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"He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn?t listen to political radio. He didn?t take sides. He wasn?t on the left. He wasn?t on the right."

Said one of Jared Loughner's friends.

For those of you who still want to argue, straining against the evidence, that the terrible political rhetoric pushed Loughner over the line, let me help you. I've studied law for 30 years, and I know how to extract an argument using what little is available.

Ready?

Here goes...

The overheated rhetoric in America was so repugnant that Jared Loughner couldn't bear to engage with it. Alienated and left to his own thoughts, he became mentally disordered, leading to the massacre. If only the political debate had been more gentle and inviting, he might have watched television and listened to the radio, and then his mind would have contained more conventional ideas, precluding the insane, murderous thoughts.

AND: I was just talking with Meade about my (deliberately strained) theory, and he said that a young guy like Loughner would not have been drawn in by more politely stated political commentary. A marginal individual ? especially a person with a propensity toward violence ? would probably be susceptible to more aggressive, more vivid commentary. What did Loughner consume instead of  politics? Wasn't it violent video games and movies? By contrast, the news ? even the commentary pundits decry as vicious ? would seem bland and insipid.

We've read that Loughner had a grudge against Gabrielle Giffords because she wouldn't answer the question "What is government if words have no meaning?" He seems to have decided she was stupid and fake. If that was his tendency, toned-down rhetoric wouldn't have been what would reincorporate him into the political community where he might be influenced by others and come to believe more normal things. He seems to have wanted to talk philosophically about what's really true, beneath the surface of things, beyond the platitudes.

Now, I think he was psychotic, in which case, none of this explanation applies, but let's assume you want to work with the idea that he was a marginal citizen who might have been normalized if the community socialized him more appropriately with debate and dialogue. What could have reached him? Probably not some namby-pamby paragon of niceness.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 12, 2011 (boomark / email).