Bird’s Eye: Loughner is the killer in Arizona, and while Sarah Palin clearly considers herself one of his victims (perhaps she could ask some of her Muslim friends how to deal with being unfairly targeted for the actions of a lunatic?) a number of more intelligent commentators explore what might reduce the chances of more such tragedies.
* Who is Jared Lee Loughner? Hatewatch (Thanks, Linda!)
Is Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged mass murderer who shot U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, a right-wing extremist?
It’s hard to say. When you look at the Internet material he purportedly produced, the first impression you get is that the 22-year-old now in custody for the shooting of 19 people in Tucson was completely out of his mind, or at least mildly deranged. His writings will be virtually impossible for most people to understand, what with his references to unexplained numbers, his fondness for weird syllogisms, his unexplained references and his apparent semi-literacy.
That said, there are some clues….
* White Terrorism Juan Cole Informed Comment
Jared Lee Loughner, the assassin of Federal judge John M. Roll and five others and attempted assassin of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was clearly mentally unstable. But the political themes of his instability were those of the American far Right. Loughner was acting politically even if he is not all there. He is said to have called out the names of his victims, such as Roll and Gifford, as he fired. As usual, when white people do these things, the mass media doesn’t call it terrorism. (Update: A canny reader in comments pointed out that if a Muslim organization had put out a poster with American politicians in the cross-hairs, and one had gotten shot, there would have been hell to pay.)….
Those right-wing bloggers who want to dismiss Loughner as merely disturbed are being hypocritical, since they won’t similarly dismiss obviously unstable Muslims who, like the so-called “Patriots” of the McVeigh stripe, sometimes turn violent. (Zacharias Moussawi, for instance, isn’t playing with a full set of backgammon dominoes, and blaming Islam for him is bizarre). In fact, the right-wing Muslim crackpots and the right-wing American crackpots are haunted by similar anxieties, about a powerful government in Washington undermining their localistic ideas of the good life.
* Could A Better Care System Have Prevented This Tragedy? The New Republic
Mental health, unfortunately, is probably the illness most likely to go untreated in the U.S. …Funds for care and support of the mentally ill remains woefully inadequate. Private insurance rarely provides enough coverage for the seriously ill, overwhelming public systems to the point where people who could benefit from therapy, drugs, and community supports–frequently living totally normal, productive lives–instead end up without treatment and sometimes without homes. Inevitably some of these people end up committing crimes, overloading a criminal justice system ill-equipped to handle them. We don’t warehouse the mentally ill in asylums anymore. Instead, we warehouse them in jails.
Arizona in this regard is fairly typical. Mental health services in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, has been the subject of litigation for more than twenty years. The state has tried contracting out services to two different private companies, but care seems to be getting worse, not better.
