report, and killing about half the people he hit. I'm assuming people started running and seeking cover after he fired the first round, so this guy was clearly a very good shot. That means he had a lot of OJT or hobbyist training... which means he had friends or at least acquaintances at the firing range.
And it took EMS 30' to arrive, which suggests to me either that EMS in Tuscon is broke as a joke--if he had a rifle every single one of those victims would have bled to death by then, and even if that's a severe event for Tuscon it's called "EMERGENCY" medical services for a reason--that this Safeway was in the middle of nowhere, or that this was deliberate.
The Ideology Thing:"The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America's Constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws," the video's titles say. "In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in god!"
Like Joe Stack, this Loughner character's ideology seems utterly inchoate. I don't really sympathize with 82_28's suggestion that this is predicated by a "fascist" environment in the US. For their to be fascism there needs to be a coherent left in the US to be the target of petty bourgeois rage. Shooting a Blue Dog is hardly that... which is part of the reason this isn't making a lot of sense.
But like I said, it's incoherent. His reading list includes some Greatest Hits nonsense: "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". These are all canonical works and all very accessible and presumably on high school reading lists across the country. It's the type of stuff you'd mention if you were trying (because you really aren't) to be "deep". But I'd fear the "philosophy" that threatens to emerge from this swamp. We The Living + The Republic = ???
Mercifully, Catcher in the Rye is not on the list.
But back to this being incoherent.
There's a few fearful posts above:
Simulist wrote:Luther Blissett wrote:What is the specifically political gain from this? I can think of none.
For one thing, it will be utilized to reinforce the well-cultivated public sentiment that those who think "outside the lines" are potentially dangerous persons.
You can't reconcile the Communist Manifesto with We The Living, anyway... To call this "thinking outside the lines" relies on a very loose definition of "thinking". Not only that, but like I said, with the exception of Mein Kampf every single one of the books he lists is fucking canonical, which means its hardly "outside the lines". Which is exactly why trying to pin this down as "left/right" is a useful exercise. It's neither, not because it's "post-partisan" or "truth-seeking" or whatever ideological excuse you subscribe to, but because it's bullshit.
Canadian_watcher wrote:Distraction, gun control, the madness of the tea-party (which may have madness, but mostly since it's been co-opted), fear of 'fringe elements' in society, phobia of veterans, anti-immigrant sentiment (if the judge was the target)...
No. Incidents like this are exactly the sort that require that we identify whatever politics the actors in question subscribed to. In this case, it looks like Loughner had lots of "ideas" but little in the way of over-arching coherence to them. He mentions anti-federalism then mentions hard money. He worries about the Grammar Police, literally. t's a mixture of leftism, rightism, populism and idiosyncrasy and schizophrenia. Why is he listing The Communist Manifesto but not Capital? Why We The Living but not Atlas Shrugged? The Phantom Toll Booth? This is a lazy reading list, for certain. Like Joe Stack, I suspect that little in the way of a left or right push will be made from this because ultimately there is little to make from it. which is why any attempt to paint this as "extremism" without a major media push--and considering that this hasn't gotten the 9/11 treatment yet, that seems slow to the station--is going to fall flat.
Which is why the criminal element is probably more interesting. Who was this accessory? What's going on with the rumored American Renaissance connection if there is one?
