White House Shooting Suspect’s Path to Extremism

[alp227]

The government says that on Nov. 11, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, rode past the Ellipse in Washington in a black Honda Accord he bought with money he earned waiting tables at his family’s small chain of Mexican restaurants here. Investigators say he slowed down as he passed the White House and fired a semiautomatic rifle from the passenger window. Bullets struck the White House near the residential quarters. The president and Michelle Obama were out of town.

The federal charges accuse Mr. Ortega of attempting to assassinate President Obama. They say acquaintances claim that Mr. Ortega was trying to kill Mr. Obama because he considered him “the Antichrist.”

That a religious extremist from a small town in Idaho would try to kill a black Democratic president might seem like cinematic stock. The state has long been stereotyped as violently antigovernment and racist. Remember the white supremacists of Hayden Lake? Remember Ruby Ridge? But many people here in Idaho Falls say the cliché is empty this time.

Mr. Ortega is a Mexican-American whose family knows the sound of ethnic slurs and worries mostly about its restaurant business, not politics. People here say that the only thing that could have motivated Mr. Ortega was mental illness — but that they did not realize the severity of it until it was too late.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/us/oscar-ortega-white-house-shooting-suspect-struggled-with-mental-illness.html

[RZM]

1. Makes sense to me

I don't think that strong religious beliefs are a sign of mental illness. But those beliefs compelling you to do a drive-by on the White House? I think that qualifies.

[greyl]

2. Curious...

Can you please define "strong religious beliefs" and "mental illness"?

[RZM]

4. I'm neither a doctor nor a theologian

Strong religious beliefs to me denote powerful faith in a particular belief system and a construction of one's identity around that system. Mental illness means to me means a disconnect from reality and/or modes of thought that are very different from how most people operate.

[sce56]

3. So who did he listen to on the radio Beck, Limbaugh or Pat Robertson?

That is what I want to know who told him on Hate Radio that the President was Evil?

[2pooped2pop]

5. bingo

try as they might to pin violence on the left, we all know who the gun toting, racist fools sides with. Seldom do you see violence from the left.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. He watched an Alex Jones video

It's on the 2nd page of the article.

Mr. Chapman, 21, said he had not heard Mr. Ortega talk of taking violent action. But more than a year ago, he recalled, Mr. Ortega and others watched an antigovernment film on the Internet called “The Obama Deception,” which was written, directed and produced by Alex Jones, a Texas-based conservative talk show host who has espoused a number of conspiracy theories involving the federal government.

[Blue_Tires]

7. yep, that'll do it...

[Doctor_J]

8. Yeah, these assholes who do these analyses refuse the blatantly obvious

Listen to any radio station in Idaho for 10 minutes and you'll have your answer.

FWIW the far right's stranglehold on America will loosen as soon as we the people take a few hundred hate radio stations off the air

[FailureToCommunicate]

9. Lots of people listen to those nut jobs, but don't necessarily have

easy access to an AK-47:

"...Jake Chapman is also scheduled to make the trip to Washington. The AK-47 that Mr. Ortega is accused of using to fire on the White House was registered to Mr. Chapman, who said in an interview that he is known to friends as “the gun guy.” He said that he sold the gun to Mr. Ortega in March for $550 and that he believed it was the first gun Mr. Ortega owned."