Why is it that American politics seem so chaotic, confusing, and dysfunctional? Is it intentionally so? Have rich businessmen bought congress, the media, and manipulated both for their own selfish ends? Have radical leftists infiltrated the universities and fostered anti-Americanism among the youth? Have intergalactic space lizards created the entire material world and all the resulting chaos, confusion, and dysfunction merely to entertain themselves or because they’re just naughty lizards? Is there is a shred of truth to all these views and is it due to some combination of the three? Or could it be that the truth is even more outrageous, unthinkable, and unpleasant? As it has been said, the truth is what one does not want to hear. 

Could it be, rather, that the average American, not to mention politicians and maybe even the 45th President himself, understands little to nothing about politics and government and is thus led by emotional whims and social pressure if they participate in the political process at all? Without much knowledge, perhaps, they feel their way to beliefs and conclusions and then stubbornly force, contort, and filter facts in an effort to maintain their preferred views. Worse still, what if the American electorate has completely lost any reference to reality and is essentially insane? What if Americans have genuinely gone insane by the surest route to that terrifying place – from flawlessly reasoning from false premises? If so, there is no evidence that could possibly change one’s mind. Every fact, regardless of how contradictory it is to one’s world view, serves to validate whatever peculiar belief one began with. Whereas a reasonable person continuously discards untenable ideas as the facts make it impossible to hold them, the modern madman stubbornly forces reality to conform to their preferred conclusions. This breakdown and fragmentation of reality itself is all made possible, paradoxically, by that gift of modernity that connects us all – the internet.

Consider the case of a modern madman – Jared Loughner. Recall many mass shootings ago, all the way back to 2011, when Loughner opened fire in an attempt to assassinate U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. The shooting resulted in six deaths and more than ten injuries from gunfire. Loughner, just twenty-two at the time, had already displayed concerning behavior the previous year when he had more than one dispute with the police at the college he was attending. These incidents led to his expulsion from the college with a requirement that he obtain a mental-health clearance if he wished to re-enroll. Loughner, having already uploaded conspiratorial videos to YouTube, went on to make more videos declaring the college illegal under the constitution, accusing the government of vast conspiracies, and advocating for the creation of a new currency based on the gold standard. While Loughner went down many conspiratorial rabbit holes, the idea that the government controlled the population through grammar appeared to be centrally important to his worldview. 

According to a friend of Loughner, Bryce Tierney, he had possibly become obsessed with Giffords when he asked her a question at a prior rally. When Giffords opened the floor for questions, Loughner got an opportunity to ask her, “what is government if words have no meaning?”  Tierney recalled that an indignant Loughner commented to him on the encounter saying, “can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question”. Tierney suggested that since the exchange Loughner regarded Giffords as a fraud and developed a grudge against her. 

Loughner’s fixation on grammar and his wild irrational reasoning was also noted by philosophy professor, Kent Slinker, whom Loughner took Introduction to Logic from while at Pima Community College. In many of Loughner’s YouTube videos he attempted to work out his thoughts using syllogisms, a form of argument he would have learned about in Slinker’s course. Having reviewed some of the content from Loughner’s uploads, Slinker quickly recognized Loughner’s unique style of “nonsensical, disconnected thinking”. The professor recalled that Loughner performed poorly in the class and avoided his attempts to help him improve. Slinker acknowledged that though some of Loughner’s arguments made an attempt at proper form, they were nonetheless ridiculous as they weren’t based in reality. The philosophy professor noted that “if the premises aren’t true, all bets are off.” Sadly, Loughner, though undeniably troubled, was a harbinger of the “post-truth” world to come in the following decade.  

Unfortunately, as happens with nearly all American shootings, the public immediately raced to categorize the perpetrator ideologically. Was he a Democrat or a Republican; a socialist or a fascist; a lefty or a righty; a goodie or a baddie? Commentators turned to the madman’s YouTube reading list in an attempt to classify him along such lines. The Communist Manifesto, for instance might imply he was a radical leftist (perhaps to a lesser extent Peter Pan). Meanwhile, folks on the other side suggested that books like Mein Kampf, and We, the Living, by Ayn Rand were sufficient evidence that he was clearly far right. While Loughner’s videos and incidents with college police and staff plainly displayed a mentally unwell individual, the media couldn’t help but to paint a portrait of him that conveniently fit into their own preordained, rigid, and dualistic worldviews. The already intensely polarized public gladly heard the media’s comforting assessments that he was one of them or just simply a mad man and declined the opportunity to take a step back from the brink of collective insanity in order to ask troubling and difficult questions about the state of American society. 

What could possibly lead a 22 year old in the land of opportunity to commit such an atrocious act of political violence? Are there any other background factors that could have contributed to his actions outside of being merely insane? Do insane people throughout the world tend to commit such acts of political violence, or is this an ugly example of American exceptionalism? Can insane evil really be understood, or is it just evil? The novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, once observed, “nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”  

While it is painful, difficult, and no doubt impossible to fully understand Loughner’s actions, reconsidering the case could offer a much needed new perspective on the increasingly mad political landscape entering the 2020’s.

Along with attempts to define Loughner ideologically, many public figures and commentators pointed to the increasingly divisive and at times violent political rhetoric as a clear motivating factor in his actions. Among the most passionate and direct statements made came from Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, who condemned what he called, “the vitriol and rhetoric we hear day in and day out from people on radio, on TV.” He went on to elaborate that, “it’s time as a country to do a little soul-searching…the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.” 

Critics pointed to examples such as a campaign map published by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in which crosshairs were used to mark key districts, Gifford’s district was included. Palin was also fond of urging supporters to “reload” and not retreat. Nevada Republican, Sharon Angle, also drew criticism for using the  phrase “Second-Amendment remedies”, in her failed campaign against Harry Reid. Closer to home, Gifford’s Republican challenger for her seat the previous year, Jesse Kelly, welcomed supporters to shoot “a fully loaded M16” in support of his efforts to win election. Some even recalled a moment during the 2008 presidential campaign when Barack Obama, commenting on GOP attacks, said, “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” The debate over the influence of divisive rhetoric to Loughner’s actions continued despite the lack of any hard evidence and the impossibility of fully understanding the complexities of human behavior.

Those accused of inflammatory rhetoric largely stood by their words and denied any responsibility. Angle defended her use of the phrase “Second-Amendment remedies” by stating that, “Inappropriately attributing blame of a singular tragedy to achieve a political agenda is contrary to civil discourse, and is a media ploy to which I refuse to belong.” Apparently Angle is the victim of a media plot in this view. Glenn Beck, addressing Sheriff Dupnik’s comments stated that, “I find a sheriff who has no facts and blames it on talk radio.” Surely Beck was aware that all the facts of a criminal investigation are not immediately made public. Palin, meanwhile, managed to create new controversy when she responded to critics by saying, “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.” The blood libel being a centuries old conspiracy that Jews were murdering Christian children to use their blood as part of a ritual sacrifice, has sadly found a new life in the modern world through Qanon. 

Though it’s impossible to imagine what sort of facts would compel someone like Beck, Angle, or Palin to acknowledge some tacit influence of political rhetoric, it should at least be granted that, even though the most mundane human behavior is infinitely complex and unpredictable, it does not follow that we should disregard an attempt to understand the contributing influences that led a person to commit such an act of violence – madman or not. Had Loughner written a letter, for instance, directly stating that, “I am committing political assassination directly and solely because I have been directed to do so by talk radio and T.V”, his actions would nonetheless have likely been written off as merely the product of a deranged mind. 

Some with more distance from the incident and a unique perspective offered further observations. Maricopa County Supervisor, Mary Rose Wilcox, recalled being shot in 1997 after a controversial vote to build a new baseball stadium, saying, “ the man who shot me said he had heard on the radio time and time that I should be taken out…I still hear that. People think that if they take me down, then the issue will go away, but it won’t.”  Martin Kaplan, of the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism commented specifically on the issue of rhetoric being a motivating factor for Loughner’s act. Kaplan stated that, “in some ways, it’s irrelevant whether the broader toxins in the culture are what led the shooter to do what he did…those toxins are out there…the idea that they can increase their concentration in the national bloodstream and that there will be no price to pay for it ever, that’s what’s scary and true independent of this guy’s motive.” In other words, words have meaning and the continued use of metaphors invoking the second amendment as a means to solve political problems comes with a price tag. Inevitably at some point such rhetoric does play a role in inspiring some to act in a destructive and violent way. Kaplan further elaborated the point, “I don’t think there is a hard and fast line and on one side of it are smart nice people who know that those metaphors really don’t mean what they say and on the other side just a few nutballs who don’t know the difference.” Such rhetoric in this view, while no doubt engaging and stimulating, runs the risk of inciting political violence not just among deranged individuals, but also among the broader sane public. 

In 2018, seven years after The Arizona Republic and others submitted records requests under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI released thousands of pages of evidence from the Loughner investigation. Among them was a poem penned by Loughner himself who brought multiple copies with him the day of the shooting. Loughner apparently scattered some of them at the scene as one was latter found with other memorabilia at Tucson’s Banner-University Medical Center. Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic wrote that, “whoever recovered it apparently did not realize the provenance, as the author is listed as ‘unknown’”. The printed 15-line poem included hand-drawn doodling and was titled aptly, “Vitriol Rhetoric”. While the title alone speaks volumes considering the public debate that ensued over the influence of divisive rhetoric at the time of the incident, the poem itself also offers further insight. “Alienation and the internet run-amok people are crazy ideas come from somewhere”, the author writes. Loughner, with a troubled history, doubtlessly struggled with alienation and  spent large amounts of time online where he surely traveled countless conspiratorial rabbit holes. The at times extreme rhetoric from television and talk radio prove no match for that of the internet where any anonymous person can say just about anything and the wildest theories and ideas can spread like wildfire. Perhaps Loughner, while no doubt afflicted with mental health issues, was nonetheless in some sense a sign of things to come in an increasingly isolated world where reality is less agreed upon and is more of an unverifiable story that is created within internet echo-chambers. If American society is to hold together for much longer, it is imperative that everyone involved (all Americans) put some effort into the project. We must work toward a shared reality, have some basic common values, and treat words like they have meaning. Public figures and media personalities must speak with the understanding that their words could be all that stand between calming or inflaming frustrated individuals – mad or sane. 

In the year prior to the Tucson shooting, Congresswoman Giffords’ office was vandalized amidst increasingly frequent and aggressive protests. Giffords explained to reporters that she was not intimidated by the incidents by saying that, “democracy is a light, a beacon, really, around the world because we effect change at the ballot box, and not because of these outbursts, of violence in many cases…change is important, it’s part of our process, but it’s really important that we focus on the fact that we have a democratic process.” In this brief statement Giffords captures a key contribution that America has made to the world – the concept that political change can occur effectively and peacefully through the democratic process – with ballots not bullets. This simple but profoundly consequential idea ought to be a generally agreed upon starting point for all Americans. However, since the 2011 tragedy in Tucson, the radical fringes of society have moved into the mainstream. Violent political clashes in the streets are now common while too many political figures and media personalities exploit these passions instead of trying to temper them. As a new decade begins with still more political polarization and increasingly divisive rhetoric, perhaps it would be useful for Americans to reflect on how the previous decade started.