Weird that this was the first media outlet to get it right.
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.”
That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a sickening feeling: “They hadn’t released the name, but I said, ‘Holy shit, I think it’s Jared that did it.’” Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a “fake.” Loughner’s animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. He also describes Loughner as being obsessed with “lucid dreaming”—that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and says Loughner became “more interested in this world than our reality.” Tierney adds, “I saw his dream journal once. That’s the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner’s mind, there’s a dream journal that will tell you everything.”
Full story on their site. And everyone using this incident to push their political points can suck it.
The Beatles murdered Sharon Tate.
William Luther Pierce murdered those in the Murrah Bldg.
Mohammad killed those in the WTC
The guy suffered from severe and persistent mental illness. The morons who are trying to turn this into a political thing (either left or right) should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, they are not. Obama missed his teachable moment too. He focused on maintaining civility in political discourse rather than calling for laws that help family members to make sure that their loved ones get the help they so clearly need.
Which people on the right are trying to turn this into a political thing?
What is interesting is that the political left (such as it is) comes out and clubs the right with all these theories of cause and effect. Then their theories go down in flames because nobody is buying their nonsense…and suddenly they are agreeing that the left and right need to tone it down and maintain civility.
1. I am not going to temper what I say based on how some lunatic might react because loonies can react to things like someone suggesting they have soup instead of the sandwich for lunch.
2. Defending oneself from these kinds of claims is not the same as making them.
3. Using the sorrow of others to push your political agenda isn’t a lot different than what the Westboro Baptist Church does and I hold these folks on the left at the same level of esteem.
“Which people on the right are trying to turn this into a political thing?” You and Garrison, for two. Dumbass.
Anonymous is an F’ing coward…not too bright and wrong on just about everything….I assume there are more than one who posts here under that clever screen name. So the f’ing cowards, not too bright who are wrong about most everything are legion.
If it weren’t political, you wouldn’t even be here, asserting your faux conservative indignation at faux liberals for asserting that there was a political element to Jared Loughner’s “insanity.” And you’re the fucking coward for using “f’ing” as if that makes you somehow more sanitary. What a pasty-faced, flabby, fucking loser you are, “Phillip.”
Both sides are guilty of making this political.
It’s nothing but a tragedy caused by a seriously deranged individual. The attempt to give it a political context due to the victim being a politician is entirely self-serving–it takes the focus off the victims and places it squarely back onto those who make this about politics.
Neither the left or right have the market cornered on crazy. The left has PETA and the Brady Bunch, while the right has Beck and Palin.
“It’s nothing but a tragedy caused by a seriously deranged individual.”
Yes, just like 9-11.
@ Anonymous: Be careful, your reductionism is showing.
Tim, someone who asserts that the Tucson shootings were “nothing but” a tragedy caused by a seriously deranged individual, has set the bar for reductionism too low. Loughner had his own twisted ideology just like the rest of the mass murderers. Who gets to pick and choose which mass murders are “deranged” and which are justifiable homicides?
Anon,
You don’t know what the F you are talking about. Loughner suffers from severe and persistent mental illness. His actions had NOTHING to do with ideology. Does that excuse his actions? No. But it does take his actions out of the realm of politics. He is ill. He needs treatment. And the laws prevent even his family members from making that happen. This isn’t about politics. This is about mental illness.
No Frank, YOU don’t know what the fuck YOU’RE talking about. If Loughner’s actions had NOTHING to do with ideology, he would have killed the first human he laid eyes on.
Face it, you, Garrison and the rest of the ‘conservative’ chattering class are the first to get on your soapbox about radical Islam, or rap music, or some other driver for violent acts, as long as the message behind the mass murder du jour in some way opposes your own libertarian free-for-all fantasy.
And of course, you good conservatives would oppose universal health care that just might have helped Loughner separate the insanity from his ideology.
@ Anonymous: Ideology actually requires a functioning and consistent brain. Loughner had neither, so reducing his actions to ideology is conflating ideology with mental illness.
Again, with the reductionism.
1) Loughner obviously has mental illness as evidenced by many of his youtube videos.
2) Even though his target was a politician, it doesn’t make his motivations political (Was John Lennon’s killer a music-hater? No.)
3) No one said what Loughner did was “justifiable” homicide–no, quite the contrary. Those were your words.
If you choose the view everything through the lense of ideology, you will make the mistake of reducing everything down to ideological explanations, even to the point of over-applying your constructs and filter to buttress your world-view.
Ideology and mental illness are not mutually exclusive. To assert that ideology and mental illness never intersect accomplishes nothing, as you only have to turn on the news at any time to find examples of people killing other people for reasons that that don’t fit neatly into one realm or the other. Are today’s deaths in Eqypt the result of ideology or mental illness?
And if there are so many mentally ill people walking the streets of the US, why are you so eager to deny them free access to mental health care?
Anon, you still haven’t a clue as to what you are talking about. That Loughner’s illness involved political rantings are as significant as the Unibomber’s bizarre socio-political rantings or the mentally ill folks who kill someone who because they believe them to be demons or a Mark David Chapman’s bizarre notions of John Lennon. The illness is the cause, not the tragically flawed reason. I have experience with the mentally ill and know precisely what I am talking about.
As for your comment regarding free care for the mentally ill, again you don’t know what you are talking about. The laws which protect the mentally ill actually prevent others, even family members, from helping the mentally ill get help. While these laws were created decades ago to prevent incorrect involuntary treatment, they have also resulted in the mentally ill going untreated, being “forced” into treatment only when they have attempted suicide or harmed others. That is the law in Arizona, Texas and many other states as well.
Finally, as expected you conflate fanaticism, like that on display in the Middle East or elsewhere with mental illness. Allowing one’s emotions over an issue to trump reason is long distance from mental illness where the disconnect with reality is strikingly severe. There is no comparison and your attempt to mix the two again demonstrates that you don’t know what you are talking about.
“The laws which protect the mentally ill actually prevent others, even family members, from helping the mentally ill get help.”
Yes, and my point is the laws need to be changed. And it’s the Tea Party ‘libertarian,’ every man for himself ideology that stands in the way of the impoverished mentally ill from getting help on their own.
It must be nice to have such a clear-cut, black and white view of the world, where all murders clearly fit into either two categories; the perpetrator is either perfectly rational and sane and acting from some ideological or religious motive, or he’s bat-shit crazy. It would be nice if the world was that simple,
“every man for himself ideology that stands in the way of the impoverished mentally ill from getting help on their own.”
As usual Anon your politics taint your point of view. The plain fact is that approximately 40%, maybe slightly more, of the mentally ill have an inability to recognize their illness. As a result they would not get treatment if it were given away free on every street corner. The problem is not the affordability, in many cases, it is how to actually make sure that those who actually need the treatment get it. You say your point is that the laws need to be changed, but your prior posts give no indication you have even a clue as to what laws you are talking about. You simply blather on about denying treatment to the “impoverished.” There are many, many, mentally ill who come from families who could afford treatment. Yet the laws prevent their loved ones from taking an active roll in pressing for their treatment.
I am not the one who proposed the sort of dichotomy you suggest regarding murders. I see many causes of murder other than those you mention. You are the one who suggested the simple explanation that Loughner acted out of political ideology, not me. I suggested an explanation for more complex and difficult.
“You are the one who suggested the simple explanation that Loughner acted out of political ideology, not me”
Now you’re just being obtuse. I contend that ideology and insanity are not always that easy to differentiate, and that Loughner’s ‘true’ motives are no easier to discern than those of other mass murderers who appear to be motivated purely (as you and others seem to insist) by religion or ideology.
And yes, in my fantasy world, we would have universal health care, where people who cannot afford hundreds of dollars in monthly premiums can go – of their own volition or at the encouragement of friends or loved ones – to get mental health care.
You and Trey seem to be espousing your own brand of ‘libertarianism’ which is essentially your own stingy self-interest, the Law of the Modern Jungle where the poor and unemployed are just unwanted members of the herd that are entitled to nothing more than to be thinned with expedience.
“I contend that ideology and insanity are not always that easy to differentiate.”
If you truly believe that statement then you know absolutely nothing about mental illness.
Again, the issue is not availability, it is how to get the ill person to seek help. The laws won’t allow family members to force the issue without a very byzantine process which is not always in the best interest of either the person suffering or those around him or her.
“the Law of the Modern Jungle where the poor and unemployed are just unwanted members of the herd that are entitled to nothing more than to be thinned with expedience.”
Not sure how, exactly, that even fits into the discussion other than stating it allows you to post your pet rant.
Not sure how the above post got credited to Anon, but . . . it was mine.
“I contend that ideology and insanity are not always that easy to differentiate.â€
If you truly believe that statement then you know absolutely nothing about mental illness.
Again, the issue is not availability, it is how to get the ill person to seek help. The laws won’t allow family members to force the issue without a very byzantine process which is not always in the best interest of either the person suffering or those around him or her.
“the Law of the Modern Jungle where the poor and unemployed are just unwanted members of the herd that are entitled to nothing more than to be thinned with expedience.â€
Not sure how, exactly, that even fits into the discussion other than stating it allows you to post your pet rant.