Of course, if it’s proven in court that Loughner’s insane, most of this is moot anyway. Obama noted implicitly in his speech at the memorial service for the victims on Wednesday that most stories like this disappear with the next news cycle (though I’m sure Nancy Grace will get a decent series of fat paychecks for all-too-in-depth coverage). Regardless, I’ll pretend this one will stick around for the sake of argument.

While it may be pointless to assign blame to specific individuals (not to mention a little absurd to pin it on a political mailer), it would be a lost opportunity if we didn’t take a moment to investigate the structure and state of the society in which a psyche like Loughner’s is incubated.

Some of Loughner’s acquaintances have mentioned that he seemed interested in a philosophy of fostering chaos, which has been, mistakenly in my opinion, labeled nihilism. His disagreement with a college math professor about whether the number six was actually the number six or if it was instead the number eighteen is particularly telling (his problem was having a linguistic argument in a math class, methinks).

From what we know, Loughner’s words and actions point to someone disconnected a little more than the median modern man. I think his disconnect is, in a way, a linguistic one. It goes further, though, into what in psychoanalysis is referred to as the symbolic order – the very way we order the world around us. The void left by this malfunctioning of his mode of relating to the world was filled in much the same way that it is filled – and this is key – for all of us in American society: by multiple narratives, myths, and in Loughner’s case, conspiracy theories.

Moments of crisis and chaos, in an extreme case like Loughner’s, might be the only time he feels comforted – that, in those split seconds of terror, no one is fully capable of ordering the world around them.

So no, Mrs. Palin, this is no time to point fingers. Neither is it a time to brush off the lessons of such a tragedy and declare a society inculpable. To do so is to close ourselves off to betterment.

In the introduction to the field manual I posted a link to yesterday morning, it reads that “Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors. They must be prepared to help reestablish institutions and local security forces and assist in rebuilding infrastructure and basic services. They must be able to facilitate establishing local governance and the rule of law.”

Given that one of the largest complaints (and the cause of many vendettas) of militant groups in the Middle East and elsewhere is that the U.S. involves itself where it needn’t or shouldn’t, you’d think that the most obvious step would not be to first get more involved. Unfortunately, that line was crossed when we invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq.

My second point on these few sentences is that the “reestablishment” and “rebuilding” only needs to happen because we drove out the established government and destroyed the original infrastructure. Along these same lines, it seems obvious that when the manual says “reestablish institutions,” it really means “establish institutions friendly to the U.S. and willing to do whatever the fuck we say.”

the wikipedia page on COIN

and

the army’s field manual.

I will hopefully follow up soon with a more detailed post explaining why COIN is a dumb idea.

So reads the first sentence of an article in today’s NYT about a bill with which lawmakers are responding to the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year on corporate spending for campaign ads.

. . .awesome.

but where has dominion gone?

Secondly, here’s an article in today’s NYT about Proposition 14, which passed on Tuesday. It modifies California’s primary structure, so that open elections will be held in place of the more nationally ubiquitous party primaries. The top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, will then go on fight out the general election. It’s intriguing because it indicates a frustration among the plethora of independent voters who are regularly left out in our current two-party system. Whether or not it is the harbinger of changes like this on a national level is yet to be seen, though the progress in that direction will certainly be slow and painful for anyone who would be cheered by it.

No place is left
to stab a body
without making it
a martyr. The only
weapons left to us
are preemptively dull;
the herd is culled no more
by straightforward slaughter
but by word and lore
and satisfactory fodder.

It is power and responsibility,
we hear this myth daily
and assume the two intertwine
instinctively, all the while
intuiting that it is rarely so
simple. Still, such
a dichotomy reassures.