Suspected Arizona Shooter’s Motives in Question, but Should Not Be Politicized

The recent and horrific incident in Arizona has grabbed the complete attention of the media and has forced the nation to ask why. As of right now, the facts seem to be this: a young man opened fire outside a grocery store that was hosting a small meet and greet event by the local U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  In total, six people were killed, including a nine-year-old child and a federal judge, twelve were wounded. At present, it appears Representative Giffords is alive despite a point blank gunshot to the head that passed through her brain.

The motives of the person taken into custody by authorities for this shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, are now and will soon be of even more interest to the nation given the current political atmosphere in the country, especially in Arizona. The two most important things people who are not directly involved in this matter can do now and in the future are to hope for the well-being of the victims and not spin or try to gain politically from this act.

The following information will be an assessment and critique of the possible motives and beliefs of Jared Lee Loughner, and it will be updated and changed dependent on new information or consensuses.

Using Loughner’s YouTube account as a main source, his philosophy, if it can be called that, seems to be completely outside the left-right paradigm that characterizes the political climate in the United States. His primary target, Rep. Giffords, may also attest to this. She is a moderate “blue dog” Democrat, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that she was targeted for any particular stance on any issues as of yet. Loughner’s account is made up of a brief and perplexing array of videos that don’t seem to be the product of a sane mind.  These videos included five on one channel and then one lone video on another that was added to his favorites (though it looks to be authored by him as well).  The profile also contains personal information  that appears to be the same as that found on his now defunct Myspace page.

Though it is impossible to say which video Loughner made first, the first video to be posted on YouTube was the lone video on the account ‘Starhitshnaz.’ Pictured is one long shot of an American flag burned by a person in an odd costume in the desert. The costume is nothing more than a black trash bag, a brown pullover, and some white covering over the face. The video and its captions mention a nonexistent bird, BCE not starting, a reference to the Constitution and an allusion to an incidence with police over free speech. Unlike the ‘Starhitshnaz’ account, ‘Classitup10’ lists the owner’s name as Jared Lee Loughner, the accused shooter. However, the two accounts share the same repetitious themes and the same blood-red background.  Logically, it seems the accounts were created by the same person.

The ‘Classitup10’ account contains five videos that go into further detail about Loughner’s views. The videos are titled:

• How To: Your New Currency!
• This Student At Pima Community College: An Unconstitutional Crime!
• How To: Mind Controller
• Introduction: Jared Loughner
• Hello

The videos do not contain any actual recordings of Loughner’s image or voice, only odd instrumental trip hop or beat music of some kind accompanying text and/or images created with a program of MS Paint caliber. The texts in these videos are repetitive ramblings that often follow a logic pattern: first a statement, then a restatement, and a concluding statement only similarly different from the first statement. Basically this:

If A is happening, then B is happening.

A is happening.

Thus B is happening.

Loughner repeatedly brings up the idea that people can and should create their own currency and control their own “English grammar,” things Loughner believes the government is wrongly doing. This government control is brainwashing people and seemingly putting them into a sleeping state where only a select few, such as him, can manage to see that they are in a dream.  He presents these ideas as mentioned with his circular logical fallacy style of three statements. He also mentions himself by first and last name as being at MEPS (military entrance processing station) and alludes to being kicked off of Pima Community College for disrupting class and how this is unconstitutional.

More than once Loughner complains about illiteracy and asks the “listener,” or person reading the text on his video, if they are literate. This appears to be asking more about whether the audience is able to see that society is being controlled compared to literally asking if it can read.

What is interesting, when it comes to his assassination attempt, is that he for all intents mentions. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords almost directly. He states that:

Secondly, my hope – is for you to be literate! If you’re literate in English grammar, then you comprehend English grammar. The majority of people, who reside in District 8, are illiterate – hilarious. I don’t control your English grammar structure but you control your English grammar structure.

The important statement here is that Loughner refers to congressional District 8. It would be very odd for a person to make any general statement about those around them in such a way unless it was related to the person of or election of Rep. Giffords. House Districts exist almost solely for that reason, and the substitution of Tucson, or Arizona, or Americans would make more sense to say conversationally if Rep. Giffords wasn’t the indirect focus of the term.

Mentioned in the personal information area of both his YouTube and Myspace accounts are a list of books that cryptically were his favorites, in the past tense. These books seem to not have anything in common but many of them may allude to some theme relating to his motivations.

The first type of books are all dystopian, such as Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World. Each of which involves manipulation or loss of culture or language. Orwell’s most famous work 1984 and his essay “Politics and the English Language” would fit perfectly here given Loughner’s hatred of illiteracy and bad grammar.

Loughner also listed The Wizard Of OZ, which in book form has been described by others as full of metaphors relating to the gold and silver standards of currency, an issue that Loughner brings up more than once in his videos.  His listing of the books  Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and The Republic are probably only related in that they present solutions or definitive answers to problems more than that they share a coherent worldview. Moreover, books like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and to Kill a Mockingbird have basic connotations about society and good people  trying to deal with it. While other books like The Odyssey, Peter Pan, Aesop’s Fables, and Alice Adventures Into Wonderland leave one scratching one’s head, but what is clear is that he had an admiration for works where people were under the control of systems or took over systems in order not to be controlled. This would make sense for someone who feels trapped, is paranoid, or is a conspiracy theorist to an extreme degree.

All in all, the confusing and possibly psychotic statements of Loughner are without a doubt outside the standard political atmosphere of the country. There is no apparent connection between this horrible shooting and any coherent political philosophy, and only more evidence will be able to show if the general political climate added anything to this.

[Further reading: CNN]