Jared Lee Loughner, "fallenasleep"

While new data will surely come in about Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, his YouTube text-videos indicate that he is not a right-wing politico, not a tea party type.  He seems to be a sui generis make-your-own reality psychotic.

Loughner seems to have developed his own formula for taking control of his world and rejecting the world controlled by government officials.  His key terms are currency, grammar/language, sleep/conscience [i.e., consciousness?]and land and law.  The government controls the dominant currency, language, (false) law and land; most people are brainwashed into accepting this reality.

Loughner, like Lewis Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty, asserts that he can create his own language and hence reality -- that is, currency, consciousness (through sleepwalking), and law; he can teach his "listeners" (as he calls readers of his text videos) to do likewise. To create that reality, he uses a syllogism-like structure: 1) an "if-then" statement; 2) an assertion that one part of that statement is true; 3) a conclusion that the second part of the if-then is true. For example:

Every human who is mentally capable is always able to be treasurer of their new currency.

If you create one new currency then you're able to create a second new currency.

If you're able to create a second new currency then you're able to create a third new currency.

You create one new currency.

Thus, you're able to create a third new currency.

Here's a variation of the formula, with an added, open-ended -- and chilling -- conclusion:

If I define sleepwalking then sleepwalking is the act or state of walking, eating or performing other motor acts while asleep, of which one is unaware upon awakening.

I define sleepwalking.

Thus, sleeping is the act or state of walking, eating or performing other motor acts while asleep, of which one is unaware upon awakening

I'm a sleepwalker -- who turns off the alarm clock.

Loughner's screen name in an online community from which he was barred -- I couldn't tell which -- was fallenasleep. It seems that sleepwalking is his personal talisman enabling him to act as a free, unbrainwashed revolutionary (see below).


It's important to note that Loughner rejects not simply current lawmakers and those now in power but the Constitution itself : "The majority of citizens in the United States have never read the United States Constitution.  You don't have to accept the federalist laws. Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."* (Loughner also rejects God, and says that his religion was marked down as None on his army application.)  So while those now in power are apparently worthy of murder, so that "revolutionaries" can take "control of the land and laws," their illegitimacy comes not from corrupting the Constitution but from executing it. He believes in what Sharron Angle might call "Second Amendment remedies," but he is not acting in the name of the Second Amendment:

If the property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution.

Thus the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

It appears to me that this unfortunate insane individual is of no party or clique.

* There is some ambiguity in Loughner's judgment regarding the Constitution. "In conclusion," he writes, "reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."  Why "second"? There may be some suggestion of a corrupted original; the prior assertion about the Constitution quoted above could be read the same way. Needless to say, the "doctrine" is not exactly coherent.

n.b. Text cannot be captured off the YouTube videos, and they cannot be printed; I've relied above on back-and-forth transcription. There may be minor errors of capitalization or punctuation.

I want to say, too, that while I'm made somewhat uneasy by my impulse toward snap analysis here, I have justified it to myself on the premise that it's not psychoanalysis, just a close reading of Loughner's text and its internal, pardon the expression, logic. What seemed important to highlight quickly is this insane belief system's apparent disconnection from any recognizable political theory -- though this too could prove to be an erroneous first impression.

UPDATE 1/9: Regarding the reference to a "second...Constitution" and other terms with political resonance, please see the next post.