Yesterday, February 18, 2010, at approximately 10:00am, disgruntled software engineer, Joe Stack, piloted his Piper Cherokee into the Federal IRS office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and two other people in the building.
Now, before some laud Stack's efforts as some sort of anti-IRS hero, keep in mind that the two people killed were, like Stack, middle-aged civil servants just doing their job, hardly responsible or even able to steer IRS policy and legislation.
Reading reports, the media has variously referred to a posting on Stack's website as "rambling", as a "manifesto".. and have suggested that Stack was simply insane.
I don't know. And that's the scary thing. His writing in my mind strikes me as actually quite lucid. So, if we have intelligent, lucid people willing to engage in a terrorist act out of frustration over the disconnect with government, isn't it perhaps about time we started to take seriously the growing sense that the "us" and "them" are not conservatives and liberals, but citizens and their own government?
For your own consideration and thoughts, Stack's posting shortly before his death is posted on the National Post here.
While I would hardly suggest Stack is a hero for taking the lives and seriously injuring other innocents, his frustration and his lack of faith in a government of the people and for the people are worth more consideration than just being written off as a "rambling manifesto".
6 comments:
Thanks for linking to that Rob, I'd seen it mentioned but didn't think to go read, just assumed it was the rant of a mad man. You're absolutely right though. This wasn't the ramblings of a crazy person, nor was it a piece of partisanship full of nonsense about Bush and 9/11 or Obama's socialist takeover. This was someone dealt a shitty hand whose government failed him again and again.
..it was curious that over the lunch hour, I was listening to Opie and Anthony.. and their point was essentially the same as my own.
That we can't condone what Stack did, but we are fools if we ignore the reality that he isn't alone in his feelings of disconnect with the administration of government.
There is a problem, but the machinery of government is self-perpetuating, and sadly, acts like this are not likely to end with Joe Stack.
In no way can I condone the killing of two people who were just two cogs in the machine. In fact he may even have more credibility if he took out some of the politians he hated even though I cannot condone that either.
That being said I read his entire post, and I agree with some of the things he said. Taking money from us taxpayers to subsidize failing companies and big unions... I'm tired of that.
Crazy or not he was a coward. To target innocent people that may not have even viewed his case, and murder them, while committing suicide is not the norm. I have felt like government has failed me many times, but never thought about violence as a fix.
There are so many channels to take, and I wonder for those showing him sympathy, what is the other side of the story. Could he just simply been evading taxes?
Now if he had been brown then he would have been a terrorist, right Rob?
Because with you it is all relative....
CWTF.. oh yeah, I'm all about being a hater because of someone's color.
I'm not even remotely suggesting stack was a hero. Any more than I would suggest that some crazed Al Quaeda bomber is a martyr.. and in both cases, we have to ask the fundamental question of why is it happening.
Seems we're spending lots of time worrying about the "why's" when it comes to Islamic extremists.. and when it comes to learning about and "understanding" every other screw up in society.. but we don't seem to be all that concerned about why voter turnout is so dismal, and why people feel so dis-connected to their own government.
As I've suggested before, CWTF.. the powers that be profit greatly from the ruse that the "us" and "them" is the left and right.. and we buy into it in turn.
But when both the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. are handing money hand over fist to AIG and GMC.. well, it's time to do a re-think.
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