‘I don’t think Jared’s a good person to go shooting with.’
January 10, 2011, 2:34 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
MoJo political reporter (and one-time Commonweal editorial assistant) Nick Baumann has just filed a must-read interview with a close friend of Jared Lee Loughner. It begins:
At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn’t answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: “Hey man, it’s Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later.”
Read the rest right here.
For more on Loughner’s insanity, check out the Wikipedia article on David Wynn Miller, the so-called semantic theorist and tax protestor. He thinks among other things that you can change who you are — stop being yourself! — by adding a preposition to your name. This, he claims, will get you out of paying taxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=wynn+miller
Sheer madness, and Loughner is not the only one who takes Miller seriously. Miller has been called as an expert witness in several court cases. (!)
The center does not hold.
Since insanity is the only potentially viable defense the defendant has, his defense counsel will be very interested in these kinds of reports of interviews with Loughner’s friends and acquaintances. I’m sure the “dream journal,” assuming it has been already been seized (or will be seized) by the Government, will provide a lot of fodder for the defense psychiatrists.
I wonder if a video will turn up of Rep. Giffords’s attempt to answer Loughner’s bizarre and unanswerable question. From everything I’ve read and heard about her and her dedication to her job, she no doubt made a polite effort to answer the question.
Some of Loughner’s alleged comments (from the Baumann piece) are illuminating:
As Loughner and Tierney grew closer, Tierney got used to spending the first ten minutes or so of every day together arguing with Loughner’s “nihilist” view of the world. “By the time he was 19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics and how the world is really nothing—illusion,”
Once, Tierney recalls, Loughner told him, “I’m pretty sure I’ve come to the conclusion that words mean nothing.”
Loughner would also tell Tierney and his friends that life “means nothing,”
“The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,”
“I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it.”
“Punish your enenies, reward your friends.”
“Get in your neighbors’ faces”
“If they bring a knife, we bring a gun.”
Oh, wait…
Can we blame Loughner on Derrida, post-modern semiotics and nihilism? Fortunately most young people channel their nihilism into hedonism and consumerism, not violence.
JC –
It wouldn’t be the first time that philosophers, by their introduction of vocabulary and catch phrases that make their way into the non-academic language, affect the thinking of non-academic people. Remember Marx and the Soviet Communists? ? Remember Nietzsche’s influence on Hitler?
Indirectly if not directly, philosophy does have consequences.
It seems to me based on the interview that this young does in fact have schizophrenia. He stopped taking drugs (although not completely contrary to what his friend said). Apparently, marijuna can trigger psychotic episodes in some 20% of the population. He probably has been exhibiting some of the signs but has not had to have any intervention because he would not have met a criteria for involuntary hospitalization.
The whole waking dream world is an attempt it seems to interpret his psychosis that he was unable to break free from.
Very, very tragic and sad.
I do not think that this was really due to the media, tone, etc. However, obviously handgun laws should be strengthened. I really do not understand the need anyone would have to buy a handgun and would certainly favour restrictions on their purchase. And the entire push for being able to carry concealed weapson, I cannot at all understand. That state legislatures actually pass such laws is incredible.
George D. –
Loughner’s notion that he can control the world by his thoughts also sounds like a serious case of paranoia to me. He has also referred to himself as a “King”. Very sad case, indeed. Unfortunately, if he is really as crazy as he looks, the violent will cry for his execution.
I would be very hesitant to diagnose any particular mental health condition — although Loughner is clearly very disturbed many diagnoses have overlapping symptoms, and things like sleeplessness and drug use can aggravate or even cause bizarre behavior.
Note that his friend also thought that Loughner had stopped using marijuana, and it may be that marijuana use had been an effort at “self-medication” that eased his symptoms, or at least made him less likely to act on them.
Hopefully he will open up to the psychiatrists at Butner or wherever they send him for pre-trial evaluation.
Ann
I am going to talk to a psychiatrist friend who has a forensic background about his thoughts on this. Not sure if he is following it. The interview was interesting and reading between the lines, certain patterns emerge. I read somewhere that his cessation of drugs might have made things worse. The drugs while triggering some states may have had a sedating effect. Once he went off them the thoughts went out of control and his agression increased. I saw his picture and he is smiling. He seems to be in an active state of psychosis.
Another comment I read is that they should raise the minimum age of purchasing a handgun to 25. At least if it was 25 it would have reduced his access as it sounds like even friends were concerned about his stability around firearms. In that time, probably something would have surfaced that would have landed him in trouble with the law and got him mental health assistance.
Lots of unanswered questions
Barbara:
I am not sure how things work in the US or state of Arizona but I am familiar with the province of Ontario. If there is a question of his mental illness he would be subject to a 30 day criminal responsibility assessment. The assessment is not to determine the specific illness but to determine if he is criminally responsible.
Note that this does not mean that he is “getting off by reason of insanity”. If he were found not criminally responsible, he would be held in a psychiatric forensic facility and as I understand it, he can undergo forced treatment.
Thanks, George D. I’ll be interested to hear what your friend has to say.
I really wish some psychiatrists and psychologists would join this blog. We could certainly use their expertise. But they don’t seem to read Commonweal. Sigh.
George D. –
P. S. While; you’re at it, ask your friend about the effect, if any, of violent political rhetoric on unstable and crazy people.
Remembering how John Paul II thought that Our Lady of Fatima guided a certain bullet, I can’t help wonder who guided Loughner’s.
This killer was sold an extended magazine, without which 6 killed and 14 wounded would not have happened. Question to all gun advocates .. why do we have to sell extended magazines when law enforcement does not have them. An extended magazine ban will be a very small step… but will be big step for those not killed in the next and next and next 20 massacres.
Is it a combination of guns plus a society comfortable with ultra-violence practiced both at home and abroad? Polls show that among all countries in the world, the American public leads in the percentage of those supporting torture – something unthinkable just a few years ago but, hey, our Dear Leaders (Bush and Obama) said it was O.K. so there you have it, loyalty is our virtue (which I think was the motto of the SS).
The desire to say “just a lone nut,” bespeaks a country in profound social crisis. Wasn’t there just a mass murder from another psycho at another college just a couple years ago? The kid who murdered an astonishing 32 of his classmates? In response, the loudest voices said that the problem was that guns were NOT allowed on campus, that is, that gun laws were TOO restrictive. In other words, they present a society in which institutions such as law are powerless to defend the people and the only answer to a lone “bad guy” is a bloody shootout, i.e. just about every American film ever made with few exceptions.
Here is a revealing article on the social significance of the Arizona massacre:
http://web.overland.org.au/2011/01/11/the-social-significance-of-the-arizona-massacre/
penultimate sentence should read “the bad guys” not “a lone bad guy.” I allude to characters anywhere from High Noon to Taxi Driver.
Bob Herbert writes in today’s NYT: “According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed.”
A 9 year old child, a Congress woman, a judge, an elderly woman from NJ, 34 people are murdered by handguns everyday in the USA.
Enough, Enough. If we embrace the teaching and example of Jesus on the primacy of Peacemaking then we must work to oppose, no stop, the violence and hatred. Especially when it is fostered by those persons who consider themselves leaders.
Im sorry, but people like Ron Paul, GLenn Beck and Sarah Palin are not Robert Kennedy, Daniel Berrigan or Martin Luther KIng.
Peace to all.
The interview is very important journalism, thanks for posting it.
This is a troubled person, not a dittohead, not a joiner–but a mentally ill person.
He didn’t even vote: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/10/accused-gunman-had-no-party-affiliation/?hpt=T2
richard mcgarry: Your post might carry more credibility if you had included the bloodthirsty rhetoric if domestic Islamic extremists. But I realize that they belong to a protected category in certain circles.
Enough, Enough. If we embrace the teaching and example of Jesus on the primacy of Peacemaking then we must work to oppose, no stop, the violence and hatred. Especially when it is fostered by those persons who consider themselves leaders.
And then there is the bothersome detail of the 1st Ammendment.
Ann:
No psychologists or psychiatrists, perhaps, but this psychiatric social worker is a long-term Commonweal subscriber who regularly lurks at dotCommonweal. My posting at Vox Nova on January 9, 2011 reflects the consensus of my colleagues who work with psychiatric inpatients:
So far the media commentary has variously pegged the assailant as a Tea Partier, a pot head, a liberal, an anti-abortionist, and a leftie…and the analysis has just begun. Sort of an ideological Rorschach test.
I think M.Z. got it right at 11:02 last night: enough already of the instant meta-narratives.
How about we focus on the indisputable role of psychosis, an equal opportunity affliction, for this tragedy? All signs certainly point in that direction. Mental health and law enforcement professionals routinely encounter and release individuals with bizarre delusions as well as command hallucinations to hurt themselves and others. Those suffering from psychosis in its various forms often have no insight into their illnesses. In the vast majority of cases they may not be compelled to take anti-psychotic meds that might diminish their symptoms and protect both them and others.
The critical questions: What is it about our society that seems to trigger psychotic outbursts? Are our love affairs with individualsm and autonomy preventing us from containing psychotic decompensation? How might we reach out to the tens of thousands of Jareds among us?
“— bothersome detail of the 1st Ammendment.”
Free speech in this country is not an absolute.
For a start, there is such a thing as a “clear and present danger test.” (Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919) The key passage is this: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”
Additionally you cannot libel somebody without repercussions, you cannot talk of bombs while on aircraft and you cannot use threatening language against the President without a visit from authorities. We do have limitations (albeit small) on free speech in this country.
Strange thing is:
http://i.imgur.com/47MWM.jpg
Someone found this. It could be a hoax. Or the other could be a hoax.
Jimmy Mac:
Point taken. But then what are we to make of Obama’s pre-presidency remarks I posted earlier:
Punish your enenies, reward your friends.
Get in your neighbors’ faces
If they bring a knife, we bring a gun.
Not exactly conducive to civility. He should set the tone.
Mike McG –
Glad to hear from an expert. Your expertise will no doubt be especially valuable when Loughner goes to trial, and many people will scream for the death penalty. Please speak up then too.
There is appalling ignorance in this country about mental illness. If I could change two things in our educational system I’d require some basic psychology and economics in high school. Ignorance of them is at the heart of many of our most basic national problems, I think.
I think both psychiatric care and gun control should be discussed at a time like this.
Speech control, not so much…
Oh oh, here comes another Patriot Act, or at least I smell one in the works, and so far it stinks.
Before we “submit” to more restrictions on American society as a result of this particular AZ lunatic e.g., federal gun ownership and speech restrictions which no doubt will be presented to us as liberating, something, “..for the sake of public safety, homeland security, for the children you understand…” (maybe they will call it the Freedom from Fear Act) it is worth looking into the killer’s formative years, specifically his high school days, and keeping in mind that unlike the vast, vast majority of Americans, this man is mentally unbalanced and has been for more than a few years.
Ken,
Why are you so pessimistic and cynical about the possibility of a society free from the fear of mass murder? You have to take a vision test to apply for a driver’s license. If you fail it, you don’t get a license. Are you against that?
Ken
I think the so called freedom from fear act is laws permitting concealed weapons.
And I think that this person should be given the dignity of at least being understood as clearly a person with a serious mental illness and I am 99% sure he will be diagnosed accurately and probably for the first time in his life with one and maybe actually in the facility receive treatment.
As for lunacy, the only lunacy is concealed weapon laws and the legislatures that support them
Obama’s knife and gun remark shows that he is not immune to the toxins of violence. More striking to me is the callous way he joked about predator drones at one of those stand-up comedy meet-the-press dinners.
James Joyce, that fearless truth-teller, was asked why he did not return to his native land. “Because I’d be shot in the street!” “But, Mr Joyce, who would do such a think — only a madman!” “Precisely.”
Had Joyce been shot the people who guided the madman’s trigger would have been those who had demonized him and portrayed him as the devil incarnate (and who persecuted his relatives). The same is true of the Palinesque demonizers.
CNN is livecasting a specail Mass for the victims.
Mark Hemingway on a stunning bit of hypocrisy from ousted Rep. Paul Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania:
Ex-Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., pens an op-ed in the New York Times today about the proper political response to this weekend’s tragedy. I wholeheartedly support the former Congressman (Kanjorski lost his seat in November) when he argues that, following this weekend’s shooting, Congressman need to remain open and accessible to the public. However, Kanjorski is rather hypocritical when he climbs up on his soapbox:
We all lose an element of freedom when security considerations distance public officials from the people. Therefore, it is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.
Incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect? Congressman heal thyself! Yesterday, I noted that, according to the Scranton Times, that Kanjorski said this about Florida’s new Republican Governor Rick Scott on October 23:
“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.”
P Flanagan
I would rather Christian freedom than secular, materialistic freedom. Many things which we see are “freedom” in the US, many things people demand as “what it takes to be free” such as guns, abortions, etc, are not really freedom, but Orwellian anti-freedoms portrayed as freedom. Those who do not understand freedom will look in the wrong direction, and really, what they are saying is “I want to do what I want to do, you can’t tell me otherwise.” That, however, is not true freedom, that is a prison. The prison of the self controlled by fallen passions, thinking passions must be right. Read Pope Benedict XVI on the way society misunderstands freedom. The Christian response is to find true freedom in the cross, not in the sword.
What I see by so many with an ideological perspective of the United States, looking at things as not being able to be improved and changes as being “unfreedom” is that they have a utopian ideology, and one which ignores the real world where most people suffer due to the “grasp for freedom” a few are able to afford.
I fear we are wired to rail against the outrageous discourse of the other tribe but contextualize equivalent invective when it comes from our own. I wonder if other Democratic correspondents are as disturbed as I am by the Scranton Times quote above attributed to former Representative Kanjorski.
I honestly believe that a disproportionate amount of recent vile discourse comes from the Right. It is mistaken to posit a false equivalence…even though Dana Milbank opined yesterday in the Washington Post that two years ago the roles were reversed.
On the other hand it is distressing for me to observe fellow Democrats so reluctant to own our role in the ugliness and so eager to point fingers. For all the content differences in the evening lineups of FOX and MSNBC, for example, the contempt, the shadenfreude, the disdain, the sneers are remarkably similar.
And make no mistake, experiencing one’s views and values mocked has consequences. It often drives the more issue-oriented among further left or right. It often drives the moderates among us out of the fray. While the impact on the unstable among us isn’t absolutely certain, it can’t be good for them either.
But more than unseemly, the pointing of fingers is unwise. The hallmark of psychosis is disorganization so the path from one party’s hate speech to a troubled young man’s violence is crooked at best. The effort to pin the violence on one party or ideology will come back to haunt us when the next incident suggests linkages to the opposite party and ideology.
Do we really want to start tallying misdeeds by demographic categories? Can you imagine where that might take us?
Speaking of mental illness, may I lure you away momentarily with this fascinating story of true crime?
It resembles one of those Chicago stories told by unagidon. In this case, the suspect has been convicted, but a retired investigator thinks the real culprit had gotten away.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_collarbomb/all/1
Back in high school, according to former classmates, Diehl-Armstrong was known for her dazzling intelligence, and she still possessed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of literature, history, and the law. But over the years, that brilliance had become spiked with madness…
Henry Karlson said,
I would rather Christian freedom than secular, materialistic freedom.
So would I, Henry, but constitutional law forbids the imposition of Christian religious values on the citizenry at large.