It’s a little pointless to speculate about where the Arizona shooter got some of his super-crazy ideas: presumably he will eventually be medicated and/or interviewed enough to simply tell us. Still, the press’s sudden fascination with David Wynn Miller strikes me as a little over-eager. There isn’t really much evidence tying him to Loughner. Yes, both men seem to have strange ideas about the government using grammar as a means of mind control. It seems perfectly possible — maybe likely — that Miller’s the source of that. But for what it’s worth, I think we probably shouldn’t rule out simultaneous, uh, discovery.
It’s just that Miller’s ravings aren’t as novel as they might seem. Consider timecube.com (it’s a lot sadder to read than it was a couple of days ago). In this case the author is convinced the government is exerting control through a conspiracy centered around the 12 hour clock. There’s also plenty of railing against evil educators, biblical allusions and specious logic.
In Gene Ray’s case it’s the clock, not grammar. But it could easily have been grammar. This kind of sickness seems more about obsessive and broken thought than conceptual synthesis. Whatever bibliography we generate is going to be meaningless, and it seems a bit ludicrous to be playing name-your-influences as if Loughner had just released a debut album.
