People v. State

From an article in The Arizona Republic about how crazy Jared Loughner was/is:

In August 2007, Loughner put a cryptic question to Giffords at a public event: “What’s government if words don’t have meaning?”

It seemed an attack on the very legitimacy of government. Giffords fumbled for a reply. Loughner wouldn’t forget it, her or his question.

Three years later, the same question appeared in the last line of a YouTube screed called “Introduction: Jared Loughner.” The lengthy post read like a manifesto.

. . .

Loughner thought money not backed by gold was unconstitutional. That those in power kept it by controlling grammar, words, numbers and symbols; that the CIA and FBI read his online messages; that spaceflight and organized religion were frauds; that teachers and government used mind control.

. . .

Such ideas anchor a number of New Age spiritualist websites that blend theories of lucid dreaming, secret knowledge and government conspiracies, along with several other concepts Loughner wrote about.

It’s unknown whether Loughner accessed such sites, but the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and extremists, commented on the similarities soon after the shooting.

Taken as a whole, the ideas dovetail with the message of a 2001 full-length animation film “Waking Life,” which news reports said was among Loughner’s favorites.

. . .

In an online post, Loughner named [Philip K.] Dick and George Orwell among his favorite authors. Orwell’s classic “1984” depicts a totalitarian government that can change history by altering language and climaxes when the hero is tortured into submission by agreeing that “2+2=5.”

. . .

He started calculating his life earnings and what he’d paid for education.

. . .

Retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, whose career focused on mass shooters, says a common trait is what she calls an “injustice collector.” Such shooters often collect grudges, let them ferment and unleash an act of revenge far out of proportion to the initial insult.

It clearly appears that Jared Loughner was indeed clinically insane at the time he committed the terrible actions for which he is incarcerated. What’s disturbing about the article in The Arizona Republic is that it seems to imply that certain ideas (rational in themselves) were part and parcel of his insanity, and that these ideas are therefore as insane and dangerous as Loughner is.

This very blog is “an attack on the very legitimacy of [the] government.” When I first read this opinion issued by the Indiana Supreme Court, my immediate response was to write: “Words, including the words of which the law is made, are worthless.” (Cf. Loughner’s “What’s government if words don’t have meaning?”) The irrationality and the injustice of the court’s opinion literally left me speechless.

Mass shooters are commonly “injustice collectors”? Well, here is just one well-regarded blog, titled Injustice Everywhere, which is exactly that.

“Waking Life” is a damn fine movie. According to Wikipedia, its title is a reference to philosopher George Santayana’s maxim: “Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.” Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars, and included it on his ongoing list of “Great Movies.”

A lot of people, including a lot of lawyers, are beginning to realize that education, including law school, is a scam.

Is it crazy to think that money not backed by gold is unconstitutional, or that the CIA and the FBI (like the Southern Poverty Law Center) monitors “extremists” online? Is it crazy to regard Orwell’s “1984” as prophetic, and to see his prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes? Do we not hear, even in this Arizona Republic article itself, the advent of Newspeak, i.e., “the destruction of words” (cf., again, Loughner) and of nuance and distinction, in the equation of attacking “the very legitimacy of government” with insanity?

Loughner is indeed crazy. He’s lost it. But did the State, which shackles and steals from its subjects and then tells them to fly, help drive him mad? How many other fragile minds and desperate souls, especially in this time of artificial and aggravated poverty and unemployment, will be driven by the State’s crimes and doublethink to such madness?

Deliberate and premeditated violence that is gratuitous and unnecessary is madness. It was Loughner’s madness. It is the State’s madness.

I disavow that madness. I fear Room 101. Therefore I speak, while we still can, in spite of the Thought Police.

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