The takeaway, from this week's Pentagon shooting: Pot will make you crazy. Photo: nimbin mardi grass 2009/Flickr CC

The Washington Post today describes John Patrick Bedell as “a troubled 36-year-old Californian who loved marijuana, computers, and conspiracy theories.”

If those interests form some kind of explosive mix, as the WaPo story indicates, then we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Suspicions that 9/11 was an inside job are widespread, as are pot use and technophilia — the latter two, at least, are directly supported by the government.

Bedell pulled a gun at an entrance to the Pentagon this week not because of his interests, or his character, but — as Bedell’s parents rightly put it — his mental illness.

I’d be interested, then, to know which psychiatric and psychological treatments Bedell did get, if any. That will go further to answering the “why” of this story, than a list of hobbies.

Here’s a bit of the sensational stuff, though, from WaPo:

Bedell left an electronic trail thick with written, video, and audio manifestos. In an audio address posted on the Internet, he suggested that after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy the United States had been infiltrated by a cabal of gangsters he called the “coup regime.’’ Bedell believed that the group has continued manipulating the country “up to the present day’’ and was probably responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.

via Gunman troubled, friends say – The Boston Globe.