Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was a 9/11 truther?

Looks like it:

In an Internet posting, a user named JPatrickBedell wrote that he was determined to see justice for the 1991 death of Marine Col. James Sabow in Orange County, which was ruled a suicide but has long been the source of coverup theories. The writer said the case would be a step toward revealing the truth behind the 9/11 “demolitions.”

The same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer.

This is, of course, preliminary information, but still: Oh so drearily depressing. And hardly unexpected.

There’s something about the quality of fringe political beliefs and conspiracy theorizing that practically demands a violent response. Believe the government killed 3,000 of its own citizens to launch deadly adventurism abroad? How could you not be plotting rebellion and death to the miscreants? It’s not like that kind of shadowy power would ever let itself be voted out of office.

Which is why today’s regular intrusion of fringe beliefs across the political spectrum into the mainstream conversation is really quite troubling. Those beliefs — aside from their distinct disadvantage of being, you know, false — don’t just crazy up the discourse: They undermine civil society. One side can’t dialogue with another that’s nuts; and the nutty folks couldn’t possibly dialogue with folks they regard as completely evil. The willingness of mainstream figures to toss around words and ideas like “tyrant” and “secession” only compounds the problem.

John Patrick Bedell was, most likely, a lone nut. So was Scott Roeder. So was Joseph Stack. And so, too, will be the next nut. But they didn’t form in a vacuum. Our national dialogue is as filled with extreme talk as it has been in my lifetime — we shouldn’t be surprised that extreme acts sometimes follow.