THE LOUGHNER QUESTION

THE MEDIA’S PORTRAYAL OF THE ARIZONA SHOOTING

By KM Patten

While making the declaration that “the revolutionaries from the revolution are in control of the land and laws,” Jared Loughner saw it as justifiable grounds for walking up to Gabrielle Giffords at her supermarket rally in Tuscan and begin opening fire, hoping that it would later be understood that it was needed in order to push the world past A.D.E. Or, its Peak. Giffords survived, thankfully, but six others did not.

I was watching the tragic news unfolding from the first day. A psychotic, murderous rampage, Shepard Smith affirmed, in what would become the only credible report on Fox News. Details of Loughner’s behavior were quickly established. For the past couple of months he had been leaving cyber-prints all over the web, the most publicized of which was his scrolling manifesto found on YouTube. A diminutive, plain text, with words that were always structured in a kind of limerick, were set against a solid-colored background with the most melancholy of sounds pleading out from the beyond the speakers. Reading it in the dark by myself at three-o-clock in the morning, it was all the more unsettling.

Loughner could just say something like, “If you’re receiving a grade from Pima Community College class then the grade you’re receiving is unconstitutional because of the Bill of Rights” – affording the viewer a fully-drawn conclusion that he was being mistreated. In his mind, this retardation of elementary discourse was vindication - enough for him to proof his thesis in cold blood. While a great many of us are still questioning his actions, it’s a fair guess that he is probably doing the same: Sitting in his cold dark cage, wondering how others don’t understand why.

The Freedom to Speak

There was another group, mostly left out of the discussion; the very rest who were concerned with civil liberties and the Constitution, who at that point, in the early hours of the breaking news, were hearing something entirely different from amidst the endless commentary. The patriots, basement bloggers, zine publishers, street activists, and conspiracy theorists saw it coming like a tidal wave from over the horizon, and could do nothing in our efforts to admonish the deluge of disinformation about to be witnessed: A flood of media magicians, arm-chair experts, and jaded politicians, who were about to tell us all how bad things were and what must be done to prevent the next psychopath from striking.

The first of these characters was Arizona’s own Sheriff Dupnik, who from the very first press conference took the opportunity to denounce the “vitriolic rhetoric coming from the people in the radio business and some people in the TV business,” invoking that America has “not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.” The awkward and inappropriate statements of Dupnik were only the first of a great many more to come.

An early online-surfer of such bombastic nonsense was Kae Davis, a writer from the Green Celebrity Network. While using her column to directly blame the Sarah Palin crowd (more on her in a second), she nevertheless correctly stated in her article that “the assassin has been reading philosophy and logic books but failed entirely to understand that if you assert a premise that simply is not true, that no matter how cogent your argument, no one is going to believe you.”

Exactly. But when she also stated that everyone only assumes him as “an asshole who employed the strategy of terror to both humble and make a mockery of all things right about our American government,” I felt a compulsion to oblige Ms. Davis with my own thesis. If, as an illustration, I asserted that she was fundamentally wrong about our Republic, and that the Government of the United States used the shooting in Tuscan to furry-up a panic in an attempt to curtail Constitutional Liberties, I would (and should) be expected to present evidence.

Inserting that in a minute, it should be noted not as coincidence but instead as another earmark in the recent attempts to derail freedom on the Internet, that on the day before the shooting (January the 7th) CBS reported the Obama Administration was in the process of drafting legislation that would give everybody using the Internet a Federally-registered ID Card. So what? Who cares? Well, after much insistency that it was not a National ID card, gadget guru Damon Brown, writing a follow-up piece at CNET, warned that “If each individual had a universal ID, it would be even easier to access his or her information. Aggressively targeted marketing using private data and evasive, extensive files on user habits could become the norm.”

In fact, several pieces of legislation have been introduced in our Congress over the last year or so that would essentially reduce net anonymity and give sweeping authority over to the Feds. The DISCLOSE Act of 2010, for instance, would “radically redefine how the FEC regulates political commentary. A section of the DISCLOSE Act would exempt traditional media outlets from coordination regulations, but the exemption does not include bloggers.” If operating from any foreign institute, significant influence on elections, via Federal regulation of money put through the blogosphere, would not be allowed. The mass media, being home-grown, is not subject to such rules, unless a 20 percent stake from an external institution is in place. National boundaries notwithstanding, bloggers typing anywhere from Los Angeles to Beijing – if ever defined as having “significant influence” over the government – would be forced to disclose those financial transactions.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, another attempt, would “Black-list” Internet domain names with broadly defined language of “infringement activity.” Websites publishing scoops about a politician’s adulterous sex affair could then wield a sabre of “intellectual holdings” and request court-approval to shut down any website trying to republish the story. Neglecting critical reservations made from the ACLU, the Entertainment Industry, worth an estimated net of some billions, favors with Patrick Leahy (D-V), the co-author of the legislation.

Yet another tentacle reaching for our Bill of Rights is The Protecting CyberSpace as a National Security Asset, which would grant President Obama (or any other paid-for executive) the authority to shut off the Internet in the event of a cyber-attack. Say, from a superpower like China, or an activist group like Anonymous, or anybody else one might hear on tonight’s report. Quoted in a PC Magazine article, the bill’s co-author and main promoter, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) noted that “right now, China can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war... We need to have that here, too.”

Getting to Ms. Davis’s conclusion, the mass media machine, in collusion with the government elites who fear uprisings such as that in Egypt (and who subsequently author freedom-eroding laws to prevent information from turning into organization), deliberately interjected a massive dose of influential hysteria into the tragedy when they quoted – the very next day – an undisclosed individual working at the Department of Homeland Security, who first tipped off The Huffington Post that Jared Loughner might (key word might) have been affiliated with a white separatist movement calling itself the American Renaissance.

The founder of the organization, Jared Taylor, quickly went on record to condemn the attacks and reveal that Loughner had never even been a subscriber. After recognizing it as the deliberately inputted lie that it was, Fox News, the Associated Press, and the NY Times, fearing for being labeled as defenders of racism, refused to retract their initial reports and repudiate the DHS’s claims.

But that’s not all. The Loughner Question, as it was at this point, quickly applied itself to the Second Amendment and an individual’s right to possess firearms. Sarah Palin, the Tea-Partiers, and any other person imploring “gun remedies” were taken to task for “inciting an atmosphere of violence and hate.” Or something like that. Even the most moderate libertarian would have been appalled that individual responsibility was never even considered for placement in the equation, which became more or less a game of pong played-out between talking-heads stationed on the top of Media Empires, refusing to report the stated concern of Constitutional freedoms.

The Result of Hysteria

Such unchallenged fear-mongering can soon lead to a disillusioned population, already lethargic from watching reality shows, and are not likely to protest when the said-laws floating around in Congress are about to be given a pen signature. Positioning the situation in contrast with the escalating chaos in Egypt, and the Mubarak Regime’s initial shutting down of the Internet, a rash of solicitude would be warranted here, stateside, from vigilant commentators.

With such deceitful claims of group affiliation, like being part of a racist movement (usually funded by the same elites), it can easily be compared with other behind-close-door types who employ similar tactics of division. Comparatively, whereas the same reasoning I say that two smoking packages showing up in Washington in the days preceding the shooting were the concerted workings of someone at the Central Intelligence Agency to create yet even more chaos, it would not have to necessarily be true in order to gain reputability, merely stated.

Forgiving my pseudo-academia, an objective analysis would report that Jared Loughner cannot be singled out for his deranged, incoherent language while the government of the United States stands guilty of the same offense: making bold-faced assertions without the gratitude of evidence. Why exalt such blatant propaganda? Unless the trial provides tangible evidence (which would also become questionable) Mark Potok could have very well put the final nail in this coffin. In the courtyard of his Southern Poverty Law Center, Potok – brandishing a very large paint brush – stated that the rhetoric emulating from Jared Loughner’s hate could have come from anywhere. From Marx, to Hitler, or even New Age hero David Icke.

The next move? As tragic events like this always lead to the introduction of new laws, this time we have Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA) who is promising a bill to outlaw any speech or symbols that could be interpreted as threats to members of Congress. Furthermore, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), wants us to "rethink the parameters of free speech." Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), with finger pressed firmly on the document-shredder, promises to look into ways to “police the airwaves more effectively.”

“Frankly,” Slaughter says, “what I would like to see if we can all get together on both sides of the isle... Democrats and republicans, to really talk about what we can do to cool down the country. Part of it has to be what they are hearing over the airwaves.” Rep Peter King, (R-NY), has also just introduced legislation that would make gun-toting a crime if one-thousand feet from a federal official. No word yet as to how all this enforcement is expected to play-out in the real world.

The only man who was brave enough to stand up for honesty was the father of 9-year old Christina-Taylor Green, a victim of Jared Loughner’s rampage. In interviews following the shooting, John Green stated that “I don’t want to raise alarm…we don’t need any more restrictions on our society.” Boldly saying what no other talking head dared to say: “In a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.”

A New World Order?

One of those cryptic, global elites often spoken of, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the geostrategist now giving his opinion on the Egyptian crisis (and a conspirator’s best friend), has stated that the global world now requires “[an American] society dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values (founding liberal values like freedom), this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control.” Hilary Clinton, a more prominent elite, told her friends in the United Arab Emirates that Loughner was an “extremist” (not a psychopath) and signified that both nations “have the same problems.”

Today, more than two months after the deplorable and senseless attack, it is widely known that Jared Loughner was not a devil-worshipper. Nor cross-dresser. Or even a drug-riddled psychotic. But also a patsy, whose ideologies might never be clearly defined except by those desperately attempting to brand him as this or that for their own purposes. With no weighty assurance for any particular mindset, he was the perfect tool to fire up rhetorical debate, rebuking Kae Davis’s description. Remarkably void of any human empathy, Loughner was unaware that actions like his are used by governments keen on stopping the very suggestion of uprisings now being reported in the Middle East. Nonetheless, when stating that “they” were controlling the grammar, he was probably too stupid to realize that they actually were trying to do so, now graciously helped along by his sick mentality.