Anti-government violence in Texas

I’m kind of curious as to why, when it’s an angry white man flying his plane into a federal building, it’s not considered an act of terrorism?

For those of you who haven’t heard, Joseph Andrew Stack, 53, of Texas, flew his Piper Cherokee PA-28 into an IRS building in Austin this morning.

Are white men in their 50’s automatically given a pass, or do you think it has more to do with not wanting to ignite the furor of those of the far right who might sympathize with Stack and his jihad against “big government”?

It’s kind of funny when you think about it, how the Republicans have no problem insinuating that Obama and other Democrats are terrorists, but how they get all up in arms when the same label is used against their party faithful, like the man who recently murdered abortion doctor George Tiller, when they use violence to bring about political change… which, to me, seems the very definition of terrorism.

But we don’t yet know where Stack, today’s attempted mass murder, stood on the political spectrum. Certainly, based on the “fan” groups that popped up today on Facebook, it’s a distinct possibility that Stack was an anti-government teabagger, but, to my knowledge, no photos have yet surfaced of him at a Tea Party rally, carrying a gun and waving around a sign about how the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of tyrants… I suspect that might be coming, though.

As for what Stack believes, I’ll let him speak for himself. The following is a clip from the message that he left behind:

…I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well…

Nothing changes unless there is a body count. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at ‘Big Brother’ while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough…

Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.

Sounds like teabaggery to me, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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77 Comments

  1. Jacques Stropp
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm | Permalink

    It’s quite eloquent, in it’s own way. “Big Brother” is clearly the superego, in which sense he is flying a plane into his own self-hatred.

    Hope this doesn’t fuck up SXSW.

  2. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 10:03 pm | Permalink

    Behold the end of the guy’s letter:

    “The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

    The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”

    I’m not sure he was a right-winger, if I’m reading that correctly.

  3. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 10:05 pm | Permalink

    Why the fuck are airplanes named after Native Americans?

  4. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 10:11 pm | Permalink

    It fascinates me that two of this country’s very few acts of left-wing terrorism happen in Texas. Lee Harvey killed Kennedy because Kennedy was threatening to annihilate Cuba.

    Now Stack has a sentiment of distaste for capitalism which, end-resulting in death, would have been profound, had he crashed the plane in the ocean.

  5. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 10:34 pm | Permalink

    Rips on Bush, laments that Congress didn’t do something about health care… hmmmm.

  6. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 18, 2010 at 11:49 pm | Permalink

    Remember when you kinda rushed to judgment about that census worker being hung by anti-government tea-bagger types because Glenn Beck kept using that “blood of patriots and tyrants” quote?

    Yeah, it was a suicide.

  7. Posted February 19, 2010 at 1:39 am | Permalink

    I thought it was on today on NPR when they announced this and said, “but it wasn’t terrorism” – how is it not?

  8. EOS
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 6:20 am | Permalink

    Terrorist – a radical who employs terror as a political weapon; usually organizes with other terrorists in small cells. Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. It is the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political.

    Joseph Andrew Stack and the man who killed George Tiller were isolated individuals whose deplorable actions were performed to draw attention to themselves. Neither acted as part of any group, nor is there any evidence of coordination of similar further acts by other individuals in a group. In a similar manner, just because an armed robber may invoke a sense of terror in his victim does not make his crime an act of terrorism.

    The Weathermen or Weather Underground are rightly considered terrorists because they were a group of individuals who planned and carried out a series of bombings and used the publicity of each atrocity they committed to further their political agenda of stopping the war in Vietnam.

    Mark, you lose your credibility and do damage to your political viewpoint when you attempt to smear law abiding citizens who gather for peaceful protests as members of a terrorist group. There hasn’t been a single arrest at any Tea Party and the large groups who gather don’t even so much as litter.

  9. Posted February 19, 2010 at 6:43 am | Permalink

    You guys might want to reread the post. I said, quite clearly I thought, that we didn’t know where Stack stood it terms of ideology. I said that, as yet no evidence had come forward showing a connection to the anti-government teabagger contingent. All I said was that, as his message has seemed to resonate with those folks (based on the fan pages that have popped up), that I wouldn’t be surprised.

  10. Posted February 19, 2010 at 6:45 am | Permalink

    And I never thought that I’d see Lee Harvey Oswald’s roll in the Kennedy assassination framed as an act of “left wing terrorism.” Thanks for the early morning laugh.

  11. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 8:01 am | Permalink

    Good morning Mark.

    Based on my non-encyclopedic reading on LHO, he was, as a young leftie, deeply disturbed by JFK’s anti-communist aggression against Cuba. It is not far-fetched, I submit, to argue his shooting of JFK was an act of left-political terrorism.

    I should point out that I define “terrorism” as a systematized use of terror, no mattter if by an individual or group. If one agrees, then LHO’s act used terror in an attempt to “protect” Cuba.

  12. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 8:02 am | Permalink

    it’s a distinct possibility that Stack was an anti-government teabagger, but, to my knowledge, no photos have yet surfaced of him at a Tea Party rally, carrying a gun and waving around a sign about how the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of tyrants… I suspect that might be coming, though.

    Sounds like teabaggery to me, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

    Tags: tea party, Tea Partyfication, teabaggery, terrorism, Texas, violence on the extreme right.

  13. Posted February 19, 2010 at 8:43 am | Permalink

    Looks like old Commie-kazi Joe played bass, too.

    You know how those soft-spoken nice-guy left-leaning bass players named Joe get. You never know you’ve pushed them too far until they fly a plane into your shit.

  14. Elf
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 9:14 am | Permalink

    I’ve read through Mr. Stack’s comments and, in my opinion, it looks like a mishmash of sometimes conflicting theories, kind of like the tea partiers with their signs about how Obama is a Marxist Socialist Nazi. So I’m not sure what camp to assign him too. What’s clear to me, however, is that the rhetoric of people like Glen Beck, who spout irresponsible antigovernment nonsense, played a roll. So, while Mr. Stack may never have gone to a tea party, I’m certain that the climate that spawned them has some responsibility here as well.

  15. Rob
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 9:32 am | Permalink

    I can almost see how Mr. Stack’s kamikaze worldview developed… A failure in business, not because of anything he did or didn’t do, but a victim of the vast government conspiracy ( left-leaning, of course ) that didn’t offer HIM any sort of new-fangled bailout because he’s just another pasty middle aged white man. A long winter of feeling like a flop, fueled by perhaps ten hours or more of Faux News daily, add on a few hours more of “tea bagging” Internet time …….. And there you are.

  16. Kim
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 9:49 am | Permalink

    Tea partiers – or, as some of them like to be called, members of the liberty movement – are trying to distance themselves:

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/news-that-joe-stack-was-not-a-tea-party-member-disappoints-obamanoids.html

  17. Kim
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 9:51 am | Permalink

    See also Michelle Malkin’s “Blaming The Tea Partiers: First Step To Criminalizing Dissent”:

    http://vdare.com/malkin/100218_tea_partiers.htm

    You see, this was all done to shut down the Tea Parties! It’s a conspiracy!

  18. Curt Waugh
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 10:29 am | Permalink

    I heard a Texas politician on the radio this morning. I believe he was a Republican and he very clearly said that this looked like terrorism. He was not mincing words.

    EOS, your attempts to parse what is and is not “terrorism” (whatever the fuck that means) are pathetic and sad. You come off as if you’re defending him somehow. Who are you? John Yoo? This guy wanted to scare the shit out of people and have his name remembered. He wanted to terrorize the people he hated because he was a tiny little man who felt that he had no control over his own life. This fuck head also tried to kill his family, by the way. He terrorized people. Why in hell would you jump to his defense? Do republican talking points really mean that much to you?

  19. PaulKS
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 11:45 am | Permalink

    We should immediately start profiling anti-tax, anti-government people before letting them get on planes.

  20. Joe Cooter
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 1:37 pm | Permalink

    Don’t worry Black Jake, your left-leaning soft-spoken bass player doesn’t know how to fly. But from my location up the hill from you, I guess I don’t need to.

  21. TV watcher
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 1:41 pm | Permalink

    Anyone watching FOX News? I’m curious as to how they’re covering it.

  22. Blake Blain
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 1:49 pm | Permalink

    Once I got so angry at the tax man that I was seriously thinking about driving my limited edition Porsche Cayman S right into the back of a big government sponsored school bus!

    Turns out they’d cut all the school buses in my district though, so I had to settle for tearing up flowers in park. I’m pretty sure they got the message, because a few months later, they closed the park!

  23. tommy
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 2:03 pm | Permalink

    Curt and EOS – the definition of what is and is not terrorism is hard for me to get my arms around. I tend to follow the logic of EOS’s (did I really say that) in the thinking that the ‘calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political’. I also think that sustained efforts in this regard – whatever the agenda – is a factor. The Weathermen and the IRA fit this description. Not so sure that the Ft. Hood shooter, the Unibomber, the Tiller Killer, the Columbine Guys, Va. Tech, or this dude do. This seems more like delusional people who went over the edge with devastating results. I could be wrong; just my opinion.

    The saying, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter is something I think about often. I think about Howard Zinn’s ‘Peoples History of the United States’ and its views in a similar light.

    Where you stand sometimes depends on where you sit – doesn’t make it right, however.

  24. M Simpson
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 3:47 pm | Permalink

    The guy’s pissed that that corporate fat cats don’t pay their share. This, as you’ll remember, is the same guy who was busted by the IRS for not paying his taxes. So, it’s not that he thinks everyone should contribute. It’s that he doesn’t think he should have to. That’s nuts-to-the-forehead teabaggery right there.

  25. Curt Waugh
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

    I quit. This is the dumbest topic ever.

  26. Andy1313
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 3:57 pm | Permalink

    Stack seemingly had no coherent political philosophy based on the limited writings that have been released. He just knows that he’s against anything he thinks has the power to hold him down and take his money – read gov’t/IRS, big corporations, organized religion, etc.

    I don’t think he’s so easily pigeon holed politically, but he can certainly be considered a violent anti-gov’t terrorist.

  27. Mr. X
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 4:28 pm | Permalink

    What is it, Curt? What has you so bummed out about this discussion? Would you prefer that we not talk about the anti-government madness gripping our nation? Should we avoid it altogether? Or is it just that the body count wasn’t very big this time? Would it have been worth discussing if he was successful and had killed as many people as Timothy McVeigh? I think this IS something that we have to discuss as a community. It’s vital to our very future. If you don’t think we’re going to see this more and more in the coming years, you’re crazy.

  28. Mr. X
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 4:29 pm | Permalink

    I would, however, agree that it’s silly to quibble over whether or not he’s a Republican or a Democrat. Still, though, I think his actions should be discussed.

  29. Posted February 19, 2010 at 4:57 pm | Permalink

    That’s because you won’t cut footloose, like Joe Stack did.

  30. Dirtgrain
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 11:17 pm | Permalink

    Is God a terrorist?

  31. Andy1313
    Posted February 19, 2010 at 11:59 pm | Permalink

    Not only is god a terrorist (he directly inspires most of them, although apparently not Mr. Stack), but he’s also the most prolific abortionist in history, killing an estimated 25-30% of all our precious babies. God needs to be brought to justice. If he won’t cooperate I recommend a torturous stress position to loosen his lips.

  32. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 12:06 am | Permalink

    God can do whatever he wants with his own creation, because he created it.

    He is unique in regard to his total legitimate authority over everything, since he is the author of everything.

    Just like any of us is unique in having total creative authority over our own artistic creations.

  33. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 12:12 am | Permalink

    Joe Stack’s the guy at the keyboards.

  34. dragon
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 1:50 am | Permalink

    In the words of Oscar Wilde the central theme is “The terror of God, which is the secret of religion.” The terror of God: a phrase which neatly summarizes the idea that the reason for and the importance of religion is this overwhelming and petrifying fear of God—of what he is, and of what he might do. All too often—at different times, and in different places—it seems Wilde was right. The essence of religious observance is fear. God is a divine scarecrow, we are the birds!

  35. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 8:27 am | Permalink

    Yeah, well, you should watch the Stack band video I posted if you want to see terrible.

  36. EOS
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 8:42 am | Permalink

    The essence of Christian religious observance is love. We love Him because He first loved us. There is no greater love than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends.

    The motivation for a Christian’s behavior is gratitude, not fear. We are grateful for what God has already done for us. Unlike any man made religion, we don’t perform in order to be acceptable to God. God has already accepted us, and He is preparing an eternal home for us. Death is victory and we leave this sin damaged world to live forever with God in paradise.

    And the benefit of every Christian is a personal relationship with an Almighty Holy God and unsurpassed joy. There is no more important issue in this life than seeing Jesus for who He really is, and savoring Him above all else.

    There IS a great God of grace who fulfills promises to people who trust Him. Effective faith embraces the promises of God as more satisfying than the promises of sin. Christians are hedonists, who once they have tasted the joy of Christ, have a thirst to experience more of that joy and eventually abandon the pursuit of all else.

  37. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:17 am | Permalink

    EOS, I would like to share a bottle of wine with this God you describe. Do you happen to have her email?

  38. EyeHateGod
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:24 am | Permalink

    God is a hateful asshole.

  39. EOS
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:32 am | Permalink

    Try kneemail. It’s instantaneous.

  40. Dirtgrain
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:33 am | Permalink

    “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2).

    “When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you… Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17).

    “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves” (Numbers 31:17-18).

    “The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open” (Hosea 13:16).

    “And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works” (Revelation 2:21-23).

    “From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths” (2 Kings 2:23-24).

    I’m not feeling the love.

  41. EOS
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:52 am | Permalink

    The love is experienced by those who trust and believe. If any believers were killed in those events, they immediately experienced an unsurpassed love and a life far greater than any experienced in this world.

    “Whosoever believes shall have eternal life.”

  42. Dirtgrain
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 10:07 am | Permalink

    Do they have Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in heaven?

  43. EOS
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 10:09 am | Permalink

    No. Everything in heaven is perfect.

  44. Dirtgrain
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 10:44 am | Permalink

    No action movies? No explosions? No conflict? I hope never to read a novel that has no conflict in it. I don’t think people would be happy in a perfect heaven. How would you even be able to appreciate “perfect” when there was no bad to contrast with it?

  45. Posted February 20, 2010 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

    But I thought that Total Recall was pretty perfect.

  46. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 3:55 pm | Permalink

    Please, somebody watch that video I linked to. It’s not a trap, it doesn’t support me or my philosophy in any way. You may regret it, but not for Brackinald Achery-related reasons.

  47. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 4:35 pm | Permalink

    Brack Ache,

    They’re so bad it’s beautiful.

    This, on the other hand, makes me want to get guitar lessons.

    Erich

  48. Peter Larson
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 8:08 pm | Permalink

    I was intrigued by his constant twitching. Perhaps it’s his Fleabagger angst. I was more intrigued that the video suddenly stopped and became a story about 12 people being killed in a flood.

  49. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 8:18 pm | Permalink

    So far zero connection to teabaggery, for those following along at home.

    …not that reality has a whole lot of influence around here when the partisan parroting kicks in.

  50. Peter Larson
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:04 pm | Permalink

    True, there is little evidence that his politics had any level of coherence, but then the fleabaggers have shown me little evidence that they have any either, hence my dumping him into that bag.

  51. Peter Larson
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 9:06 pm | Permalink

    Speaking of incoherence, the same could be said of the truthers, or anyone who reads the Huffington Post.

  52. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 20, 2010 at 11:37 pm | Permalink

    It’s too bad more people aren’t interested in talking about this. The arguments are getting to be bigger news than the actual event. Everybody’s trying to pin it on the other political party, but it looks like he just “blew his stack,” so to speak.

    There were some statements made in various commentaries that he was a registered Democrat, and that his daughter said he voted for Obama, but both are completely unsubstantiated.

    He also had no connection to the tea parties that anyone can find so far.

    There are some interesting articles about his life history, his being an orphan, his personality, etc. Nothing about his political leanings at all.

    It seems that he tried to write off his house as a church, and got busted. He tried to fight it, but failed and lost a lot of money, lost a couple businesses. He got busted for not filing his taxes for two years (if I remember right) because his income was only a little over a grand for those two years. Then he wrote off his second wife’s piano, but didn’t report his wife’s income (which he blames on his accountant), and got busted for that.

    His house was worth over $200,000, and he owned the plane he used, so he wasn’t exactly poor.

    He also got in a fight with his second wife just before he went kamikaze, but it looks like he worked on his letter for a long time before that (as an attempt at therapy, at least), so it’s hard to tell which caused what.

    But it looks as simple as he had a history of trying to evade taxes and getting caught, and he felt his only option left was to burn his house down, and fly his plane into an IRS building.

  53. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 12:08 am | Permalink

    As for Joe Stack being the latest in a long line of tax protesters:

    Mr. Siegel added that Mr. Stack doesn’t fit the traditional profile of a tax denier because, while he appears to have complained about taxes and sought to evade them, he didn’t claim he was under no legal obligation to pay them.

    Source.

  54. dragon
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 2:15 am | Permalink

    Not sure if he was a teabagger, but he sure sounds like a Butcher.

    an essay by AYN RAND

    Throughout history there have been two kinds of chickens which have come into power whenever society abandons reason– The Butcher, and The Semi. The Butcher succeeds by the very virtue of those they enslave, by deceiving chickens into believing that they are fulfilling their “Destiny” or entering “Nirvana,” by sacrificing themselves for “The Chicken Coup.” Under The Butcher, the chickens offer themselves to slaughter. But The Butcher ultimately must rely upon The Semi for survival, an agent of fear and muscle with which to dominate those who reject the creed of self-sacrifice. The Semi survives by running straight over any chickens in its path. But The Semi is also dependent on The Butcher for justification of its slaughter.

    In either case, the historical product is the mass slaughter of innocent chickens. The Semi which does not regard the values of the lives of the chickens runs right over them, and The Butcher which does not regard the value of the life of the individual chicken leads them to mass extermination for the Whole. These two alteratives are manifestations of the same false ideology– the lack of recognition for the rights of the individual chicken.

    But politics is always a compliment to culture. When you hear the phrase “Why did the chicken cross the road?” — this is your cue to run. The chicken who says this gives up his ability to think, leaving the world to the Semi’s and Butchers. He comes in many forms, passivism– giving up the world to The Semi’s as the Butcher, or aggression– giving up the world to the Butchers as a Semi. Each false alternative is a manifestation of the same deliberate attack on the chicken’s rational faculty.

    Why did the chicken cross the road? The question is impossible to answer–we are given no information as to which chicken and which road. We are given only two abstractions without context.. The question itself implies either rationalism, that knowledge is not based in reality– or empiricism– that knowledge bears no relation to how chicken’s think. the question is a society-wide symbol of epistemological disintegration. Its cultural / linguistic function is to compliment The Butchers and The Semi’s, by severing the chicken’s mind from reality and leaving him to wallow in what he cannot know. Only by rejecting the question altogether, and its poltical implications, can chickens be saved from mass extermination.

  55. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 4:10 am | Permalink

    How so?

  56. Peter Larson
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 9:06 am | Permalink

    “But it looks as simple as he had a history of trying to evade taxes and getting caught, and he felt his only option left was to burn his house down, and fly his plane into an IRS building.”

    That’s really the crux of my impression of the type of people who become Fleabaggers. People who are completely willing to receive services but unwilling to pay for them. Basically, tax evaders.

    But that’s just my impression. I could be wrong.

  57. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 8:50 pm | Permalink

    Here is an interesting NYT article from 1998 about the specific anti-programmer tax law that Joe Stack was pissed about.

  58. Hot Knuckle Lover
    Posted February 21, 2010 at 10:00 pm | Permalink

    Brackinald Baggery,

    Yes, that is the exact article that the free republic is citing, along with a large number of other like leaning sites:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2456176/posts

    Is the free republic where you get your talking points from or somewhere else? Just curious because I’d like to read the source not just another regurgitation from the the copy-and-paste army.

    LOL!

    -HKL

  59. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 8:48 am | Permalink

    I’m just google searching “Joseph Stack,” going through the results, and posting links to articles that I feel others might find interesting, basically, since nobody else seems to want to add anything of factual value to the discussion.

  60. Fredra 12
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 9:02 am | Permalink

    I don’t know what it would prove if there were photos of him with an Obama-as-Joker-with-a-Hitler-mustache t-shirt, waving a Palin flag at a Tea Party. I know everything I need to know from his letter and actions. He was paranoid about the government, and his political philosophy wasn’t in any way coherent. He was an angry failure of a man, and he thought that someone else was to blame. You can call it whatever you like, but to me it looks like the guy took Glenn Beck 101.

  61. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 11:40 am | Permalink

    Looks to me like some people feel so politically threatened by the populist tea parties in the midst of seeing their own best political hopes fail miserably, that they’re desperate to put down the tea parties to the tune of being prejudiced and intellectually dishonest.

    Mind you, I think Beck is an opportunistic phony, and I’ve never been to a tea party.

  62. Peter Larson
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 1:00 pm | Permalink

    I’m not politically threatened, it’s just that everything I’ve read from the Fleabaggers themselves sounds like the words of uneducated, raving lunatics.

  63. Robert
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 1:24 pm | Permalink

    When asked if he was a hero, Joe Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bell, said “Yes. Because now maybe people will listen.”

    http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/daughter-pilot-in-irs-crash-was-a-hero-266326.html

  64. Peter Larson
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 2:54 pm | Permalink

    I just did my taxes.

    I paid $210.27 this year.

    The IRS sent me $1004 back, part of which is to offset my absurdly high local property tax.

    In addition, my family got over $10,000 in educational financial aid from the federal government.

    My local township cleared the road in from of my property twice and provided a really bad school. I think they are closing the library, too.

    I really don’t think the typical fleabagger makes much more than I do. I don’t understand what these people bitching about.

  65. Ed
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 3:55 pm | Permalink

    Robert,

    I bet that daughter wasn’t the one who was supposed to have been in the house he set fire to that morning, before crashing his plane into the IRS building. My guess is that she’d have a different opinion.

    -Ed

  66. Peter Larson
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 5:38 pm | Permalink

    And apparently queen fleabag, Sarah Palin, gets health care through the Indian Health Service. If she were a true fleabagger, she would forego tax money and pay for it herself. She certainly can afford it.

    My beef, Mr. BA, is that most of the fleabaggers out there probably don’t make enough money to actually pay taxes, and even if they do, they likely have enough kids and other deductions to get credits that put money in their pockets, rather than take it away. In addition to other services, it’s likely that every fleabagger gets much more than they actually pay in, just like I do.

    I hear Libertarians and fleabaggers screaming about taxation and the IRS, but I don’t imagine that many of them are ripping up their refund checks or turning away financial aid for their kids, or staying off highways. I bet Ron Paul himself hasn’t turned down his government provided health care that none of the rest of us can have.

    I bet you, too, BA have no problem consuming federal services, even with your calls for a quasi-feudalistic, anarcho-state.

  67. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 5:42 pm | Permalink

    Here’s another article about is daughter feeling like he’s a hero.

    An excerpt:

    “Bell lives in Norway, “Good Morning America” reported, because she lost her job while pregnant, and Medicaid “would not take care of her.” Despite Norway’s steep taxes, Bell feels she gets more for her money there, she told the morning show.”

    Joe Stack was pretty pissed the the US hadn’t passed Health Care reform, and he sure hated corporations and the Catholic Church. Not very tea-baggerific sounding to me. Hated Bush, didn’t bitch about Obama even once. Quoted Marx favorably, disdained capitalism…. not signs of tea-baggery.

  68. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 5:45 pm | Permalink

    As per your last comment about tea-baggery, Peter, I really don’t care. I’m talking about Joe Stack, who is not a tea-bagger. So far, tea-baggery has nothing to do with Joe Stack, despite the left’s attempts to make it so. That’s my point.

  69. Peter Larson
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 6:45 pm | Permalink

    I agree that Joe Stack has little to do with Teabaggery, except that he had a beef with the IRS, who apparently did not like his efforts to evade them.

    Now, what about the hypocrisy of the fleabaggers? I’d really like to know what you think, since you appear to defend them.

  70. Erich Auerbach
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 7:41 pm | Permalink

    Apropos:

    “If, as author Bill Blum has noted, a terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force, then the suicide pilot Andrew ‘Joe’ Stack most certainly qualifies as a terrorist, having made an effective little bomb out of his Piper Cherokee. At the minimum, he appears to have been a thoughtful terrorist, so we should pause a moment to consider his thinking. For crashing his plane into the offices of the IRS in Austin, Tex. – and, worse, for leaving a manifesto explaining why he did it – Stack has been accused by the usual mouthpieces on the Democratic left (Daily Kos, for example) as a right-wing Tea Party loon (the Tea Partiers demur). His suicide letter, now published far and wide on the internet, has been dismissed as a “rant” for its “ideological incoherence” and “self-pity,” in the words of Salon’s Joan Walsh, herself a model of the Democratic left in that she can always be expected to say nothing worth reading.”

    “The Joe Stack Manifesto: What it Really Means,” Christopher Ketcham

  71. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 8:27 pm | Permalink

    Peter, I defend whoever is being slandered. I defended Obama when that Geir guy was slandering him. I hate lies more than people. Truth and facts give me enjoyment; one of my favorite things is to change my mind about something because new shit has come to light, or to formulate an opinion about something I never thought about before my researching it. I like to discover truth by arguing with people who think something different than I do. I don’t have a lot of patience for shitty arguments, obstinately prejudiced thinking, or intellectual dishonesty. That’s my motive. I don’t know why it makes people mad at me, but it does. That doesn’t mean I’m doing it on purpose.

    I’m not a tea-partier, I don’t follow the tea parties besides getting amused that the neocons are trying to hijack them to get back into power, all the while shitting on the real small government people. I’m not even sure if the tea-partiers have a unifying philosophy, or if so, what it is. In short, I really don’t care about the tea parties. I’m just pointing out that the automatic knee-jerk partisan propaganda to label this guy as a tea-partier is false, transparent, and pathetic.

  72. Hot Knuckle Lover
    Posted February 22, 2010 at 11:04 pm | Permalink

    Brackinald Aggery,

    Sorry if I misjudged you. I was all inflamed by the other paste post. Do me a favor (not that I merit favors, but) maybe in your Googling give us heads up and say, “I was Googling ‘Stack and tax’ and a bunch of folks on right wing sites are linking to this article in the liberal NY Times…”

    In the interest of intellectual honesty, it’d help me to know if you found the NY Times info on your own or if it was filtered content.

    Honesty gets me wet, too. And there is such a thing as a knee-jerk jerk. Gotta keep a head up!

    Kisses!

    -HKL

  73. kjc
    Posted February 23, 2010 at 7:06 am | Permalink

    “I don’t have a lot of patience for shitty arguments, obstinately prejudiced thinking, or intellectual dishonesty. That’s my motive. I don’t know why it makes people mad at me, but it does.”

    yes, that’s some real enlightenment that’s come from all your arguing with others. but i hear you on not having a lot of patience. i hate a persecution complex.

  74. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 23, 2010 at 5:24 pm | Permalink

    I’ll swing when you get near the plate.

    One thing so far has been settled from this — there is absolutely no evidence so far that Joe Stack has any connection with Glenn Beck and/or tea baggery, despite the best efforts of some to make it so.

  75. Meta
    Posted February 24, 2010 at 1:43 pm | Permalink

    Robert Wright has a piece today on the NYT blog entitled “The First Tea-Party Terrorist?”

    …Was he a Tea Partier — or at least a Tea Party sympathizer? Conservatives who say no point to leftish themes in his manifesto. And it’s true that — in a line much-quoted by these conservatives — he seems to wish that the government would do something about health care. Then again, who doesn’t?

    There are clearer left-wing strands in Stack’s writing — he identified with blacks and the downtrodden, he said the rich oppress the poor — but I’m not sure how relevant that is, because I’m not sure how purely conservative the Tea Party movement is anyway.

    Yes, it mobilized against a liberal health care bill and the stimulus package, but it also opposes corporate bailouts. Sure, Tea Partiers hate taxes, but that alone doesn’t distinguish them from many Americans. On social issues the Tea Partiers include some libertarians along with a larger number of family-values conservatives.

    And when you move to foreign policy, things don’t get more coherent. Though some Tea Partiers are hawks, many follow Ron Paul’s lead, combining a left-wing critique of military engagement with a right-wing aversion to the United Nations and other multilateral entanglements.

    In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/the-first-tea-party-terrorist/

  76. Brackinald Achery
    Posted February 24, 2010 at 4:15 pm | Permalink

    To sum up:

    “He thought a bunch of leftist stuff, and wasn’t associated with tea-parties at all, but fuck that, he was a tea-partier because I fucking hate those people.”

  77. Dirtgrain
    Posted February 24, 2010 at 6:40 pm | Permalink

    And you don’t paint . . .

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    […] week or so ago, in the wake of the one-man attack on the IRS in Austin, we had a discussion here about the whether or not the increased anti-government rhetoric on the […]

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