Sounds like a lunatic whose politics were all over the map. His name is Jared Lee Loughner. From the Telegraph:
On Saturday night. Caitie Parker, a singer-songwriter from Arizona, said she had known Loughner when they were both teenagers and that he dropped out of school in 2006 after developing alcohol poisoning. However she added that when she had known him, Loughner seemed to be liberal or Left-wing. “I went to high school and college, and was in a band with him,” she said on Twitter. “I can’t even fathom this right now.” Describing him as a “political radical” and a “loner” who was “very philosophical”, Ms Parker claimed Loughner was “oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy”, which predicts the world will end next year.
Later in the article, there’s this:
An account on YouTube, the video-sharing website operated in Loughner’s name contained several home-made videos including one titled ‘”My final thoughts”. The YouTube account stated that among Loughner’s favourite books, most of which were much-loved classic novels, were Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto … It called for a return to the gold standard, a common demand of Tea Party activists, and claimed that the government was imposing “mind control and brainwash on the people”.
Here’s the video:
Please remember that this is all very speculative. Loughner hasn’t been convicted of anything. And if this video is created by the guy who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people, he sounds like a poster child for “not guilty by reason of insanity”.
Having said that, well, what the fuck did people expect? This is the kind of carnage stirred up when a political movement like the Tea Party that’s affiliated with an allegedly legitimate political party — the Republicans — spouts violent, angry rhetoric that’s predicated on shoddy facts and deliberately used to elevate passion over reason amongst an increasingly economically insecure, increasingly xenophobic and well-armed constituency.
Seriously, what the fuck did people think would happen?
