“implying mind control”…

Posted on Sunday 9 January 2011

"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," the video’s titles say. "In conclusion, 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. No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver! No! I won’t trust in god!"
The Blame Game and Prayers Begin
Red State
by Erick Erickson
January 8, 2010

A terrible tragedy today. Rep. Giffords of Arizona was gunned down and, though early reports were that she is dead, the hospital is confirming, as of this writing, that she is alive and in surgery. 11 others were apparently shot and six others are dead. I spent an hour with Rep. Giffords a few months ago. She and I were sitting in Jim Bohannon’s studio with Robert Reich was on the air. She’d driven him over to the studio. We chatted for an hour. We disagreed on much. She was extremely, exceedingly nice. My prayers are for her and her family.

Unfortunately, the left is using this tragedy to score political points. Rep. Giffords was on Gov. Palin’s target list for defeat this past November. The left claims Gov. Palin has blood on her hands. So does the tea party movement. Less than a year ago a gunman stormed into the Discovery Channel’s headquarters, taking hostages and threatening to kill them all. The left immediately accused the man of being a tea party activist. Unfortunately for the left, the man turned out to be an envirowacko leftist raised on Algore’s global warming garbage.

Immediately, the left changed their tune and proclaimed that no longer could we as partisans accuse each other of causing things like this. There are just crazy people in the world and tragedies happen. My, my how quickly they forget. The truth is there is evil in this world. Evil exists where God does not and as we drive God further and further away, evil creeps in more and more. Today was not a random act of violence. It was a profound evil. Let’s not pretend it wasn’t. Let’s not pretend evil does not exist.

But let’s not let the left, yet again, spin this against the tea party movement, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sarah Palin inciting violence. That’s both a profound lie and just another, though lesser, bit of evil.
Parsing the disjointed ramblings of Jared Loughner looking for clues to define his political leanings does seem to be a predictable outcome of the assassination attempt and murders in Arizona. Erickson’s hypothesis is that the cause is Evil, "Evil exists where God does not and as we drive God further and further away, evil creeps in more and more" – pulling Loughner’s violence into the Religious Right’s notion that Godlessness is the organizer of modern society. Erickson counters those who blame it on "the tea party movement, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sarah Palin inciting violence" with a story of someone who attacked the Discovery Channel – "an envirowacko leftist raised on Algore’s global warming garbage."
Jared Loughner’s Possible Mental Illness
FireDogLake

By: Jeff Kaye
January 8, 2011

As more details are revealed about the background of purported 22-year-old shooter Jared Loughner, who is in custody currently for the shooting in Tucson today of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Federal Judge John Rell and a number of others, at least five of whom have died, a number of people are speculating about his possible mental illness. One diagnosis that keeps arising is schizophrenia.  It’s worth looking into what that might mean…

I am a licensed psychologist and from afar, and am not in the position to diagnose Mr. Loughner. However, one can make some initial impressionistic comments based upon the video content he posted on YouTube. The autistic, in the sense of highly encapsulated and personal, nature of his thought processes, his emphasis on coercion from without [see his discussion about being taught letters of the alphabet], the strange nature of his logic and language, the paranoid attitude toward the world in general, are consistent with known cases of schizophrenia, paranoid type…

This is not the rambling of a right-wing crackpot, which some have claimed Loughner to be, but gibberish. This doesn’t take away from the possibility Loughner reacted to right-wing propaganda, but quite likely out of madness, not political motivation, such as we understand such motivation.
Comments from the Left are more rational, but then we have nothing to defend. The incitement language of the "lower" right is despicable on its own, independent of what happened in Tuscon yesterday. The published writings of the assassin seem enough to support Jeff Kaye’s diagnosis of Schizophrenia. Loughner’s ramblings follow a private logic and focus on ideas of influence – mind control, brain-washing, grammar control. In the early days when Schizophrenia was being defined, there were a number of criteria suggested for the diagnosis. Eugene Bleuler proposed "the four As" as primary symptoms – Autism [Private Logic], Associations [Tangential flow of thought], Affect [an Inappropriate Affect], and Ambivalence. Kurt Schneider introduced the "first rank" symptoms including certain kinds of hallucinations and ideas of influence or outside manipulation of thought. Victor Tausk wrote of the Influence Machine, the schizophrenic’s notion of how thoughts might be influenced from the outside. Loughner’s ramblings fit all of these criteria in a variety of ways.

Schizophrenia doesn’t often lead to such violence, but when it does, the cases are bizarre and usually make the news, then show up on what I call "bad person television" along with serial killers and sociopaths – Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20 – those shows that document the stories of the macabre around us. The motivation in such Schizophrenic cases is rarely directly political, but more idiosyncratic – either a response to direct command auditory hallucinations or as an attempt to destroy and silence the imagined tormentors. That would be more likely in this case than any consistent ipolitical deology. That said, 90 years ago, when Victor Tausk wrote about the Influence Machine, he noted that the Schizophrenics’ ideas about what was causing their internal turmoil came from the times they lived in. In ancient times it was witches or sorcerers, God or Satan, later it was electrical current, then radio waves, now electronic devices. Political or spiritual sources are commonly fingered as the culprit.

As to Erickson’s formulation about Evil and Godlessness. Plenty of Schizophrenic people have been sacrificed  in response to such theories – burned as witches being the foremost example. Erickson actually has it backwards. It is the psychotic Schizophrenic person who is obsessed with fighting against Evil [with a capital E], and that’s very apparent in Loughner’s postings. Erickson may be correct in cautioning the Left to refrain from blaming this on the right-wing pundits, but his own use of this tragedy to promote his religious right return-to-god agenda makes the exact same error in the other direction.

Whatever the real meaning of Jared Loughner’s shooting spree, I expect it will have an effect on the country. I hope that effect is a tempering of the provocative rhetoric from all directions rather than a flowering of more senseless violence…

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.