Jared Lee Loughner had become increasingly erratic in recent months. He had posted on his Myspace page a photograph of a US history textbook,on top of which he had placed a handgun. He prepared a series of Internet videos filled with rambling statements on topics including the gold standard,mind control and terror. And he had started to act oddly during his classes at Pima Community College. That behaviour,along with a disturbing video,prompted school administrators to call in Loughners parents and tell them that their son had been suspended and would have to get a mental health evaluation. Instead,he dropped out in October. Reports of Loughners conduct suggest an increasing alienation from society. Once after a student read a poem about getting an abortion,Loughner compared her to a terrorist for killing the baby. Grant Wiens,22,who graduated in 2006 from Mountain View High School,a year ahead of Loughner,said something Loughner said during a discussion on religion had stuck him: Whatever happens,happens, Wiens recalled him saying. Might as well enjoy life now. Another high school classmate said Loughner may have met Representative Giffords,whom he shot,several years ago. As I knew him he was left wing,quite liberal & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy, the former classmate,Caitie Parker,wrote in a series of Twitter feeds. He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in 07,asked her a question & he told me she was stupid & unintelligent. A series of videos posted on YouTube,apparently by Loughner,consist of texts that are largely rambling. The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar, he says. No! I wont pay debt with a currency thats not backed by gold and silver! No! I wont trust in God! In a biographical sketch on the site,he writes his favourite books include Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf,Karl Marxs Communist Manifesto and Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,which is set in a mental asylum. One of his videos suggests he may have applied to the Army. Army officials said he had been rejected. He also briefly discusses terrorism. If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism,especially as a political weapon, he wrote. If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is ad hominem. On Saturday,on his Myspace account he said,Goodbye, and added,Dear friends . . . Please dont be mad at me. After attack,content disappears from Net WASHINGTON: Within minutes of the reports emerging that Representative Gabrielle Giffords,had been shot in Tucson,pages began disappearing from the web. One was Sarah Palins infamous cross hairs map last year,which showed a series of contested Congressional districts,including Giffordss,with gun targets trained on them. Another was from Daily Kos,a liberal blog,where one of the congresswomans liberal constituents declared her dead to me after Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi in House leadership polls last week. Odds are pretty good that neither of these had much to do with the shooting. But scrubbing them from the Internet couldnt erase the rhetorical recklessness that permeates politics in Arizona. The US has had such moments before. Whats different now is the emergence of a culture on blogs,Twitter and cable TV that loudly and readily reinforces the dark visions of political extremists.
