Loughner, cont.

In my previous post, I took a close look at alleged assassin and mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner's YouTube screeds and suggested that Loughner seems to be an idiosyncratic psychotic, not directly invested in any recognizable political movement, but rather devising a personal formula for evading mind control and establishing his own freedom of action.

There does seem to be something distinctly American in Loughner's paranoid conviction that "government officials" exert a matrix-like control over Americans by controlling "currency" and "grammar" and "law and land." But that paranoia seems to seek grounding not in a fetishization of the Constitution but in an antifederalism that predates the Constitution -- though that last point remains unclear.

The extent to which current political discourse penetrated this loner's disturbed consciousness also remains unclear. Below, a few further thoughts regarding some historical and apparently political references in the manifestos:

1) Several commenters on the prior post, reacting to Loughner's assertion that "reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications," wondered whether he was referring to the Articles of Confederation -- cf. his earlier statement, "you don't have to accept the federalist laws." I had the same thought -- but on a second and third reading, I think it remains unclear what shreds of historical knowledge contribute to Loughner's magical reality. It's unclear whether he is casting the Constitution itself as an illegitimate "federalist" power grab, or alluding to some later corruption that is manifest to a "literate" reader.

2) References to "currency" and "gold and silver"do not seem to me to suggest sympathy with any coherent (if crazy) advocacy of a gold standard. "Currency" in Loughner's personal lexicon is a means of mental control or liberation.  Note below how it's conflated with "grammar," another tool of mental mastery, in the last line of the sequence below:

Every human who's mentally capable is able to be treasurer of their own 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.

You're a treasurer for a new currency, listener?

You create and distribute your new currency, listener?

You don't allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?

 3) "Literacy" is another term that Loughner invests with idiosyncratic meaning. Those who create their own "currency" and "grammar" are "literate" -- that is, mentally free -- and therefore able to apprehend either the inherent illegitimacy of the Constitution or its later corruption (again, it's not clear which):

The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America's Constitution.

You don't have to accept the federalist laws.

Nontheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.

You're literate, listener?

4) In Loughner's universe, government officials control currency and grammar -- that is presumably why they must be destroyed. From the piece titled "Hello":

Firstly, the current governmental officials are in power for their currency, but I'm informing you for your new currency!  If you're treasurer of a new money system, then you're responsible for the distributing of a new currency. We now know - the treasurer for a new money system, is the distributor of the new currency. As a result, the people approve a new monetary system which is promising new information that's accurate, and we truly believe in a new currency. Above all, have you your new currency, listener?

5) Per the reference to a "treasurer" above, Loughner has messianic aspirations. He is going to lead "listeners" and create "revolutionaries" adopting a new currency and grammar. This is clear in a slightly older YouTube titled "How To: Mind Controller."  Here, rather than bid to liberate listeners from mind control, Loughner asserts himself as the "mind controller."  Note use her too of the "magical syllogism" formula outlined in the prior post: a) if-then statement; b) declarative: the "if" statement is true; c) conclusion: "thus" I am what I wish to be.

If you're editing of every belief and religion reaches the final century then the writer for every belief and religion is you.

You're editing of every belief and religion reaches the final century.

Thus, the writer for every belief and religion is you.

You control every -- thought, action, and lifestyle -- for the person or people as the mind controller.

I'm able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller!

 6) In news reports, a Loughner acquaintance claims that Loughner was " oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy." The "Introduction: Jared Loughner" YouTube includes some unfathomable (to me) date mysticism regarding years B.C.E. and A.D.E. that are "unable to begin."  Perhaps his messianism is bound up with a conviction that some kind of apocalypse is imminent.

7. Loughner's YouTube page includes as a "favorite" a terrifying video, dated to October, in which a hooded figure, face covered by a rigid white "comedy" mask and  lower body shrouded in what looks like a black garbage bag, shuffles slowly up to an American flag planted on a sandy path, which he proceeds, with excruciating slowness, to fondle, mutilate and burn. The accompanying text, if not the film itself, is plainly Loughner's: it follows his if/then structure as well as his ambiguous assertions of some disconnect between the Constitution and the U.S. as we know it:

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.

This is a sickeningly sensual film. We don't know who created it (it's ascribed to "Starhitshnaz" and appears separately, and alone, on the channel of someone with that screen name). But one can readily believe that the creator would shoot a crouching child point-blank, as Loughner seems to have done yesterday.