Arizona Shooter

[shipperx]

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/23/133156205/A-Look-Inside-Loughners-Mind-Reveals-Our-Own
A Look Inside Loughner's Mind Reveals Our Own by Wade Goodwyn

Excerpt:

Mr. MARK POTOK (Director, Intelligence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center): And I thought quite clearly, overall, he was very mentally ill and also virtually illiterate, extremely difficult to follow.

GOODWYN: Potok says that beneath the rambling discourse, a hint, an outline of political ideology is evident.

Mr. POTOK: I also felt that this was a person who was mentally ill who had absorbed some very particular ideas from the radical right and, in particular, from the conspiracy theorists on the radical right.

GOODWYN: Potok believes that though Loughner is mentally disturbed it's no accident that he allegedly targeted Giffords.

Mr. POTOK: It seems to me just as likely that someone like Loughner might have targeted his own family or a McDonald's restaurant or an elementary school, God help us, but he chose to attack the highest representative of the federal government in his area. So, I think it's legitimate to wonder, how did this man select his target?[...]

GOODWYN: Loughner's writings and videos on YouTube, MySpace and a conspiracy website called 'Above Top Secret' reveal, above all, a deep distrust of the federal government. [...] For example, that the American currency is worthless because it's not backed by gold and silver. [...] Loughner also wrote about the government trying to use grammar to enslave citizens through mind control, a theory he may have borrowed from 'patriot' conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller. Chip Berlet, a political research associate, says Loughner also wrote about something called the second American Constitution. That refers to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments after Reconstruction, which freed the slaves and granted citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.

Mr. CHIP BERLET (Political Research Associate): In white supremacist circles and in certain right wing conspiracy circles, the argument is that these Reconstruction amendments invalidated the actual first legitimate Constitution and that ever since then the government of the United States has been operating illegally.

[...]GOODWYN: Amber Troy is a linguistics student at the University of Arizona who shared a poetry class with Jared Loughner at the local community college. Troy says that Loughner would bring up subjects like currency conspiracies but that he was so incoherent he was practically unintelligible.

Dr. MICHAEL BRENNAN (President, Arizona Psychiatric Society): Lots of people have the idea that government is less than benign. But when it takes on a very concerted effort to specifically try and undermine you and somehow control you as though you were slave-like, that takes on a delusional proportion and a delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to reason.

GOODWYN: Brennan says there are more people than we might think who are prone to political delusions. Some of those delusions simply skirt the edges of logic while others are other there - way out there. But Brennan says delusional rarely equals violent - rarely but not never...