(Loughner) Tucson shooter obsessed with bizarre Internet movie

Washington Examiner ^ | 1/17/11 | Byron York

[markomalley]

By all accounts, an Internet documentary named "Zeitgeist" was the favorite movie of accused Tucson shooter Jared Loughner. Created in 2007 by New York-based conspiracy merchant Peter Joseph, "Zeitgeist" is a two-hour mash-up of old and new conspiracy theories involving religion, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the Federal Reserve system. Its message is simple: "We've been lied to. We've been lied to by every institution."

"He wanted to watch it all the time," a teenage friend of Loughner's told the Arizona Republic. "It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do."

"Zeitgeist" has three parts. The first tells us that Christianity is a myth, and that religion in general conditions us to believe other myths. The second tells us that the most powerful of those other myths is 9/11 -- we call it an act of terrorism when it fact it was an inside job perpetrated by the U.S. government. And the third part tells us the real powers behind 9/11 and the other myths are central bankers. They're making the myths for money, while we're just being duped.

"Christianity, along with all other related theologies, is an historical fraud," the narration begins. "Zeitgeist" posits a sort of Zodiac-based foundation for all faiths and gives us insights like, "Jesus' solar Piscean personification will end when the sun enters the Age of Aquarius."

But religion is much more than astrological musings. "It empowers the political establishment who have been using the myth to manipulate and control societies," the movie claims. "The religious myth ... serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish." And anyone who questions the myth will pay a price. "The keepers of the faith won't enter into debate with [critics]," the narrator says. "They ignore them or denounce them as blasphemers."

At that moment, "Zeitgeist" turns to -- of all people -- Washington pundit Tucker Carlson to pivot from the Christianity myth to the Sept. 11 myth. Interviewing a 9/11 skeptic on MSNBC in 2006, Carlson said, "It is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful for you to suggest, imply, or help other people come to the conclusion that the U.S. government killed 3,000 of its own citizens."

To the makers of "Zeitgeist," that is an "Aha!" moment: a skeptic being literally denounced as a blasphemer. From there, the movie recounts standard 9/11 truther stuff, like claiming plane crashes alone could not have brought down the World Trade Center towers.

But why was it done? "Sept. 11 was the jump-start for a hegemonic agenda enabling the possibility of constant global warfare," the movie asserts. It was a pretext, staged "to launch two unprovoked illegal wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"However, 9/11 was a pretext for another war as well," it continues. "The war against you. The Patriot Act, homeland security, the military tribunals act and other legislation are all completely designed to destroy your civil liberties and protect those in power." From there, "Zeitgeist" cuts from a video clip of Adolf Hitler to -- surely you saw this coming -- George W. Bush.

But even Hitler and Bush aren't the real villains of "Zeitgeist." The third and final part of the documentary is titled "Don't Mind the Men Behind the Curtain." Those men are central bankers and currency manipulators, the "invisible government" that controls our lives.

In the early 20th century, according to "Zeitgeist," "ruthless banking interests" held a secret meeting to create the Federal Reserve system. The goal, beyond enriching themselves, was to debase American currency and reduce the United States to the "slavery" of ever-increasing debt. Anyone who has even sampled kooky speculations about the Fed will recognize this as very old stuff, repackaged with amateurish digital effects.

In the end, "Zeitgeist" tells us we must break free of the slavery. "If the people ever realize the truth," the narrator says, "the entire manufactured zeitgeist ... will collapse like a house of cards."

Is all this left or right? Parts of "Zeitgeist," complete with depictions of Fox News as a government propaganda organ, resemble some paranoid, far-left, anti-Bush tracts of 2004-2007. Other parts resemble far-right paranoia from many years ago. But the more important question is what effect the picture had on Jared Loughner.

At a time when Loughner was increasingly unable to control his own mind, he apparently welcomed "Zeitgeist's" message that there were sinister forces out there trying to control it for him. The meaning of "Zeitgeist's" role in the Tucson violence is not that Loughner's motive was political. It's that the movie's insane incoherence proved to be an awful stimulant for one dangerously incoherent mind.

[markomalley]

In other words, he was loony tunes.

Nice piece, Byron, but no humongous revelations contained herein. Sorry.

[JohnBrowdie]

he’s a GWB hater and a truther. he reminds me of keith olbermann MUCH more than sarah palin.

[Danae]

So he was a truther as well.

I don’t even know what to say, in some very small way I feel sorry for the guy, because he was clearly mentally ill, and in dire need of help he obviously didn’t get.

I hope that the medical community can help this guy, if only so as to make him sane enough to recognize what he did. At the very least he should become cognizant of just how sick his actions were.

Sad sad sad story from start to finish.

[NoLibZone]

Yes he hated Christians Christians like Tea Partyers.

[raccoonradio]

Speaking of Looney Tunes, as in a certain cartoon blog,
Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Brew blog has this:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/bad-ideas/was-arizona-shooter-obsessed-with-waking-life.html

>>Was Arizona Shooter Obsessed with “Waking Life”?

>>If something is too difficult to explain, just blame cartoons. So now some people are beginning to suggest that Jared Loughner, the gunman who went on a shooting rampage in Arizona that killed six people, may have been a fan of Richard Linklater’s 2001 rotoscope-animation film Waking Life. Last night on 60 Minutes, friends of the shooter said he was “obsessed with the film.” The connection stems from Loughner’s obsession with lucid dreaming—a mental state in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming—which is a central theme of Waking Life.

>>Fans of the film are so worried that they’ve already started publishing pre-emptive defenses of the film, like this one at the Brown Tweed Society:

—— Waking Life kept popping up in my mind because Jared Loughner wrote a lot about the blurred lines between dreams and reality. He also asked a lot of difficult questions about government and social control, questions which mirror many of those posed in Waking Life. Before his dark mental illnesses really took hold of him, some of Loughner’s questions contained a degree of reasonable skepticism grounded in established, though perhaps poorly understood on his part, tenets of philosophy and linguistics. He asked it in a poor, ill-suited context of course, but the question Loughner posed to Gabrielle Giffords at the much-discussed 2007 public forum—“What is government if words have no meaning?”—is a valid inquiry grounded in the assumption that government and other human social abstractions are primarily linguistic constructions. It’s exactly the kind of question that prompts much of Waking Life’s extended dialogue segments.

[pissant]

I’d prefer they just quickly execute the POS.

[cripplecreek]

I don’t even know what to say, in some very small way I feel sorry for the guy, because he was clearly mentally ill, and in dire need of help he obviously didn’t get.

To make matters worse, liberals actively encourage and enable mental illness. With them they see it much the same way they see drugs as a tool to enhance creativity. Unfortunately with most liberal ideas, it too often ends in disaster.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

A lot of that reads like George Noory's CoastToCoastAM, especially the truther stuff, Bush's illegal wars, Bush's anti-constitutional Patriot Act, global conspiracies.

Noory claims C2C is nonpartisan and not political but after six years or so of calling G.W. Bush everything but president and now getting furious at guests who don't address Obama as President Obama, I find it hard to believe that Noory is telling the truth.

I wonder if Loughner is C2C fan.

[USNBandit]

And the third part tells us the real powers behind 9/11 and the other myths are central bankers.

Well it's a well know fact, sonny Jim, that there's a group of the five wealthiest people in the world known as the pentaverate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers. And meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion known as, the Meadows. .......The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothchilds and Col. Sanders before he went tets up.

Oh, I hated the Col. with his wee beady eyes, and that smug look on his face, Oh you're gonna buy my chicken, Oohh...... Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave for it nightly, smartass!

[mylife]

And do you know what the Colonel does with the chicken ***es?

He sells those to McDonald!

[DarrellZero]

Of course human language is a manmade construction.

As such, it is only an abstraction of reality.

It doesn’t require any particular genius to realize this. Loughner seemed to think this notion was some sort of amazing insight on his part.

[cripplecreek]

Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence.

I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto.

But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here.

When I stop going there, I will be well.

Are you also divergent, friend?

[USNBandit]

With all this coming out over the long weekend I'm sure MSNBC will correct all the "misplaced outrage" they have been putting out since the shooting.

In fact, "misplaced outrage" should be the operative term to respond to leftist attacks on conservatives over this event.

[reagan_fanatic]

But religion is much more than astrological musings. "It empowers the political establishment who have been using the myth to manipulate and control societies," the movie claims.

That's funny. If anything, the government is doing all it can to minimize and maginalize Christianity in America. You'd think if it was using it to 'control' society, it would let it flourish so that it would gain more adherents.

[Crim]

Nope...he was just our every day truther off his meds....

There have been multiple mass shootings tied to truthers now... and the fact is...this info is going main stream...

Truthers are being exposed...

[Danae]

Just as long as he recognized what he did, on a cogent level.

Works for me otherwise.

[pissant]

I’ve always hated the “insanity defense” and it shouldn’t be up to jurors or judges or anyone else to determine if a murderer is nuts, or just sometimes nuts, or just nuts when he did his evil deed.

Ted Bundy was apparently a very intelligent man. But he was also a psychopathic murderer. So whether this AZ bastard is as aware and cognizant of what he was doing as old Bundy was makes no difference to me. I want him dead ASAP so not one more dime (than necessary for trial) of his victims and victims families tax payer money is spent to house and feed him.

[El Cid]

I’ve always hated the “insanity defense”...

I never had a problem with the insanity plea... But it should have been an 'AND' statement, not a 'Get out of Jail' card.
If guilty, the ruling should be: 'Insane AND Guilty' - not, 'Not Guilty by reason of Insanity'... that's just crazy. I'm certainly sorry that the murderer's brain was scrambled - but that's true about most murderers. If he's guilty of murder - than he's guilty of murder.

[joesjane]

Love love love this movie!

[depressed in 06]

"We've been lied to. We've been lied to by every institution."

He may be on to something or on something.