By any reasonable standard, the man accused of killing at least six people (including a federal judge) and critically wounding U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is mentally ill. He thinks there is a big conspiracy to “brainwash” him which involves “grammar” and “currency,” and he has posted garbled and incomprehensible Youtube videos to that effect, including one which shows him burning the American flag, with this caption:
If there’s no flag in the constitution then the flag in the film is unknown.
There’s no flag in the constitution.
Therefore, the flag in the film is unknown.
Burn every new and old flag that you see.
Burn your flag!
I bet you can imagine this in your mind with a faster speed.
Watch this protest in reverse!
Ask the local police; “What’s your illegal activity on duty?”.
If you protest the government then there’s a new government from protesting.
There’s not a new government from protesting.
Thus, you aren’t protesting the government.
There’s something important in this video: There’s no communication to anyone in this location.
You shouldn’t be afraid of the stars.
There’s a new bird on my right shoulder. The beak is two feet and lime green. The rarest bird on earth, there’s no feathers, but small grey scales all over the body. It’s with one large red eye with a light blue iris. The bird feet are the same as a woodpecker. This new bird and there’s only one, the gender is not female or male. The wings of this bird are beautiful; 3 feet wide with the shape of a bald eagle that you could die for. If you can see this bird then you will understand. You think this bird is able to chat about a government?
I want you to imagine a comet or meteoroid coming through the atmosphere.
On the other hand, welcome yourself to the desert: Maybe your ability to protest is from the brainwash of the current government structure.
He reportedly has a criminal record and a history of substance abuse.
Is anyone surprised?
While there are voices of sanity who still recognize that crazy people do crazy things, there is a growing chorus of people on the left who are determined to blame the right wing, the Tea Party movement, and Sarah Palin.
I’d like to say this has to stop, but I know it won’t. I say this in full recognition of the fact that had he somehow managed to shoot Sarah Palin, a chorus on the right would be accusing him of being on the left.
He’s not “on the right” or “on the left,” OK?
Yet because his victim happened to be a Democratic congressional rep, a growing chorus on the left is trying to spin this paranoid schizophrenic (whom Glenn rightly calls a garden variety nut) as some sort of right wing ideologue.
“Sounds like something you’d read at Free Republic,“ is how one insightful genius at the Democratic Underground characterizes his writings.
Another leftist blogger has a post titled “Jared Loughner – The Consequence of Right Wing Propaganda” which says,
Early indications are that Jared Lougner was a greatly misguided and easily manipulated Tea Bag supporter.
But OTOH, someone claiming to actually know him says this:
…he was a pot head & into rock like Hendrix,The Doors, Anti-Flag. I haven’t seen him in person since ’07 in a sign language class” and “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.”
It’s a shame people have to make political hay out of a mentally deranged man when the issue is is why such people can’t get help when they need it.
As if these examples weren’t enough, Stacy McCain linked a post titled “Sarah Palin’s Hit List” by the highly regarded leftie blogger TBogg. The latter maintains that Sarah Palin put the guy up to it because a map she released in September showed districts of the House Dems who voted for the health care bill with a “target” symbol over them. That, plus her statement “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” made this guy shoot people.
Seriously, that’s what they say. (I think it’s as crazy as the rantings of Jared Loughner.)
A commenter accuses the GOP of,
spamming their mentally ill constituency that it is, “OK to kill people if they don’t share your beliefs”
And another says,
Sorry, but I think this paranoid, pot-smoking, flag-burning, God-denouncing schizophrenic would have been just as likely to have taken aim at Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, or Bachmann had he had the chance.
Except I don’t think we would be hearing much about the left wing “eliminationist rhetoric” that drove him to it.
