The False Premise of Murder

I've just been reading the messages left on YouTube by Jared Lee Loughner, the man who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to-day. Early reports said she was killed but she seems to have survived somehow, despite a bullet passing through her brain. Six people were killed, though, among them a nine year old girl.

I admit my first thought, given that Giffords is a Democrat, was that Loughner was a tea partier. I'm not sure I'm wrong yet, either, based on the YouTube messages, which conclude with a demand for a gold based system of currency. This is a policy advocated by many tea partiers and Ron Paul supporters, as well as by, it should be noted, Democrat Barney Frank. Though Loughner's argument seems to be a bit metaphysically based, as his messages seem generally to be. They seem based on the modern idea of reality created by one's own consciousness. Which mainly reminded me of Brad McCullum in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, and I can sort of see Loughner as a Werner Herzog character. By which I certainly don't mean to glorify Loughner, merely that Herzog's film--and I'm also reminded of Cronenberg's Videodrome--speaks to the fact that Loughner's mental illness is not uncommon.

I also thought of the tea party in Loughner's bizarre insistence on proper grammar while failing to use it himself;

Secondly, my hope - is for you to be literate! If you're literate in English grammar, then you comprehend English grammar. The majority of people, who reside in District 8, are illiterate - hilarious. I don't control your English grammar structure but you control your English grammar structure.

He talks about government brainwashing;

Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen.

I can't help thinking, who are you to criticise anyone's grammar? Yet, I don't think it's so much blind hypocrisy I'm seeing as a thoroughly delusional philosophy. "I don't control your English grammar structure, you control your English grammar structure."

I thought about Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment believing in creating reality by defying the rules of morality like Napoleon. He was also assured of the supremacy of his intelligence over others, and it's not hard to see how he'd feel that way when he considers the rules of reality being only those conceived by himself.