Thursday Reads

Good Morning!!

I’m going to focus this post on news and opinions relating to Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona mass murderer. The news media is so focused on this story, it’s hard to find much else.

First, let me say that it has become abundantly clear that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia–a least I’m going to assume that unless someone comes up with a better explanation for his symptoms. I immediately suspected it when I first read descriptions of his behavior by people who knew him, but the more I read about him the more clear it becomes that Loughner suffers from this terrible illness.

Schizophrenia is characterized by a broad range of unusual behaviors that cause profound disruption in the lives of the patients suffering from the condition and in the lives of the people around them. Some common symptoms of schizophrenia are delusions, hallucinations (usually auditory), disorganized thought and speech, social withdrawal, and emotional unresponsiveness (flat affect).

Based on news reports, Loughner appears to be suffering from all of these symptoms. He was apparently experiencing delusions of persecution and delusions of control (e.g., his belief that the government was using mind control on him).

What Loughner did was driven by his delusions and his disorganized thought processes. Despite the repulsive campaign rhetoric used by tea party politicians like Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle, it really isn’t accurate to blame their words for Loughner’s crimes. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to shame politicians into speaking and behaving more civilly, but the real outrage is that this young man was able to buy a gun and ammunition. Loughner was a walking time bomb, and he lived in a state that allows people to buy guns easily and to carry concealed weapons without a permit!

Let’s condemn conservative politicians for helping to make guns far too easily available to troubled people and liberals for refusing to stand up to the gun nuts.

If you read this Wall Street Journal article, you’ll see examples of Loughner’s disordered thinking and communication. The WSJ writers found a collection of postings by Loughner to an on-line gaming forum. He talked about his inability to get a job and his failure with women, and sometimes his comments became bizarre and disturbing.

Look at these examples from the article:

On April 24, Mr. Loughner titled a new online thread: “Would you hit a Handy Cap Child/ Adult?” He wrote: “This is a very interesting question….There are mental retarded children. They’re possessing teachers that are typing for money. This will never stop….The drug addicts need to be weeded out to be more intelligent. The Principle of this is that them c— educators need to stop being pigs.”

Later that day, he posted a rant titled “Why Rape,” which said women in college enjoyed being raped. “There are Rape victims that are under the influence of a substance. The drinking is leading them to rape. The loneliness will bring you to depression. Being alone for a very long time will inevitably lead you to rape.”

[….]

On May 9 at 2:00 a.m., he asked: “Does anyone have aggression 24/7?” By noon, when others suggested he try smoking marijuana, he said: “No weed. No drugs. It’s not like I can’t see my brain.”

[….]

On June 3 at 12:14 a.m. Mr. Loughner described one confrontation with Mr. McGahee [his college math instructor], writing to his fellow gamers that he had asked the teacher: “Are you just getting a pay check for brainwashing?” as well as questioning if the class was a “scam” and asking, “can you tell me how to Deny math?” He wrote that the teacher told him it was a stupid question and he should “GET OUT OF MY CLASS!”

The next day, after he had to see a school counselor, he wrote: “Told her about brainwashing a child and how that can change the view of mathematics.”

This young man was extremely confused and delusional. It would be impossible for his parents not to have known that he was very ill. We may learn that they tried to get help for him; unfortunately it is not easy to get help for people with psychological disorders. People suffering from schizophrenia resist getting treatment–they don’t realize how sick they are. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to force someone into treatment. Ironically, Arizona makes committing someone against their will easier than most other states, the state has also cut so much on mental health facilities and workers that services aren’t readily available.

Our mental health system is even more broken than the rest of our health care system. People who talk about “falling through the cracks” are clueless. Our mental health system is nothing but cracks.

More Loughner articles:

Mark Ames, author of Going Postal: Is the Giffords Shooting a New Kind of American Murder?

I studied countless rampage massacres for my book Going Postal, and this is the first instance I can think of in which the shooter—in this case, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner—carried out anything like a hybrid assassination-rampage: first, a planned, targeted assassination of a high-profile political figure, followed immediately by a seemingly indiscriminate shooting rampage. The first part of this hybrid assassination-rampage left a U.S. Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, in critical condition with a serious head wound; the second part, the rampage, left six dead and another 13 wounded.

These two types of murders have little in common. In America, at least, the assassin is concerned about only one thing: taking out his target. While others may get shot in the confusion, political assassins never, to my knowledge, stick around after accomplishing their primary task just so they can keep murdering others indiscriminately.

[….]

In rampage shootings, on the other hand, media reports often describe the rampage murderer “shooting at random” before the bullet-in-the-head finale. But closer study of these shootings reveals that the attackers often have specific targets in mind—usually bullying supervisors or fellow workers. Sometimes, in the bloodiest cases, the shooter takes aim at the entire “company” or school, making everyone in it an intended target. In many of these cases, the shooters turn out to have been victims themselves of bullying, harassment, and social or financial ruin.

Judging from early reports, Loughner looks to be a pastiche of these two classic profiles.

Why psychiatrists can’t predict mass murderers

Let’s assume that we’ve identified a set of characteristics often exhibited by mass murderers. What does that buy us? It enables us to answer the question, “Given that someone is a mass murderer, what characteristics is he likely to exhibit?” That’s an interesting question, but it’s not the one we want to answer. Rather, the question we really want to answer is, “Given that someone exhibits this profile of characteristics, how likely is he to commit mass murder?” Answering this question is extremely difficult because the predictors are invariably far more common than the event we hope to predict, and mass murder is very rare. Although mass murderers often do exhibit bizarre behavior, most people who exhibit bizarre behavior do not commit mass murder.

Media reports about Jared Loughner, the alleged Tucson killer, illustrate this difficulty. His abnormal behavior, however unusual, is still far more common than the crimes of which he is accused.

Loughner pulled over hours before shooting

Hours before Saturday’s shooting, suspected gunman Jared Lee Loughner was stopped by an Arizona Game and Fish officer for running a red light.

Agency spokesman Jim Paxson confirmed Wednesday that an officer made the stop about 7:30 a.m. Saturday on an Interstate 10 access road several miles from the shopping center where congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people were gunned down.

Loughner, who was described by the officer as “very forthcoming,” and “very polite, very subdued,” was driving an older-model charcoal gray Chevrolet Nova, which has since been seen parked outside the Loughner family home.

Police Release Documents Detailing Contact With Ariz. Gunman Prior to Deadly Rampage

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department released reports on Wednesday detailing contacts with Arizona gunman Jared Loughner and his family prior to Saturday’s shooting — contacts that ranged from petty nuisance complaints to a drug arrest.

[….]

The reports detail all personal contact Pima County deputies had with Loughner beginning on Sept. 23, 2004, when he was the victim of a reported assault.

Loughner was later arrested as a juvenile for possession of alcohol on May 15, 2006, and on Sept. 10, 2007, he also received a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia, according to the police reports.

The police reports do not appear to indicate a violent history. Instead, they reflect a man seemingly prone to destructive tendencies.

Read more at the link.

Records show fear of Loughner, lack of mental health intervention

Pima Community College in Tucson has released records of its campus police contacts with student Jared Loughner, showing the increasing fear that he stirred in his classmates and teachers.

A thread running through the documents is the difficulty of police finding a context in which to intervene: Until they found a violation of the student code of conduct, or a state law, police officers wrote in the reports that they weren’t sure what else they could do, even when a fellow student said she thought Loughner had brought a knife to class.

The records show no indication that the college took steps to get Loughner any mental health counseling.

Loughner also seemed not to understand the seriousness of the fears. When police spoke with him, Loughner said his free speech rights were being violated, and seemed to have trouble understanding why he had been called out of class.

Here’s a really interesting article by a researcher on why some people act heroically in situations like the Arizona shootings.

Rohit Deshpande, a professor at Harvard Business School, has delved into the science of heroism to find out what causes someone to spring into action despite the danger to help or save someone else.

In his research, Deshpande focused on how hotel workers took extreme risks to protect guests during the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008.

After several desperate hours of explosions and gunfire, members of the kitchen staff locked arms and formed a cordon around guests as the attackers machine-gunned them down.

In another display of heroism, hotel operators stayed at their phones to call rooms with vital information.

[….]

He found heroism had nothing to do with age, gender or religion. It started with personality.

“It seems that they have a much more highly developed moral compass,” he said. “They have this instinct for doing something good for other people. We find this across a whole series of situations.

I’m going to end with an article by Joan Walsh of Salon on why Sarah Palin is too narcissistic and lacking in empathy to ever be elected president.

Good grief! Has Joan Walsh paid any attention to current President Barack Obama’s behavior or George W. Bush’s for that matter? Narcissism and lack of empathy have seemingly become de rigueur for holders of the office these days!

Sooooo…. What are you reading this morning?