More fuel for the fire:
Another highlight from Mother Jones interview noted earlier, Loughner quit smoking pot a few years ago, according to his friend:
In October 2008, [Bryce] Tierney was living in Phoenix, and Loughner came to visit. They went to see a Mars Volta concert with friends, and Tierney was surprised when Loughner said he had quit partying "completely." Loughner, according to Tierney, said, "I'm going to lead a more healthy lifestyle, not smoke cigarettes or pot anymore, and I'm going to start working out." Tierney was happy for his friend: "I said, 'Dude, that's awesome.' And the next time I saw him he was 10 pounds lighter." Tierney never saw Loughner smoke marijuana again, and he was surprised at media reports that Loughner had been rejected from the military in 2009 for failing a drug test: "He was clean, clean. I saw him after that continuously. He would not do it."
Interview in question:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1
I think this interview says the most about Loughner, in terms of how he interacted in reality. This kid was probably someone combing the obscure reaches of the internet in his private life, and at times challenging reality with the blunt weapons of his non-sensical ideas.
Really, what you can get from the Mother Jones interview is that his motivations may be very much linked to simple
humiliation: all of these ideas bubbling up in his head, and perhaps he thought it very profound to ask the senator in 2007 how words could mean anything, but instead her response (in Spanish apparently) probably ran straight against his ego. He does not seem to have been obsessed with Giffords, but to have held a resilient grudge against her, and his note after the assassination makes it clear that she was his target. Perhaps he felt, in a Freudian way, that he was "intellectually castrated" by an intelligent woman in public, and after reading all of the conspiracy theory fueled bullshit he could find online, she made a nice target when the time came to attack the government.
The right really has to stop prevaricating here. In terms strictly of his political ideas,
- ALL of the political statements that he makes in his youtube video, to friends etc. are based on:
1. Constitutional fundamentalism: ratifications (amendments? changes?) to the Constitution are false
2. Currency fundamentalism: the existing currency is worthless, so we have to make our own
3. Fear of language, mind control and government takeover
- One exception is his apparent atheism, which caused him indignation when an Army recruiter handed him a mini-bible.
A few quotes from his Youtube page make the connection to fringe right-wing thought apparent:
"If the property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws."
"In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."
Loughner's Youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitup10
I think that once we see more from investigators about what sites he was going to, and what networks if any, he was discussing his ideas with, we will see the influence by the conspiracy theory wing of the right become clearer.