As usual, the media pundits are racing to explain away yesterday’s tragic event in Tucson, Arizona, by diagnosing and labeling Jared Lee Loughne as an assignable cause. They want to know if he was a Left-wing nut, a Right-wing nut, or just a generally deranged nut?
He was no nut! He was just Arizona Normal.
Arizona, a leader in the proliferation of fractured ideologies and story-lines —- alien invasions, government conspiracies, gun rights, fascist commies and other evil-doers —- has done much to help institutionalize and legitimate the idea that we live in an every-man-for-himself world, surrounded by enemies who are out to subjugate each and every person’s god-given perogratives, assuming that is that those prerogatives are exercised by white, god-fearing Americans. In Arizona, and much of America, young Loughne is just a regular guy who has learned his lessons well. But Arizona Normal is not just for Arizonans.
An institution no less important than the great Supreme Court of the United States itself is on-board and is doing its best to keep the ball rolling downhill. A standout among some of its most recent decisions is the court’s latest interpretation of the second amendment, which reads in its original form:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
GLOCK 18C with extended magazine
According the court and Arizona normals, a proper, if somewhat twisted restatement of the amendment, should read:
Guns, being necessary for every individual to defend his or her personal prerogatives against any other person who gets in his or her way, no lawful restriction shall be created to “well regulate” the right of each individual to be armed, locked and loaded.
Jared Lee Loughne, being a normal young man with a deep appreciation of the latest interpretation of the Second Amendment, arrived at the Safe-Way market parking lot, armed, locked and loaded. He then acted in good faith—Arizona Normal— to defend himself from the threat posed by evil government.
Interestingly, Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D) supported Arizona’s gun “laws” that encouraged people like young Loughne to go about their daily business with concealed weapons,locked and loaded, just in case evil should get in their way.
Reportedly Jared Lee’s defense against evil was a Glock semi-automatic, rapid-fire man-stopper accessorized with an extended magazine, presumably in order to deal with extra evil.
PS – I lifted the following comment posted following a NTY article on the events in Tucson. It really does capture the essence of Arizona Normal.
“As far as I know congresswoman Giffords was a big advocate of illegal alien rights. Same illegals that come to USA and kill and rob Americans everyday. And that is somehow not violence, not crime and does not cause all the left wing hysteria in the news. Perhaps, someone got fed up with inability to find justice by any other means. As US Economy crumbles violence against the corrupt anti-American politicians will become more common.”
I disagree with your assessment that Loughner was ‘no nut’. Clearly he was derranged. But, as the Pima County Sheriff pointed out, it is those on the fringe that least able to see inflammatory comments in context.
The median murder rate per 100,000 is about 4.8. Arizona is ranked 17th at 5.4. This data is for 2009
So the Arizona as outlier claim implicit in “Arizona Normal” is not particularly justified. Unless we are to also conclude that the 16 states with higher murder rates are also (e.g.) “Missouri Normal”
California is 19th at 5.3 murders per hundred thousand population.
As an aside it is interesting to note that states with no death penalty have lower murder rates. Further of the top 15 states, 8 are in the south and 11 are in the south or west. The only real outlier is Louisiana which is number one (at 11.8) and about 3 points higher than the next highest state (New Mexico – ? – at 8.7). No other successive difference is greater than 1.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRalpha
is my source
Arizona Normal represents a broader trend. Yes it could also be Missouri Normal.
Murder rates have nothing to do with the point I am making. My entry is about a mindset that conceives of the individual as a sovereign state unto his or her self, who must stand ready to defend his or her interests and rights against all others, by force if necessary.
By this reasoning, Loughner, no matter how deranged you or I judge him, was acting in defense of what he perceived as a threat to his interests. Call this self-defense.
The view of the individual as a sovereign state that must be ready to defend his or her borders takes us to a place in which anyone, no matter what their “reality”, can justifiably act with force, lethal or non-lethal, in self-defense. The view that in the affairs of human beings, the individual’s interests always come first, is just one way of looking at things. It is a path to endless conflict irrespective of an shared understanding of what constitutes acceptable reason.
This is the logic behind the Supreme Court’s 2nd Amendment ruling and the increasingly dominant mindset I have called Arizona Normal.
Defend your rights. You lose! (W. E. Deming)
NYT Editorial Today, “Tombstone Politics” comes close to what I am saying, but not quite close enough. A reading of the column suggests that the political debate in the US has become to openly acrimonious and that the opinions allude to violent action.
What the editorial says too obliquly, is that the right wingnut “Arizona Normal” or “Tombstone, Arizona Politic”, advances a worldview that leads inexorably to violent confrontation perpetrated by he/her who is “right” and against those who are “wrong”. It is the belief that the “right” has the right to defend themselves against wrong-minded evil-doers.
It is not the rhetoric that does the harm, but the mindset that is created by the ideological nonsense of righteousness. It is not just that any Arizona Normal fool can buy and carry a gun. It is that Arizona Normal’s believe that that every person has the right to defend their rightness through action.
Mr. Arizona Normal’s right to defend himself is Arizona’s Frankenstein. They’re created the monster by telling him he has the God-given right to carry his glock and shoot bullets at evil. But they skipped the meeting that determined what was classifiably “evil” and now they rule makers are on the menu. Loughne is Arizona Normal in the context of the state of Arizona. Somebody probably should have put a red mark on his forehead so he would remember that he was mad in a state full of gun happy, Christian, mad-hatters. If someone does a thousand acts of insanity and one reasonable thing, which act is A-wall? Maybe Arizona Normal is California Insane.
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