On a certain level, anti-tax extremism more or less automatically qualifies someone as a right-winger. Still, I don’t see this morning’s airplane attack on IRS buildings in Austin as explicitly political. The pilot’s suicide note mostly makes him sound like a tightly-wound guy who snapped after a long string of very bad luck.
***Update***
Most of you have clearly read me wrong. Of course this is terrorism. His suicide note explicitly says so. Arguing that semantic point is idiotic, and it doesn’t address the question anyway. Everyone on the internet will spend the next umpteen days arguing about this not because of what the guy did but because of what he represents. Everyone wants to know whether Glenn Beck made a guy commit terrorism. Maybe he belonged to some tea party suicide cult or represents a racist militia. If he did, the event would validate everything that people like me and Dave Neiwert have said for years about nutcases on the right.
I do not think that is the case here. This particular perp sounds like an all-purpose paranoid misanthrope who hated just about every organization or institution that he didn’t belong to. Ten minutes after reading his note, the three objects of hate that I still remember (other than the IRS and his tax preparer) are Arthur Andersen, Enron and George W. Bush. Any minute now we will know whether he attended even one tea party or gave five bucks to Sarah Palin. For now, based on what little is out there, I don’t see it.
MobiusKlein
Dunno – many folks commit suicide without attempting to kill other people at the same time.
And targeting a government building is political, unless it was just a coincidence. Let’s say his tightly wound nature was pointed at the IRS by the cloud of anti-IRS rhetoric out there.
mistermix
Clearly, the guy was nuts, but why is everyone falling all over themselves to say this wasn’t terrorism? I would imagine that a good number of IRS employees are terrified at this moment.
Dreggas
@mistermix:
it was a white ‘merikan.
The Main-Gauche of Mild Reason
But that can’t be the motivation of muslim bombers? I have to say, if this guy showed any islamic proclivity at all, we’d we waterboarding his whole family right now.
Persia
@mistermix: And is a guy who tries to set his pants on fire in an airport really 100% sane?
The Dangerman
White Guy brings down plane intentionally; crime.
Brown Guy trys to bring down plane intentionally; terror.
I don’t get it.
MarineSocialist
Yes, but it’s telling that when Democrats are Presidents or in control of Congress, Republicans stoke the milieu of “omfg commies” and a few isolated members of those milieus (milia?) commit terrorist acts.
Frankly, this just goes to show that when Glenn Beck, etc. do (by making malicious public claims against public figures and institutions that they know to be false) is quite literally screaming “FIRE!” in a crowded theater… while addressing people carrying concealed weapons.
Lyle4
Tightly wound people who end up cracking usually only kill themselves. Ranting against the government then crashing into an IRS office is 100% political.
Allan
We’ll all wait here while Tim F. rereads the manifesto, then returns here to apologize for his initial wrong response.
Mary aka Comrade Mary
Well, not just bad luck. It looks as if he joined a small group of superior people like himself who just stopped paying taxes. Because they were so smart and all.
burnspbesq
He may not have intended a political statement, but he lost control of the framing the moment he died. There is a segment of the population to whom this guy is a saint.
Tim F.
@mistermix: Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is unquestionably terrorism. The question is whether this is an incident that Glenn Beck ought to apologize for. Superficial signs might point to yes, but this particular guy just doesn’t sound all that influenced by tea partiers, Malkin or the GOP. It sounds like he hated everyone just about equally.
Tom Levenson
I would say suicide — or really at least attempted murder-suicide qualifies someone as tightly wound. But the cliche is that suicides are trying to send a message, and it matters when that signal is framed by a right-wing body of rhetoric that turns on false claims about reality.
If this guy is as described, he is the agent of his acts…but he had accomplices. Those accomplices may have been unwitting ones in this particular crime and tragedy, but anyone who has any sense of the statistical quality of experience would, I think, feel comfortable in saying that while the particulars are not predictable, the probability that some awful things result from a sustained, serial campaign of untruth should come as no surprise.
So, unusually, I’m going to disagree with you a bit, Tim: this is a politically ramified action; it’s just that the pilot himself is not a lone actor.
Alan
Why attack the IRS and not a Wall Street investment bank?
Edward G. Talbot
The left and the right will both claim he represents the other. Which is fine, but can we at least call it an act of terrorism? I’m not sure what else you can call crashing a plane into a building for a stated philosophical purpose.
Mike Kay
Another terrorist Teabagger
1) glenn beck teabagger terrorist kills 3 cops in Pittsburgh
2) Teabagger terrorist kills security guard at Holocaust Museum
3 Air Teabagger terrorist flys plane into building.
Why do they hate America?
AnotherBruce
That may be true, but I still think it’s a case for profiling white people who may want to fly small planes.
Morbo
Alternate (musical version) title: Man on the Edge
T Paine
Agreed — there’s classic slippery-slope danger if we start saying there are circumstances where flying planes into occupied buildings to make political statements is justified behavior…That is, at least, if we wish to maintain any kind of moral high ground (assuming there’s any left, of course).
Tom Levenson
Wow. I start writing my comment while there are no responses; it gets posted — and is redundant — at number 12. Quite a little community here, don’t you know.
Lyle4
And to be fair, I don’t think this guy was right-wing or left-wing or anything. Just generally all around wingerish.
mistermix
@Tim F.: Agreed. I didn’t see a lot of tea party rhetoric in a quick scan of his crazyfesto.
demo woman
Tim’s right but a lot of apolitical people are scared for their future. When you have talk radio, Fox News, teabaggers and other people and their anti-federal government rants, tightly strung people snap. The Becks and the Limbaughs of the world just cash their checks and laugh at the suckers.
Why do white folks get so little air time when they commit violent crimes?
Aimai
DItto the first four posts. It’s not an either/or situation but an and also situation. And it’s as true of Muslim terrorists– especially suicide bombers. The line between despair and exaltation as motives forvmurder suicide seems unclear to me. Or maybe what I want to say is that they may be culturally specific ways of explaining and rationalizing murder suicides.
Aimai
iPhone
danimal
My general rule: If everyone immediately runs to the microphones to pronounce that an act is not terrorism, it’s because the act is, in fact, terrorism. This was undoubtedly a terrorist act, an intentional attack on a government (IRS, even) building with an accompanying suicide note ranting against the IRS.
Of course it’s terrorism, but it doesn’t serve anyone’s political interest to admit it.
LT
No – the guy had wicked tax problems, which can drive you fucking nuts, and which are often innocently attained. And he had a divorce – which we all know can be sheer hell for some people. And then things got worse. Could be Leftie, Rightie, Innie, Outtie – the guy was a guy who had a lot of difficult stuff happen and finally gave himself over to the rush of fury.
Sounds like most of the customers at the bars I (only occasionally these days) hang out in. “C*nt and Taxes” is the plot to all their stories. (And I mean c*nt in the extra pejorative way.)
Midnight Marauder
As far as I’m concerned, no white person should ever fly any plane again. Even if they are our best line of defense against the coming Geese Invasion.
KCinDC
I’m going to wait at least until tomorrow before forming much of an opinion about this case. Judging by previous incidents, a vast amount, if not the majority, of what’s in the media right now will turn out to be false.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
He mentioned W Bush by name and took a final swipe at capitalism. Therefore, look for the righties to brand this a liberal/socialist act of terrorism.
mr. whipple
Just logged on and saw the post below with the tag, and blew coffee all over the monitor.
“Anyone else watching the freak show on CSPAN?
Posted in Assholes ”
LOL.
GregB
It’s only terrism if brown folks do it. If it is a white guy it’s righteous anger.
Now let’s start telling the wingnuts that President Obama is going to start profiling anti-taxers. That’ll get ’em wound even tighter.
Mike Kay
@mistermix:
when are you going to learn white people
IRAGlenn-Beck-Viewersdon’t commit terrorism!LT
@Mike Kay: This was not a teabagger. He was an anti-corporate Bush hater.
Definitely not a teabagger. Just a guy who lost it to anger and wanted at the same time to somehow justify it. Hence the “manifesto.”
MikeJ
@LT:
Yeah, he had wicked tax problems because of the sovereign citizen movement. You know, those wackos that put a “lien” on the county courthouse and drive around with home made license plates.
beltane
@The Dangerman: Even worse. White guy using a plane to kill government employees=outpouring of compassion for unhappy white man.
Brachiator
A long and sad note, which even more sadly, will inevitably be shortened and homogenized into a soundbite rant by those who need to reduce a person’s life into whatever works for their ideological agenda.
Martin
Terrorism is ideological. This was ideological. I’d call it a terrorist act (a poor one, mind you) because it’s pretty clear he targeted the source of his ideology.
And I agree he doesn’t sound like a winger (sounds a lot like us and the teabaggers in places, to be honest, and like BOB in other places). Bottom line, it sounds like he felt fucked over by a system that favors Goldman Sachs over voters.
I’m not sure there are many people these days that would disagree with that.
LT
@MikeJ:
How do you know that?
Update: (I love the edit feature.) You mean this:
“Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions.”
Does sound like it, doesn’t it?
Bender
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
As a commenter elsewhere imagined Obama’s response to this incident: “Bush has so poisoned the national discourse that a communist can’t even kill himself while attacking the establishment without being called a teabagger.”
Tim Cooper
Yeah, a wait and see approach should be the correct action at this point.
But……. for today’s media it seems that
White + Violently Angry at Government = Misguided Patriot or Lunatic.
Brown + Violently Angry at Government = Terrorist
White + Angry at Liberal religious group + Spurred on by conservative media = Unforseeable Lunatic
Brown + Angry at Conservative religious group + Spurred on by Islamist websites = Evil Terrorist.
Just sayin….
soonergrunt
@Lyle4: That’s like saying that he wasn’t from the south but he was from Texas.
demo woman
As polls have shown, tea baggers are not unified behind one party. They show a high level of disenchantment with the federal government and the democrats in particular because they are the ruling party. We really don’t know if Stack went to tea bagger parties or not.
I do have a question though, if his finances were so dire, why did he have a plane? They are expensive to maintain.
Mnemosyne
@Aimai:
This specific guy reminds me of the attack at LAX a few years ago. On the one hand, you had a Muslim attacking the El Al counter — terrorism. On the other hand, he did it on his birthday a couple of weeks after his wife took the kids back to Egypt and started divorce proceedings, which looks a whole lot more like suicide by cop.
Both/and. Just because this guy chose a political target for his suicide — and aiming for the IRS is definitely a political target — doesn’t mean he wasn’t also doing it because of personal stresses.
PaulW
You do get some crazy types, especially with ex-workers who go back to former offices and take out those they felt ruined their lives.
But flying a plane into a building where government offices are, and leaving behind message(s) that indicate frustration and need for vengeance against the government? That is an act of terror.
There is no difference, as I can tell right now with the information on hand, between this suicide pilot and Timothy McVeigh. Or the idiot who went in shooting up a Unitarian church. Or the psycho who went on a cop-shooting frenzy because of the gumnint. Or the guy who detonated a bomb at the 96 Olympics. Or…
srv
The letter definitely has a libertarian anti-tax bent to it. Republicans will no doubt miss all that and focus on the part were he says bad things about GW and Wall Street.
Now we’ll be establishing no-fly zones around IRS sites.
Sentient Puddle
@KCinDC: I’m beginning to think that I should do the same thing myself. Something about what we have now isn’t quite jiving with me. The suicide note was posted by one Joseph Stack of San Marcos (about halfway between Austin and San Antonio, to the southwest). The plane took off from Georgetown (about as far, but to the north). San Marcos has an airport, why not use that one?
Granted, the house that burnt was also of one Joseph Stack who had another address in San Marcos, so what we got now does seem reasonably solid. Still…something just doesn’t sit right with me here.
Alan
@demo woman:
I heard he stole the plane.
Mike Kay
@LT:
oh c’mon! The teabaggers hate bush because he was a big spender. And they hate wall street bonuses, just like everyone.
Kirk Spencer
I would like to point out something not mentioned in this manifesto — he didn’t intend to go alone, and I’m not just talking about the people in the building he hit.
He set his home on fire before he started. He did so with his wife and daughter trapped inside.
They were rescued. They didn’t escape, they were RESCUED.
I expect we’ll hear more about that, later.
jrg
I get the impression that he was not as pissed off about paying taxes as he was about the benefits of taxation going to the rich, powerful, and corrupt. Clearly he did not like the bailouts, or handouts to insurance companies, or tax exemptions for the Catholic church.
His stance was neither left nor right. There is no party out there suggesting that we stop giving
PACs and NAMBLAorganized religion a free lunch in terms of tax breaks. Nor is their a party serious about reigning in Wall Street before they fleece the taxpayers again. I suspect that this is the reason he was so frustrated.This guy was wound way too tight. He thought he was smarter than the system and got screwed repeatedly.
I can sympathize with him, but he’s still a terrorist. I don’t want my tax dollars to fund the “masters of the universe” or corrupt religious organizations either, but that does not give me license to kill some IRS employee who’s trying to feed his family like everyone else.
Dork
anti-tax + Austin target = likely RWer
Allan
How many people here think that a reasonable response to the (self-created) problems in your life is to pilot a plane into a government office building?
Anyone?
OK, just checking. Some of y’all’s comments sound weirdly empathetic.
MikeJ
@LT: RTFN. I don’t know if he was ever involved in liens or paper license plates, but the organized group of tax evaders who claim that everything they did followed the letter of the law sounds exactly like the groups that did do those things. I’m surprised there’s nothing in there about having fringe on the flag.
trollhattan
@burnspbesq
Yes. And a good many of them will be teabagging this April 15. Funny, that.
beltane
@MikeJ: But they guy is divorced so that excuses all. Women are such evil creatures that whenever one of them has the nerve to leave her husband it is totally justifiable for the husband to fly an airplane into a building. Where’s your empathy, dude?
General Winfield Stuck
His Manifesto
That is was pretty much I hear from the average tea bagger. They diss GWB and republicans as well. Their prime message is Government with too much power, across the board. Now I think privately, many or most of them are goopers and have always voted that way and will continue to. Except maybe the Paulite faction. But most of what this guy was ranting about, that sounded quite lucid to me, was a lot like what I hear prominent tea baggers spouting on my teevee.
Though no doubt a lot of his angst was from personal plights with the IRS, it also indicates he has held antipathy for them and the government for a long time.
mcc
From the suicide note.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@LT:
Would this guy have had tax problems if he had paid his taxes on time or were his “wicked” tax problems due to his attempt to circumvent tax law because he was an anti-tax wingnut?
Ailuridae
@LT:
Do you know much about tax protesters? The section Mary aka Comrade Mary excerpted is standard tax protester boilerplate.
Osprey
@mistermix:
He was white. If this guy had even had a slight tan, about 1/5 of America, including the media, would form a circular bed-wetting squad.
I’ve seen many call it a typical right-wing scribbling…but the complete sentences, good punctuation, and formations of paragraphs, and some of the things he mentioned make him out to almost sound like a dissapointed conservative Obama voter. It has a little libertarian flare to it, but he does mention the health-care system, and the complete failure (insofar) of any reforms by Congress.
And terrorism…yes, this can be called an act of terrorism, but it’s like porn, there’s no real true definition, but you kind of know it when you see it. Terrorism, as a broad definition, is using violence to bring about political change.
I don’t know if you can call it 100% political..my thinking is that if it’s political, it has to do with a right/left mentality (like if he went after a liberal congresscritter or something)…his beef was with government in general.
I think this was more ‘I want to die, but I want to go out with a big FUCK YOU to the government in general’. So he finds a plane, finds the biggest government target he can, and goes kamikaze.
The Moar You Know
Just finished reading his manifesto that tries to self-exonerate his attempt to murder people.
First, let me just say, what a dick.
Secondly, this guy is a classic right-winger who fell in with the “Freemen” and militia crowds. He should be sitting in his living room feeling grateful he wasn’t put in prison, instead, he threw a tantrum and decided to kill some people.
Again, what a dick. Fuck him.
FormerSwingVoter
“The American government is to blame for all my problems. Therefore, I better fly a plane into a building and kill some people I’ve never met who I arbitrarily decided are to blame for every problem in my sucky life.”
I think I’ve heard this one before…
Lyle4
@Allan:
Yeah, it’s sort of freaking me out…
Ailuridae
Also, I should point out that I am 99% sure that the IRS office in question was the one that Charles Polk tried to bomb in 1995 and was later sent to prison for.
Tsulagi
You say that like it might be a bad thing.
Just kidding, but I’m guessing there now may be fewer IRSers looking to score window offices.
LT
@Mike Kay:
I almost lost a testicle before the snark wafted through…
Aimai
Wow– the link in mary’s post way upthread about the clever tax dodge is already scrubbed becausecof the”sensitivity” of thevevents.
I’d like to follow up on the question of whether “c$nt and taxes” can ever be a left right innie outie phenomenon. I’d submit that it can’t. Even if a guy starts outvas a raving liberal if he has a bad divorce he’s going to end up on the libertarian/ant government/ republican side of the aisle. It is precisely at the break up of the patriarchal family that divorced men discover that they’ve always hated the courts, government, religion, education. All these modern institutions don’t help them control unruly women and children and are identified as liberal and the enemy. You might say a conservative is just a liberal angry white male who thinks he got taken to the cleaners by his first wife.
Aimai
Stav
You know, we would all be a lot better off if we didn’t try to box every lunatic out there into a political category. I just came over from Malkin’s site where I had expected her to call the sicko in Austin a “liberal”. To her credit she hadn’t. (Although I noticed that she is all over the other loon of the week Amy Bishop being an Obama supporter) So, lets face it. this is a guy with some serious mental issues and severe financial strains…pretty sure party ID doesn’t play a big role in his violent crack-up.
soonergrunt
@LT: Maybe it’s the stuff on his site wherein he writes about his experiences trying to avoid paying taxes with various extra-legal schemes.
David Neiwert has a long history investigating and reporting on these guys.
Catsy
@Mary aka Comrade Mary:
This.
Stack bought into an extremist right-wing anti-tax ideology in the early 80’s. He was a tax protester and got nailed for it appropriately hard. He then spent the remainder of his life blaming everyone but himself and his ideological fellow travelers for the consequences of refusing to pay taxes in bad faith. His final act of tax protest was as a suicide bomber trying to kill a bunch of people whose only crime was being lucky enough to have a government job in the middle of a recession.
The only meaningful difference this act of terrorism and McVeigh’s is that McVeigh succeeded in achieving a much higher body count and killed a bunch of kids, too.
Not explicitly political, Tim? Christ on a crutch, if suicide-bombing an IRS building and leaving a suicide note that amounts to a lengthy tax protester rant doesn’t qualify as explicitly political, what the fuck does? Whatever was going on in his life that tipped him over the edge is beside the point.
srv
@Sentient Puddle: Probably more planes at Georgetown, I think. San Marcos is a bigger airport, mostly hangered, not quite the GA presence on the ramp that I remember. So more choices w/o screwing with a hanger lock.
Alan
@FormerSwingVoter:
That also seems to be the theme at CPAC. :)
LT
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
I don’t know. Probably of his own making. And anti-tax doesn’t come only from wingnutville.
Uloborus
I read it, or at least a couple of pages until he started really, really rambling. Whining about how the government is absolutely corrupt, everything is black and white, and he’s been victimized at every turn. It’s absolutely not his fault that he got caught gaming the IRS, apparently by claiming to be a church? And when he was drastically poor, a 5k$ letter campaign was more useful than food, right?
This is typical terrorist reasoning, really. Same as Islamic bombers and what have you. X is evil and I’m one of many victims. Didn’t have the Beckian conspiracy reasoning or paranoid out-to-get-me delusions. In his little world he’s totally innocent, the IRS is totally evil, and somehow violence will help in some way.
Church Lady
I read the entire manifesto. I don’t see his act as political. I see a very twisted, sick, desparate man suffering severe financial problems that he could no longer cope with and that he blamed the IRS for. He decided he was done, but he was going to take a few of what he considered his tormentors out at the same time.
It’s just very sad and I feel so very sorry for his wife and child.
Punchy
Since this is clearly terrorism, it’s on Obama’s watch and Obama’s fault. If he hadn’t announced his intentions to withdraw troops from Iraq, this Cessna never would have found its way into Recievables.
Comrade Mary
The manifesto/suicide note has been posted in a variety of places now, like this.
LT
@Ailuridae:
Enough to at least get the “fringe on the flag” joke from Rusty. I’ve met many of these folks since the 80s. (And I once went a reeeeeealy long time without filing a tax form myself. Luckily all taken care of now. It took years.)
whetstone
@Stav: Hear hear. From the note it sounds like the attack was definitely, explicitly political, but not of any particularly handy ideology.
binzinerator
What the eff-you-see-kay are you smoking? What gets more explicit than nose-diving your plane into the IRS? Maybe you think the plane that nose-dived into the Pentagon wasn’t explicitly political either?
I get it. He’s not a terrorist if he’s a white male boomer.
Actually the manifesto sounds more anarchist to me, and there’s certainly cross-fertilization between libtardry and teabaggerism, unsurprising as that ordure is sifting down everywhere from every media outlet.
Plus, there’s the usual asshole whinging that emanates from people who don’t pay their taxes when they find themselves unexpectedly having to account for ‘a boatload of undocmented income’.
He would have fit in perfectly at any Teabagger gathering. His age is spot-on for the ‘Baggers too.
LT
@soonergrunt: Yeah, I read right over that part, as I said above.
cat48
If he needed his $40,000 back to retire, he should have sold his plane. Don’t know if it was new or older, but they usually go for nearly $100,000 for an older plane up to several hundred thousands for a new plane. They said the plane was registered to him. He might not have had any equity in it, but the costs to maintain a plane’s insurance, hangar space, maintenance, & fuel is out of my reach. My husband flys, but he pays rental fees to a club owned plane which is much cheaper than trying to own & maintain a plane.
Martin
@Allan: Oh, I don’t think it’s reasonable at all, nor am I sympathetic. I was just noting that from his tone and subject matter, he could have been a commenter here and fit in reasonably well.
I don’t thing you can instantly assume he’s a winger. And though it appears that somewhere in the past he bought into the freemen groups, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s still there. I mean, do we still hold John’s previous alignment with the GOP against him today? The guy seems not opposed to taxes entirely (hard to tell) but based on the kinds of things he fucked up in his past and are now trying to fix (either willingly or unwillingly, again seems hard to tell) draws a parallel between himself and the corporate guys that fucked up just as badly but have an easier time getting them sorted out than the IRS would afford him. I can see where the frustration would come from, even if I disagree completely with the response.
Corner Stone
@Aimai:
I honestly don’t know wtf to make of this.
Bob S
I found myself agreeing with much of his manifesto, for instance taxing the church, the anti-elite sentiment expressed, etc. It was my leftist/populist economics meets teabag meets libertarian seasoned with desperate and crazy. The fact that his note has something in it for everybody left me wondering when a movement with his name on it arises.
Of course it’s terrorism. The IRS is as symbolic a target as the WTC or Pentagon.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he was a regular Alex Jones listener.
Sue
Oh, that poor, poor man. He was so distraught over his terrible, government-caused poverty that he had to take his own, personal, private plane and fly it into a building, just for his voice to be heard.
Couldn’t he have just sold the plane and bought a couple of billboards with the money?
soonergrunt
@binzinerator:
He didn’t say that, dude. I think he’s trying to be careful about what he says as a lead poster–something the rest of us don’t have to worry about.
If he says the guy was a teabagger and it turns out that there’s a record of support for centrist or (unlikely) liberal causes, it becomes fodder for days for Malkn and others and it’s a mess to walk back.
If on the other hand, he takes a wait and see approach until more information is available, well first he’s actually being responsible, which we should be cheering (but we don’t have to, not being lead posters) but if as you and I suspect the Austin lawn-dart (what, too soon?) turns out to be a bagger, well then he can loudly proclaim that too.
Ailuridae
@LT:
Gotcha. Like I wrote, its pretty clear tax protester boilerplate. And that movement is a fundamentally reactionary one even if it doesn’t fit conveniently into the pen the modern American right-wing has built for itself.
Osprey
@binzinerator:
I think there’s some confusion with the term ‘political’ causing some folks to get their short&curlies in knots.
For me (and I think Tim in what he said), I think if something is ‘political’, it’s more to do with a left/right repub/dem liberal/conservative type of agenda. For instance, if he went off in his screed about Obama trying to use his tax dollars to give poor people health-care, and THEN flew into the IRS, I’d completely agree with it being ‘political’.
It was obviously anti-government, and that may be considered ‘political’, but I think some of us have differing views on what constitutes terrorism and ‘political’ terrorism.
Granfalloon
Whatever his original intent or the reasons behind it, it seems awfully likely that recent teabaggery has both served to whip his frenzy even more and, more importantly, offered him a sense that what he was doing was not for naught. I don’t think this would have happened in October 2001 when everyone was behind Bush, America and the flag. The fact of the matter is, wrapping hatred of your fellow americans, taxes, and a black President in a copy of the Constitution, the flag, and John Hancock’s breeches created a sense of justification, camaraderie, and understanding of what he did. It took a misguided, sad little lunatic and set him on what he probably thought was a grand and noble path.
JK
Everybody calm down. Alex Jones assures us that “Infowars has dispatched a team to the scene. Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com will report updates as they are received.”
w/t http://www.infowars.com/ntsb-says-austin-plane-crash-targeted-irs
Martin
@cat48: My stepfather recently bought a used plane not too dissimilar to what he’s described as flying for about $60K. But we don’t know if he owned it outright or had a loan on it. Selling it may not have netted him much other than the elimination of a payment. And a lot of people don’t hangar their plane. You can swing the whole thing on a pretty reasonable budget, actually. Well, reasonable if you don’t have a fuckton of IRS problems, but clearly this guy wasn’t a paragon of good decision making.
Gus
I don’t know if it’s terrorism. Is this act intended to sew terror, or is it a desperate act of a deranged person?
PalinDrone
From the rant: “These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.”
This is pure teabag. Only the teabaggers think they are looked at as crazy when, in point of fact, they get about 80% of media coverage as an important political movement.
General Winfield Stuck
The guy hatred of “taxation without representation” goes back to the 80’s where he opines about spending 5000 bucks writing and lobbying congress to not make certain changes to the tax code. The fact that he latter got caught not paying taxes doesn’t sound like dumb luck, but a guy who put to practice his antipathy for paying taxes. Not someone who screwed up and then went full hate on the government.
His whining about others getting bailed out sounds more like a “see, I told you so” defense of long held beliefs that got him trouble with the IRS.
On the question of Everyone wants to know whether Glenn Beck made a guy commit terrorism.
That is the wrong formula. It should be –do folks like Glenn Beck provide impetus to people who are already on the edge of committing violence against that they hate, ie federal government.
He is not a republican, but more of a libertarian anarchist, imo.
madmatt
Don’t forget those bastards at the FAA lol
Aimai
This tax protestor thing dovetails with a lot of other right wing beliefs. It doesn’t have to, could be anarchist. But u think historically it’s better understood as a kind of virus which incubates in certain climates which are specifically right wing. There’s antibtax rhetoric that goes back to notions of natural/ white citizens. And there’s anti government/ revenuer style southern fantasy civil war crap. And there’s a kindvofvpoor widdle me anti corporate priviliges/ beta male angst which is pretty well developed in his writing. It’s as dxplicitely political to think that the big banks, or the Jews, or the IRS are scamming the system and crushing the individual white male– but not all workers or women too, as to believe that Marx or thebprophet explains it all.
Aimai
ChrisS
I mean, do we still hold John’s previous alignment with the GOP against him today?
Aside from the fact that John hasn’t flown a plane into a government building (specifically, an IRS building), the anti-tax manifesto this guy left is pretty indicative that he hasn’t exactly cut ideological ties with the anti-tax movement.
(And he was an engineer. And, as a scientist, I work with plenty. There isn’t a problem in the world that an engineer doesn’t think he/she can fix. Problem is that most of their solutions fail to consider anything else that may be impacted.)
Too early to say much of what his political beliefs were, but his manifesto matches well with what I hear from a lot of people that are disillusioned with the government, unions, big churches, and corporations.
mistermix
TImF, it’s the Austin Police who are saying this isn’t terrorism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpA2OECDbDg
That’s why it is an interesting question, not because something you said or didn’t say.
AB
That really does *not* look like right-wing terrorism. Read his suicide note… it’s a combination of anger and resentment and pain leading to insanity. I agree with DougJ.
licensed to kill time
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
That’s what I got from his writing – he hated the tax machine, thought he could outsmart it, and basically invited the machine to crush him under their ‘jackboots’. It seems to be what happens to all those paranoid angry guys – by their own actions they bring on what they most loathe and fear.
Afraid the gummint is going to seize your guns? Stockpile, wave ’em around and shoot people and guess what? Here comes the gov’t to seize your guns!
Mad about taxes? Refuse to pay them, invite attn by filing futile protest legal actions and watch the evil eye of the IRS turn its attn to you in return. So smart!
Barricade yourself in your survival compound and taunt the feds to come and get you. Guess what? They will, and it won’t end well.
Extremists and self-fulfilling prophecies go hand in hand.
LT
@Sue: He stole the plane, according to what I’ve seen.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Wow. I’m seeing an awful lot of conclusion-jumping based on a couple thousand words penned by a suicidal individual.
someguy
Angry white male
Tax protestor
Violence against a democratic administration
Anti-Catholic fulminations
Spewing hateful Limbaugh / Palin antigovernment rhetoric
How’s he not a winger? Looks like a good old boy fundamentalist winger, you ask me.
Bob S
@LT: A lot of flying is also done in rented planes.
madmatt
My heart always goes out to those poor bastards who can only afford prop planes(Ironically paid for with what he owed the IRS) as opposed to being able to afford a jet like a real man!
Catsy
@Gus: From his screed:
This paragraph really should put to rest any question whatsoever that this was an act of terrorism in aid of a political goal.
General Winfield Stuck
@Aimai: Yea, we get it already. White males are the cause of all evil in the world because they can’t control unruly women.
soonergrunt
@licensed to kill time: This.
DMcK
This may be a “political act” on its face, but the underlying cause was his own self-destructive solipsism and stupidity. Seems to me he latched onto a whacko political ideology as a justification for his own self-created problems. The one thing that stood out for me was his admission that he didn’t file any taxes after moving to Austin because he had no income to report; meaning that after his careful and relentless study of the American tax code, he nevertheless remained unaware of the fact that you HAVE to file your taxes, regardless of whether or not your income is zero. Jeezus, no wonder this asshole’s life was perpetually falling apart.
Kevin K.
He could be a libertarian/teabagger. Then again, a lot of what he wrote could have been pried out of the comments at rabidly anti-Rahm/Obama lefty blogs (you know the ones).
Either way, the guy was trying to kill innocents, which, first and foremost, makes him a cold-blooded murderer.
p.s. This reminds me of a suicide attempt in NYC in ’06. There was a lot of weird political mush in his note, too, from what I remember.
EdTheRed
All D-Fens wanted was a Whamlette. Just one Whamlette. But they wouldn’t give it to him…
Stooleo
This guy seems to have had a self image implosion when he finally realized that he wasn’t bootstrapy enough to hoist his own bootstraps. Perhaps he discovered that the bootstraps were in fact broken, so even indeed if that he possessed the bootstrapyness required to lift himself up by his own bootstraps, his efforts to bootstrap himself were in vain. This forced him to come to the realization the the system was fucked. For someone to truly believe in the power of bootstraps and then discover the bootstraps don’t really exist, and are actually more like thin shoelaces, has to be a huge shock to the ego. Basically your belief systems crashes around you. So at this point the only logical thing to do is to steal an airplane and crash it into the nearest IRS building. Cause if the IRS hadn’t been taxing you, you might have had the aforementioned bootstraps, to… you know, bootstrap yourself.
Evinfuilt
Thats not bad luck, reading that I notice since the 1980s he’s been working hard on Tax Evasion and joining groups of people who feel that its their right not to be taxed.
Constantly complaining about finding out that he has to report his income, and file taxes. Gosh, such an innocent. He’s a serial tax dodger whose life finally caught up with him, and he took it out on innocent IRS workers.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m seeing an awful lot of conclusion-jumping based on a couple thousand words written by a suicidal individual.
ellaesther
Ah, so you’re seeing nuance in human behavior!
Very un-blogospheric of you, Tim F.
(Thank you!)
Allan
@licensed to kill time: This. Exactly.
I’m as pro-pot legalization as the next guy, but I understand that if I set up a stand on my front lawn to sell it to the neighbor children, the police will want to talk to me about it.
Bob L
Seems pretty strait forward; the guy was a psychopath; though he could scam everyone, got caught and then when even his wife figured him out decided to go on a killing spree rather that an act like an adult. You got to admit it does sound a lot like the personal stories of the 911 Hijackers but if he sounds like a Tea Bagger, it is because the Tea Baggers of the loudest self justifying assholes of the moment.
artem1s
The most frightening thing about this is that the teabaggers/libertarians/et al who constantly spout this anti-government and anti-tax rhetoric pretty much all sound the same when you get right down to it. It doesn’t matter one whit to me what party they belong to or what the scholarly definition of their movement might be. What I do care about is whether they fly off the handle and commit violence and martyrdom in my vicinity.
They also don’t have any clue how much courage the “Mob” mentality gives to those of them that are on the edge. They may not believe that their words influence the marginal wingnut who is a hairs breath from suicide by cop, but I do and research pretty much backs that up. There is no telling which one of these “lone gunmen” might start the cascade of mob violence and before you know it we’ve got Madame Defarge and Robespierre guillotining everyone they can get their hands on.
Existenz
He also hates Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY).
Sounds like a libertarian nut to me.
Punchy
Looks like they’re going to have to install those bum-rush-proof cockpit doors on small planes now, too. I just want to know how this guy smuggled a boxcutter onboard, and how the other passengers failed to tackle him in time…
maus
What on earth is it going to take for the print/tv newsmedia to stop pandering to Teabaggers?
“I do not think that is the case here. This particular perp sounds like an all-purpose paranoid misanthrope who hated just about every organization or institution that he didn’t belong to. Ten minutes after reading his note, the three objects of hate that I still remember (other than the IRS and his tax preparer) are Arthur Andersen, Enron and George W. Bush”
I’m assuming that the first two because LIBERALS allow state-endorsed monopolies, government intervention blah blah and the last because he was just too darn liberal.
Church Lady
@Aimai: I find your reasoning very scary. You don’t fly, do you?
khead
I enjoyed this:
It makes me wonder what building dear ol’ Dad flew into when solving his problems.
KCinDC
@DMcK, don’t you think that applies to lots of people who commit terrorist acts? Whatever their religious or political beliefs, I don’t imagine they’re generally the best-adjusted people around.
LT
@Bob S: ??
I’m only going on what I saw in news reports.
aimai
stuck and cornerstone,
I’m sorry I mentioned some hotbutton words here. For the record, I’m married to a white male and have nothing against them. I was referring to the obvious history and affinity that the Men’s Rights Movement, the Tax Protestors, the Militia movements and (among others) the breakaway Mormon groups have with each other over issues like *government interference with* idealized patriarchal families. This is a term of art, not feminist jargon–the “patriarchal family” is an actual social formation.
I was addressing an intereresting comment way upthread asserting that divorce drives lots of guys nuts, regardless of their political leanings–nuts enough to fly a plane into an IRS building? but in any event nuts enough to be the main topic of conversation at the bars the commenter frequents. I agree that divorce can be horrendous and often becomes a kind of breaking point for men, especially, in our society. But if you read a lot of MRA writings on divorce you see that individual men who were originally apolitical or even left/liberal in their political views very quickly are encouraged to see the modern government and the court system as the enemy. That’s totally reasonable because the modern court system/divorce law gave women and children lots of rights vis a vis their husbands/fathers that older laws didn’t give.
I’m not speaking out of some generalized feminist fog–I’m talking about a real social phenomenon. If you read David Neiwert’s work on the groups he’s worked with, or MRA stuff on the blogs, or even far off to the side works like Krakauer’s study of the FLDS murders you’ll see tax protesting/MRA/Divorce/Children’s rights issues all drawn together very frequently in the lives of the men in these movements.
aimai
Allan
The letters TEA stand for Taxed Enough Already.
Mr. Stack believed that he had been Taxed Enough Already.
I’m sure that after waterboarding him 183 times in one month, Dick Armey will confess that he masterminded the attack, and then the case can be closed.
Brachiator
@Tim F.:
I’m not too sure about this. From my read of his note, it sounds like he was consumed by his disappointments and resentments, and needed to make someone pay for his personal failure. But hatred alone does not appear to be a motivator.
And putting things into perspective….
I work in the tax industry. A tax preparer called our office and asked the following:
Mouse Tolliver
The people that live next door to this lunatic are extremely lucky their taxes pay for an effective fire department. The house fire he set could’ve easily taken out the entire block.
Evinfuilt
@someguy:
Till recently he wouldn’t fit in as a Republican. He’s just an old fashioned anti-government wingnut. Its just the rest of the party caught up to him. Actually I could guarantee he probably would have hated to be compared to a Republican, they were part of the problem for him. I’d also assume he’s from South California before moving to Austin, there’s a lot of anti-Government groups down there.
He wasn’t right or left, he was an anti-Government extremist, and you can reach that from either direction (Glibtards should embrace him though.)
Sentient Puddle
@LT: Report I’m reading says the plane was his.
But at this point, who the hell knows. We’re still in that mad post-apocalyptic scramble of not knowing what the hell we actually know, so…eh.
LT
@Evinfuilt:
What?
LT
@Sentient Puddle: Yeah, no knowing. Just responding to Sue.
And here are a bunch of stolen plane stories, though they could all be going on one wrong report.
aimai
How can you reach this guy from “the right or the left?” I mean that. What aspects of his rage were from the left? Being against corporations or the catholic church? Those aren’t solely leftist positions. To my mind the part of his writings which talks about discovering the “real way” things are, having been “lied to” and finding out that the game is rigged sounds pretty classically american/anti government but its not from the left–because the left (and I know I’ll get into trouble for saying a name like Marx) *has an explanation for all this bad stuff that he saw and its not resolved by flying your plane into a building and hoping other people get angry too. This isn’t a leftist gesture–there could be ones but this isn’t one.
aimai
Chris Johnson
Yup, he’s no teabagger, he bears no resemblance to any teabagger. The big-government loving, nanny state bastard obviously wanted a socialist world government like all those other left wingers.
That was brutal sarcasm, by the way, in case anyone’s dumb enough to try and run with that spin.
Come the FUCK ON. Can we not see a total resonance between these attitudes and the teabagger attitudes? Granted, he’s so far out on the anarchist/collectivist axis that you can barely pick out right vs left, but the whole teabagger thing is right there with him. They just happen to say they’re against ‘left’ and for ‘church’ and for ‘rich’ rather than against ‘church’ and ‘rich’.
What they’re really for is rage and violence and the overthrow of the system, and in that they’re just like this dude.
Bob S
@LT: ???!
Okay. Just keep in mind that a lot of the initial reporting of these events turns out to be wrong, and there are ways for a person to fly without owning their own plane.
catclub
Catsy @ 48
Wrote: “consequences of refusing to pay taxes in bad faith.”
might be better put as, “consequences of refusing, in bad faith, to pay taxes.”
General Winfield Stuck
@aimai:
He has my sympathies.
Catsy
@catclub: Much clearer construction, thank you.
Gus
@Catsy: Yeah, sorry, I posted before I read his suicide note.
Evinfuilt
@aimai:
So Seattle riots were all caused by right-wingers? His anger is very similar to those of left-wing anarchists. Yes, he is probably more closely aligned with right wing militia movements, but his overall anger can’t be put in either place.
Maybe its because most people don’t fit a single label. Though Psychopath does fit the bill.
Catsy
@General Winfield Stuck:
Okay, look, I went through a horrible divorce with my ex-wife, and I took personal offense at Aimai’s original comment until she clarified it. But what you just wrote was a serious douche move and way out of line.
robertdsc
Speaking of Falling Down, the burger joint that was in the movie is a mile from my house.
I got nothing on the Austin flier, though. We’ll see what shakes out in the next few days.
soonergrunt
@General Winfield Stuck: Dude. Really?
I don’t like a lot of the blame-men-for-everything-including-my-hangnail-crap either but, really?
Sue
LT: CNN corrected the information on the air around 1 p.m. central time.
Mnemosyne
@Osprey:
Actually, I think you (and Tim) are drawing the line in the wrong place, if I may be a pedant. His action was clearly political. What it wasn’t was clearly partisan. Politics is more than left/right/Democrat/Republican.
We can go back and forth about whether or not this guy’s actions originated from a partisan feeling, but there shouldn’t be any debate about whether or not they were political. Otherwise we get into weird territory where we say that 9/11 wasn’t political because al-Qaeda can’t be lumped in with either the Democrats or the Republicans.
Martin
@Evinfuilt: How can anarchists be left-wing?
General Winfield Stuck
@Catsy: Anyone who brings the kind of drivel Aimee brought to this discussion cannot clarify it away. It was utter bullshit femi nazi drek.
rootless_e
OT, but my Obama-bot, right wing, defense of Goldman Sachs is here
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/18/838326/-Blaming-Goldman-is-a-right-wing-story
Martin
@Mnemosyne: Nicely reasoned. Agree 100%.
WereBear
I felt aimai brought up a good point: a LOT of angry white men are angry because they are acting just like their fathers did; only their generation of women won’t put up with the same religious/cultural reasons for dealing with crap, and leave.
And they can never blame themselves.
My mind was already chewing that over, because regardless of one’s political views, trying to burn down a house with your wife and daughter in it… that sounds personal.
demo woman
We do know that the guy was a good pilot. Fortunately more lives were not lost.
artem1s
no Andrew Joseph Stack FAA registrations that I can find. One Joseph A Stack, no registration address and the registration is not up to date. that is for a Piper PA-28-236.
Second Triennial Aircraft Registration Form has been mailed and has not been returned by the Post Office
planes can be registered to companies and groups as well. so this is not definitive.
General Winfield Stuck
That was more personal than I usually get, so I apologize to Aimee for making it that way on this blog. But I still say her comment was just as out of line for this particular situation.
Catsy
@General Winfield Stuck: Whether true or not, that doesn’t make what you wrote any less galactically dickish. It was puerile high school shit–did you mistake WordPress for LiveJournal or something?
Call her a feminazi if it makes you feel better, tear the shit out of her views, but attacking someone’s marriage like that is just indefensible.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Yep, pointing out that a guy who tried to kill his estranged wife and daughter before divebombing his plane into an IRS building may have been pissed off at his estranged wife is totally out of line and an unreasonable conclusion to reach.
Dude. Really. As aimai suggested, go read Under the Banner of Heaven and then come back here and tell us that absolutely none of this guy’s rage had anything to do with the fact that his wife tried to leave his control.
Corner Stone
@aimai: First let me say that I am now more offended that anyone could find a way to put me and Stuck into the same response.
That horrifies me to no end.
Regarding the post I remarked on, I agreed with a lot of what you were saying right up to the last sentence. Didn’t care for that conclusion.
And I will say that a lot of people do indeed go crazy through a divorce, but IMO it’s usually a sharpening or focusing of the reasons they are getting a divorce in the first place.
Loss of control, loss of property (power), emasculation of the male prowess in some cases – they’re all right there in a lot of instances.
Just seemed like a bad blanket indictment to me so I wanted to point it out.
Allan
Calling someone who points out simple truths about patriarchy and its noxious down-stream impacts a “feminazi” and casting apersions on her desirability as a romantic partner prove her point. Thanks Stuck!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
After reading the manifesto a second time it sounds like this guy is a lapsed Randian who decided in his paranoia that the only thing left to do was to go Galt-o Muerto on everyone’s ass.
He sounded like a wingnut who came to a paranoid, fevered realization that even the people he thought were on his side were actually taking him for a ride.
soonergrunt
@WereBear:
A hell of a lot more White Men get up the next morning and go on with their lives and pay their child support and their taxes and continue contributing to their communities and the world around them.
In fact, the vast majority of us do this.
I doubt very much that this guy’s skin tone or his chromosome had as much to do with this as Aimai appears to need to be the case.
And I have to wonder if this were an African American man or a woman of any race who did this, how long would it be until we all heard about how this was really a strike against white patriarchal power structure.
I thought Stuck was over the line with his comment, but I certainly understand what drives it.
HRA
@Mary aka Comrade Mary:
Thanks for posting his manifesto, Mary. The site where his associates are would not come up.
Jon H
The only thing that is notably left-leaning is the closing bit,
which depicts capitalism much more negatively.
On the other hand, it would hardly make sense for a socialist or communist to attack the IRS.
Edit: on further reflection, he seems to be angry about his perception of different tax rules existing for different classes of people (he got dinged for trying to take corporate tax breaks, he’s not tax-exempt like the Catholic church). I suppose you could argue that there’s a leftist angle in being angry about the inequity, but it seems more likely that he’d prefer not to pay any tax at all, which doesn’t really suit a genuine leftist.
Jody
“sounds like an all-purpose paranoid misanthrope who hated just about every organization or institution that he didn’t belong to.”
Sounds like a tea-partier to ME…
ruemara
@The Dangerman:
You’re missing a key point-white=good, brown =bad.
The fact that both are doing a horrible act that fits the same profile is negligible. I’m just hoping they find the people missing.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: Okay, let’s just reduce this to a man hating session. This guy had antipathy for the government way before doing what he did today. And there is no indication his marriage or his wife had anything to do with it. But carry on with the pop feminazi theories of white maleism being behind it. I don’t want to stand in the way of some righteous male bashing.
LT
@Bob S: Again – I’m just relaying what was reported. What is your problem with that? It’s just something to work with. Of course it could be wrong.
General Winfield Stuck
@Catsy: I apologized for the personal insult. Now go fuck yourself Catsy, I stand behind the feminazi drek remark.
Sly
What interests me about this case, in a political sense, is two things:
1) Which members of the political and media establishment take on the air of “I can understand where he was coming from.”
2) Who among those people heaped nothing but disdain on people who sought to know exactly what political grievances Muslim extremists have against the United States.
Just in terms of in-group and out-group behavior. We’re seeing roughly the same thing in terms of the fundamentalist Protestant reaction to the child abductors in Haiti, in that I have a sneaking suspicion that if, after some horrible disaster in the U.S., a group of Haitians came here and picked off random white kids in order to bring them back to Haiti and raise them in the Catholic/Voodoo syncretic belief structure prominent there, these same fundamentalists would be publicly calling for their execution. Just a hunch.
Other than that, I have nothing to say except that homicidal mania has no default political ideology.
FlipYrWhig
I said this on the last thread… but one salient characteristic of the manifesto is that it’s actually pretty well written. You don’t get that a lot.
Bob S
@aimai: I read his specific comments against insurance and pharmaceutical companies as “leftist” given the current context of the health care debate.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yep. Yep. Yep. Well put.
rootless_e
@Martin: See Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin.
LT
@Sue: Got ya. Thanks.
Allan
@General Winfield Stuck: Did the sting of aimai’s comments burn like battery acid thrown in your face for attending school? Cause then I would feel really bad for you.
General Winfield Stuck
@Allan:
Your welcome!
Sanka
Manifesto ending:
Meanwhile, he called out a US President—President BUSH.
Yeah. Lauding communism while trashing capitalism. Sounds like a typical “Randian” there.
Funny how we’ve had two acts of violence in the past week or so commited by a left-wing extremist murderer who loved Obama and a kook with a plane who was pissed off at Bush while praising Communism.
Those f-ng Randian Tea Baggers, I swear….
General Winfield Stuck
@Allan: Oh, Allan go soak your precious liberal head. jeesh.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Other than his suicide note and that fact that he tried to kill her, of course. But, hey, why should you listen to what the guy himself actually said about being pissed off at his soon-to-be-ex-wife when you can whine about being a victim instead?
LT
Did someone just write this:
Sentient Puddle
Um…speaking as a white male, nothing of what anybody here had to say has come remotely close to offending me.
Seriously guys, what the fuck?
Chyron HR
@Sanka:
That’s right, Timmy. And when you threaten to kill “Obambi”, that’s just showing off your hard-left credentials.
Allan
@General Winfield Stuck: I think you should check the basement. One of your daughter-wives may have slipped her shackles.
Mnemosyne
Also, just to point out, political affiliation is more similar to a circle, not a line. A far-left anarchist has a lot more in common with a far-right libertarian than with a mainstream liberal or conservative.
FlipYrWhig
@Sanka: Um, the 75% of the manifesto that’s about unfair tax policy and the fact that the target was an IRS building… can’t _possibly_ have a connection to a certain movement organized around the idea of excessive taxation?
Bob S
@LT: I’ve got absolutely no problem with it. I was just trying to move the discussion forward by offering an alternative possibility, given that a lot of bullshit is thrown out by reporters in the initial hours of these episodes. I’m sorry you took it as a personal attack.
freelancer
Glenn Beck, Barking Mad Clown.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: He set the house on fire, they got out. If he had wanted to kill them, I suspect he would have done it different. If you want to believe this was due to him hating his wife or women in general then have at it. I didn’t bring this crap line of reasoning into this thread. I am an asshole sometimes, this is true. But I didn’t pick rainbows out of the sky and say something like maybe his wife was a shrew that drove him to do this. Though that would have been along the same lines as Aimee’s horseshit. Albeit libtard heresy.
RS
The pages on facebook dedicated to this guy are pretty disturbing (also crazy that people are fine with their names being attached to stuff like this):
“Joseph Andrew Stack, we salute thee”
“Finally an American man took a stand against our tyrannical government that no longer follows the constitution and is turned its back on its founding fathers and the beliefs this country was founded on.”
“”The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”…..Thomas Jefferson”
“Score one for the good guys.”
“you don’t seem to realise that the us government are terrorists as well only worse than al qaeda.”
“live for nothing or die for something..”
“It is in vain sir to extenuate the matter. Gentleman may cry, peace peace- but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it gentlemen wish? What would…”
“How the hell did the Feds. get footage within 2 minutes so damn quickly. Are they psychic or was it another false flag? They want to kill the tea party movement. Remember the Oklahoma city bombing sent the militia movement underground for a while. The government wil try to shut up the constitutionalists before the elec…tions and before Tax day because the income tax is illegal.”
General Winfield Stuck
@Allan:
LOL. And I’m the one out of line. k
Tax Analyst
Jumping into the Tax Protestor bag is one of the easiest ways to throw your life into the dumpster. It will intrude on your ability to function rationally. In effect, you are sticking your chin right out in front of a mechanism that is built to knock you around as a matter of course if you actively persist in resisting it, and they are doing it for a specious cause that cannot (and should not) prevail. I’ve known people who basically foreclosed on their own careers by turning down good-paying jobs because they don’t want to have taxes withheld from their paychecks, then took lower-paying under-the-table gigs with no benefits instead. They move themselves into a shadow existence and deprive themselves of the various safety net features of our society, such as unemployment insurance and as they grow older, Social Security Benefits.
It’s an incredibly self-destructive path, and an incredibly selfish mission for a person with a family. Most of these folks tend to go out with a whimper rather than a bang.
WereBear
@soonergrunt: I wasn’t trying to bash men in general with any of my agreements and comments.
There’s lots of people who have been dealt with badly by political events, and they aren’t deluded about the identity of the perpetrators; that’s a big chunk of what we discuss on this site.
However, while flying a plane into an IRS office feels political, burning down a house with your wife and kid in it; that’s just yer basic crazy.
Though no one has mentioned his rant containing any details on why he’d want to murder his family. The usual reasons are a) It’s their fault, or b) I don’t went them to suffer without a husband & father.
Don’t know which way this one is going.
Sentient Puddle
@General Winfield Stuck: They got out by being rescued. As in, they probably could not have gotten out on their own. As in, he probably wanted to kill them.
@RS: I’ve seen a few comments from friends of friends like this. I suppose when I get home, I should take a look at those people to see where their politics lie. My guess is hardcore glibertarian…
Fergus Wooster
@Sentient Puddle: This.
Brothers, sisters, we should be struggling together!
We are!
trollhattan
Comment from “Hinkhogg” to a Houston Chronicle article on the suicide by plane. Current tally is 24 thumbs up and 7 down.
Osprey
I agree with you 100%.
But I saw people taking Tim’s post the wrong way.
The term political can pertain to political ‘parties’ or the government in general (paraphrased from actual definition). It was completely political in the government sense, but I think what Tim was saying is that there was no clear proof that Stack’s attack was political in the partisan dem/repub lib/con sense. Could easily substitute partisan for political in the OP.
Darkmoth
@WereBear:
I’m thinking the phenomenon of “what father did doesn’t seem to work” is probably not limited to their interactions with their wives, but rather society as a whole. Being a white American male in the 50’s represented the zenith of privilege and opportunity, back when “made in Japan” meant a cheap knockoff rather than cutting-edge tech. It’s no surprise that the lessons of those fathers have left their sons confused and untethered in a world that no longer recognizes them as the pinnacle of humanity.
There is a subtle tragedy in an entire generation being cast out of Eden, with no actual clue as to why or how it happened.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Well, according to two sociologists at Oxford, 20% of violent Muslim extremists are engineers, way above their percentage in the Muslim world (<0.5%, IIRC).
So its not a surprise, I guess, that an American engineer becomes a domestic terrorist. Although really it was a f-you world act rather than terrorism. I wouldn't call him a teabagger.
Sad_Dem
It was the piano that drove him over the edge. Nobody ever suspects the piano.
Bob S
@RS: Regardless of his personal politics, it looks like the craziest fringe of the teabagging craziest part of the crazy Republican Party is claiming him as one of their own. It can’t be long now until there’s a militia named after him.
Church Lady
@Mnemosyne: Where has anyone read that he and his wife are estranged? I haven’t seen that anywhere, yet.
WereBear
@soonergrunt: I got nothing against men!
I just think that when someone’s wife and child have to be pulled out of a burning house, that the same someone set, there might be some interpersonal problems going on.
At least, I hope so. Though there is a type of mentally disturbed person who takes their family with them, so they won’t be around to get upset at all the carnage they’ve caused.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
That’s right, Sideshow Bob, if you try to kill someone and fail, there’s no crime!
See, now you’re trying to drag in “women in general” from nowhere because you know you’re being an ass. He said in his suicide note that his estranged wife was part of his problems. You can ignore the man’s own words if you like, but don’t pretend that it’s some kind of flight of fancy for us to bring up the fact that he mentioned his wife in the note.
John S.
@Sanka:
Yeah, yeah…you can’t discern the difference between someone who happens to be a liberal and a murderer and a someone who happens to be a murderer because they are a conservative. We get it.
By the way, Sanka is the most horrendous food product ever conceived. It is appropriate that you have chosen that moniker.
Corner Stone
@Sad_Dem: That damn piano comment threw me too. It was a business asset? He went from engineer to piano teacher?
DMcK
@KCinDC: Sure! It’s just that, ultimately, I don’t see this guy representing anything other than a movement of one: himself and his busted-ass problems. It wouldn’t surprise me if the members of whatever anti-tax group he affiliated with way back when thought he was a dickhead too. In other words, I think portraying his own ravings and actions as being broadly representative of the motives of any given politically-minded group (even the extremist whack-jobs!) is putting the cart before the horse. I don’t see how setting your wife and kid on fire is any help to “the cause”.
LT
@Bob S: I must have read you wrong.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sentient Puddle: For the record, I initially ignored Aimee’s first comment, until it was basically repeated in a second. I am not offended in the least by assertions that males inflict most violence in the world, because they do. Largely because of hormones, physical strength and no doubt social and cultural reasons as well. I was offended by the offering of stock feminism reductions to this particular incident with overt political and long term ideological factors being present with the offender. In other words, bringing war of the sexes into play when it isn’t supported from what we know about this person.
soonergrunt
@Allan: So he’s a pedophile? Really?
Mnemosyne
@Osprey:
I think you pretty much have to use “partisan” in this case, because otherwise it leads to a lot of confusion. He may or may not have been a teabagger, but he plainly set out to act against the government, which by definition makes his act political.
RS
@Bob S:
I was thinking the same thing. Normally when a crazy person does something, both sides try to pin it on the other side. It’s a bit unusual for a group to claim a crazy person as one of their own before finding out all the facts.
WereBear
@Sad_Dem: I noticed that too; and the rest of the rant was spelled properly and hung together, which is rare.
I wonder if we’ll ever know.
Citizen Alan
@LT:
Personally, I tend to characterize anarchists as “no-wing.” Is it really possible to plot someone’s position on the left-right axis if he thinks the best government is no government at all
rootless_e
@General Winfield Stuck: I don’t see that as her argument, but on a purely statistical ground, that’s not an argument to dismiss.
fledermaus
I actually have some sympathy for the guy. Indeed if you look at the tax code – contractors and small mom and pop businesses get royally screwed while the mega corps get sweet-ass deals and wall street financing. For all the preening in DC about small business being the engines of America the tax code actively discourages such work in preference to a job with a large employer.
srv
@Tax Analyst:
Hmm. Patriot types aside, I’ve met quite a few on the left (and some not on the left who might even be called social libertarians) who’d say it would be more self-destructive to participate in paying for all those wars everyone else either cheers or whimpers about.
Sentient Puddle
@Sentient Puddle: Actually, I’m retracting the first half of this comment. Because I’m too stupid to wait until the goddamn stories get set straight before claiming such and such happened.
hal
I’m really not seeing the point here. Tim McVeigh, Scott Roeder, Stephen Johns, etc. were members of hate groups and/or white supremacist groups vs. crazy ass Amy Bishop, who appears to be a nut, and this pilot who could easily be a card totting tea party member. Apples to Oranges.
Persia
@General Winfield Stuck:
What is this I don’t even. And that professor who shot up her school only meant to kill three people, because those are all the people she successfully killed?
Do you even know what you’re trying to argue at this point?
JK
@General Winfield Stuck:
Big Win. Ranks right up there with Billy Batts in Goodfellas, “Henry, teach this kid some fucking manners” and Roger Daltrey’s message to the audience before the Who performed Tommy in concert in the late 80’s or early 90’s: “Can have quiet before we start? Show some respect, it’s a fucking opera.”
rootless_e
@Citizen Alan: There were a buncha anarchists who called themselves things like “libertarian socialist”. It’s only in iin the last 50 years in America that the “libertarians” are Hayek/Rand types.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
“Sideshow Bob” LOL, that sounds like a personal insult. I am hurt. He set his house on fire, that is a crime. We will see if the cops call it attempted murder.
Maybe you need to go read Aimee’s first comment again.@Aimai:
Yea, I’m the one being an ass and dragging “all women in general”
I mean “C$nts and taxes” and claiming bad divorces cause raving liberal to become wingnuts” puleaseee
Listen, I was wrong with my insult about Aimee’s husband, I admit that and have apologized. The rest of it, not so much. We can keep at this all night if you like . You are wrong, but keep wanking away.
Mnemosyne
@DMcK:
I agree — I think it’s going to be difficult to tie this guy down to a specific ideology other than “hates taxes.” It would be nice to have a national conversation about how constantly running down the government as being inherently evil is not very helpful, but that’s never going to happen.
A Mom Anon
Great. Now the only place I actually enjoyed going on the interwebs has been taken over by bickering and assorted asshattery.
ChrisS
@Mnemosyne:
It would be nice to have a national conversation about how constantly running down the government as being inherently evil is not very helpful, but that’s never going to happen.
It’s how republicans get elected. They know who butters their bread. The main take home lesson from the Reagan revolution is that government is inefficient, incapable, expensive, and a rat hole.
“All government is bad, but we’re going to fight to make it smaller. Make sure you vote for me on election day.”
Persia
@A Mom Anon: Oh, we do this from time to time. It usually passes by the next thread.
General Winfield Stuck
@JK: I thought it had kind of a streety touch.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Yes, you are, because aimai was pointing to the specific phenomenon of men who go through a divorce and feel like they’ve gotten screwed by the system so therefore their ex-wife is to blame for everything. That’s not women in general. That’s a specific phenomenon that happens every single day. This manifestation was particularly spectacular, but how many times have you heard about women being shot to death by their estranged or ex-husbands as they walk out of the courthouse? But, hey, I’m sure those were all just a few lone nuts, right?
Alec Baldwin published an entire book about how his ex-wife screwed him over using the court system (aka the government) and you’re going to claim this is an isolated incident? Have at least a little intellectual honesty here.
soonergrunt
@WereBear: I happen to think that maybe, just maybe, we can try to find out what happened in this particular case. We can expend some energy and find out exactly why this guy did what he did, because he’s from a subset of society that includes women as well–tax protesters and anti-government-types. I’ll grant for this conversation that men who hold that mindset are more likely to commit violence than the women who are adherents, but I’d also point out the flamingly obvious–that this guy has a LOT more in common with the women who whold these political, financial, and societal views than he does with the general population of men.
Let’s try to learn what’s going on in this case instead of mindlessly serving up the same tired hackneyed crap. And you aren’t the one who is serving the hackneyed crap. Aimai is doing that. I’d like to think we can actually serve society here by finding out what happened, as opposed to throwing up our hands and sighing “men. Mmmm. What are ya gonna do?”
asiangrrlMN
The thing that makes me uncomfortable is that I can identify with some of his feelings such as bailing out the fat cats while the every day person suffers and expecting the every day person to know all the byzantine ins and outs of tax law when even people who hire professional accountants to do their taxes for them can’t get it right.
Then, he dives off the crazy board, and I can’t finish reading the rant.
This is political in the sense that any act of terrorism is political and that he is definitely anti-government. His mentality is very much in line with the rightwing extremists stream of ‘thought’ in that he was an angry, bitter, violent, hateful man who fits a certain stereotype. I think he acted alone, but the way in which he acted is sadly all-too-familiar.
Allan
@General Winfield Stuck: Made you laugh!
@soonergrunt: Really?
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
And, dude, the fact that you refuse to spell aimai’s name right is making you look incredibly childish. It’s right there on her post.
kid bitzer
i’d just like to chime in as an old white male to say that i think aimai’s introduction of gender issues is exactly spot on.
whether this guy in austin fits the pattern we don’t know yet. but as a general pattern, there is a huge correlation between violent right-wing extremism and hatred of women and women’s rights.
of all the things that conservatives hate about modernity–and i’m not just talking about george will and john mccain, i’m talking about the mullahs, the taliban, the mormon polygamists and the christianists all over the world–what they hate most about modernity is the change in gender roles and the prospects of genuine equality for women.
so aimai’s suggestion that what turned this guy into a fanatic might be his inability to deal with gender politics in his own home seems to me perfectly plausible. speculation, of course, but that’s what this entire thread amounts to.
(and by the way, i applaud tim and the management for taking the stance that the posts will avoid speculation and sensationalism. it will avoid more embarrassment when the real story comes out. and it leaves more scope for us commenters!)
Sentient Puddle
So…I think we need we need to step back, take a breather, and have some happy news for once.
Happy news:
Civilization V announced, coming out Q4 2010.
soonergrunt
@Sentient Puddle: Not a huge Civ fan myself, but Star Trek Online is nigh, and more DLC for Left4Dead and L4D2 are coming soon.
kdaug
Let me clear a few things up (from the local news – this happened about 7 miles from my house.)
The wife and daughter were not home when the fire started, and were not “rescued”. They returned home when the fire was going, and went to a friend’s house across the street.
He was a software engineer, but specialized in technical communications (not one of dem structural mechanical engineers like them A_Rabs.) This from the website linked to in his “manifesto”.
Austin’s proportional share of right-wingers and Teabaggers is roughly in line with Seattle’s. (Rest of Texas, not so much).
And this guy was a douchebag from California.
That is all.
-K
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: That wasn’t intentional, I spell a lot of stuff wrong. Aimai , there feel better.
@Mnemosyne: You are arguing out of both sides of your mouth. One side this was political, the other generalities about men doing most violence to women. I fully agree with that and said so earlier. But in this particular case, the evidence is overwhelming at this point that is WAS political, and there are almost always personal life problems as well. His note was very lucid and thought out why he hated government power. If it was something recent, and if the note were more incoherent, then I would say personal problems were more the cause. And if you want to defend the drek Aimai posted initially, have at it, the sisterhood and all that. we will just let readers decide.
Dr. Morpheus
@Citizen Alan:
Anarchists are considered left wing because they are anti-Capitalists (favoring worker coops and syndicalism).
stinkwrinkle
@A Mom Anon: Isn’t it great?!? Over 200 posts without a heartwarming dog story, a crotchety pain rant, or a recipe! Gold, Jerry, gold!
asiangrrlMN
FYWP. I had edited my comment to address the male bit, but permission to edit was denied.
I said that yes, there are lots of white men who are not like this. However, a certain subset ARE like this, and as it is more likely to be a man than a woman (Amy Bishop, notwithstanding) to commit an act of violence such as this, to dismiss the gender aspect is silly. I have said it each time a grandiose act of violence has happened–why doesn’t anyone ever comment that it’s men and mostly white men? It comes from a sense of entitlement that isn’t even acknowledged by the person himself. It runs deep through our society, and we won’t be able to tackle the issue without stating that in general, incidents like this and any kind of mass killing is done by men. In our country, they are mostly committed by white men who feel disenfranchised from society.
Allan
@Mnemosyne: The power to name things was granted to Adam by God. It’s Stuck’s privilege to call her whatever he chooses.
HyperIon
From his “note” which doesn’t really explain much:
WTF?
sad_dem @ 194 beat me to it!
soonergrunt
@Dr. Morpheus:
Anarchy is the extreme end of both sides of the political spectrum dude. What do you think is the logical conclusion to libertarianism?
General Winfield Stuck
@kdaug:
Thank you for clearing that up. That is why it is always best to get actual information first before ranting about shit because it fits pre conceived notions.
gwangung
@kid bitzer: And let’s not try to say this was an “either/or” situation; patricarchal privilege, anti-government sentiment, greed and all round douche bag ness can all compound and feed off of each other.
Dr. Morpheus
With the news that his wife and daughter were NOT at home at the time of the fire and did NOT have to be rescued, I’m starting to think that Aimai’s first post is indeed bullshit weaving of a garment from a thread.
kid bitzer
yeah, the piano really is an amazing touch. on the one hand, it adds this ineffable note of comedy. (maybe he’s thinking of when wile e. coyote pulls his parachute and a piano pops out?) on the other hand, it’s the kind of detail that rings true to life. it’s the broken shoelace that precipitates the suicide. or the piano.
soonergrunt
@HyperIon: Well, you don’t understand it because you’re not crazier than a shit-house rat and therefore have no common frame of reference.
Be happy.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
As long as you pretend that politics have nothing to do with violence against women, I’m sure it seems that way to you. Don’t let reality besmirch your beautiful mind, by any means.
That guy in Philly who walked into a gym with a specific plan to kill women? No politics involved there, move along, nothing to see here.
John S.
So, every man who has a bad divorce becomes a libertarian anti-government Republican? I should tell my dad, he didn’t get the memo.
HyperIon
@FlipYrWhig: it’s actually pretty well written
grammatically, yes.
but the actual meaning is well-hidden.
i can’t even follow the chain of events he describes.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
Yep. Both/and, not either/or.
Dr. Morpheus
@soonergrunt:
Uh. not if you’re talking about the political economic movement Anarchy instead of the wildly inaccurate general use of the word.
Libertarians, while being anti-government, are gun-ho advocates of Capitalism hence why they are labeled right-wing.
They are also often called “right-wing anarchists” as well as asshats.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
I think politics has very little to do with it. Culture, socialization, development psychology etc are the prime reasons for men creating violence against women. That, and they are larger and physically more capable of it. Not to mention aggression hormones. I do not think that someone who hates government power and how they use it has much to do with men visiting violence on women. Despite pop studies and theory to the contrary.
And he didn’t try to kill his wife, they weren’t home when he set the house on fire.
HyperIon
@General Winfield Dick:
Ya know, I have noticed that before but you’ve really outdone yourself this time. For me from now on you will be General Winfield Dick.
But I’m glad you continue to have moments of self-awareness.
kid bitzer
@244–
well of course the “every” was hyperbole. there are very few perfect correlations in sociology.
nevertheless, the correlations between right-wing politics and reactionary misogynist attitudes towards women are very high, world-wide.
Dr. Morpheus
@John S.:
I think this is the crux of Stuck’s problem. ‘Cause I’ve gone through a divorce and I didn’t get the memo either.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
People adopt all sorts of rationalizations to kill those they think are responsible for their problems. But with this guy, there just wasn’t and isn’t evidence that hatred of women was his motivation. You can try and paint it with that brush if you want, doesn’t make it true.
numbskull
@cat48: Nah, they’re a lot cheaper than that. Don’t know if he owned or rented, but a Cherokee can be had for $25-40K pretty easily. With financing monthly payments, including insurance, are not much more than a fairly typical sedan.
General Winfield Stuck
@HyperIon: Great argument their hyperlon. Drops in as usual to take a shot and flies away again, till next time.
kay
@HyperIon:
You and me both. If “writing” means “spelling” it’s well-written.
I read it twice and I don’t know what he was trying to tell “us”.
There’s 15 different interpretations in this thread, alone.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Because politics never feed into culture and socialization. I’m assuming you totes believed the study that “proved” women naturally prefer pink because they tested a bunch of college-aged men and women who’d had at least 18 years of being told that pink is for girls.
I hope the report that his wife and daughter weren’t home is true. It’s bad enough to come home and discover that your husband/father has burned the house down and crashed his plane into a government building — it would be 10 times worse to have him try to kill you first.
kdaug
Again – his (second) wife and daughter weren’t at home.
Would he have been attempting to “kill innocent women” in the IRS office? Obviously.
But:
1.) The building isn’t marked “IRS”. It’s a business park with 4-5 roughly identical buildings, each with different clients on different floors doing different things. This guy knew where the IRS investigators were, what floors, etc.
2.) Nobody but him is confirmed dead. One person is missing, and they could have called in sick.
3.) There’s NOTHING to suggest any misogynistic angle to this whatsoever.
General Winfield Stuck
@Dr. Morpheus: Exactly, that was my complaint. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve read lately. Bitter Divorce + liberal = raging woman hating wingnut. But I am a dick for calling bullshit. OK.
Dr. Morpheus
@kid bitzer:
Yeah, as probably the only person on this blog with a Phd in Sociology the statement is still bullshit.
Correlations do not run backwards, even if there is a high correlation between right-wing ideology and propensity for violence against women you absolutely CANNOT conclude that there is the same correlation between a propensity for violence against women and right wing ideology.
It’s a linear algebra thing.
To put it more plainly, even though there may be many men with right-wing ideologies who beat their girlfriends/wives, you are making a serious error if you think that someone who beats their girlfriend/wife ipso facto must believe right wing ideology.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
This is so stupid, I won’t even offer a response. You were wrong. Misogyny had little or nothing to do with this guys actions. Now piss off.
Eric S.
A minor point, in the couple of stories I’ve read it doesn’t say it was his plane. Although not cheap private plane rentals exist. It’s been some years since I went up with a friend who has a private pilots license but I remember it being somewhere around $100 an hour.
Feel free to point me to other references that says he did own the plane. It may have been but I haven’t read that and it feels like there are several assumptions here that it was his.
That said. Act of terrorism, yes. But after reading the manifesto attributed to him I’d peg him as generally conservative but not necessarily a raving loon of the right-wing. I just don’t see enough in there to make that final assumption. I’ll await more evidence on that too.
Mnemosyne
@kid bitzer:
Yep. And yet every time it’s mentioned, somehow the guys here decide that we’re talking specifically about them.
Look, fellas, the fact that some psychos kill women because they hate women doesn’t mean you’re the same as they are any more than John Muhammad’s killing spree proves that all black men are just waiting for an opportunity to shoot innocent people with a high-powered rifle. Okay?
Brachiator
@kid bitzer:
Nonsense. Utter and total nonsense. From pigeonholing the Austin guy into “right wing extremism” to the phony “pattern” of supposed violent right-wing extremism and hatred of women’s rights.
And it’s 2010 and still people are ringing the “correlation” bell.
Mike in NC
This homicidal clown will be lauded as a martyr on Talk Radio starting in 3, 2, 1…
soonergrunt
@kdaug:
That’s the issue here.
But the whole misogyny thing is like Maslow’s Hammer for some. No idea what’s going on, not even possession of some important facts about the situation, but misogyny and White Male Rage ™ MUST be a part of it because some people never studied sociological or psychological phenomena from any other perspective. It’s easier than trying to determine what actually happened.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
Oh stop the bullshit. It was a specious dumbass argument in this particular case is why I objected
And what if I had suggested his nagging wife had drove him crazy, you and others would be howling sexist asshole to the high heavens. And you would have been right to if I had brought such a reason in this case..
scarshapedstar
I’ll say this, he knew how to Go Galt in style.
Dr. Morpheus
@Mnemosyne:
Uh, no, because politics and ideology are subsets of culture, the total collection of material and behavioral artifacts of a given society.
Socialization is the process by which one learns the political beliefs one holds. Actually it’s the process by which a homo sapien animal becomes a human being.
Mnemosyne
@Dr. Morpheus:
True. There have been plenty of murderous assholes who were lefties — Ira Einhorn is the first one that springs to mind, but he’s not the only one.
But I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that men who hold those kinds of beliefs will be more likely to be drawn to right-wing ideologies that tell them that they should rule over their wives and children.
Corner Stone
What intrigues me is that by his own admission, all the lost billable hours, time spent studying the tax codes, going to meetings trying to rook the tax codes, money he spent, money he was fined, etc – he spent way more money than if he had just paid his damn taxes!
Or hired a high priced tax pro instead of what appears to possibly be a shady shyster type (maybe) that screwed him over.
Dr. Morpheus
I doubt many are drawn to it as raised that way.
gwangung
@Brachiator: I find this line of argumentation less than convincing.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
When the news was that his wife and daughter were in the house and had to be rescued, you were arguing that you couldn’t possibly mean to kill someone just because you set the house on fire and locked them inside.
If you’d said, “Hey, we don’t know what happened yet so we shouldn’t put this guy in that camp,” fair enough. But you didn’t, did you?
Mnemosyne
@Dr. Morpheus:
It’s hard to say — what in John Walker Lindh’s upbringing predisposed him to join up with al-Qaeda?
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
This is a lie. I had heard and stated that they had gotten out when the guy had set the house on fire. I know nothing of locking them inside, and it is the first I’ve heard that and it sounds like you just made it up to cover your bullshit. I said wait to see if the cops charge him with attempted murder, to make the call if he had in fact tried to kill them.
Molly
@EdTheRed:
Oh, well done, sir.
“So we decided that it would be in you’re best interest if we put you somewhere where you could get the help that you need.”
And I go “wait, what are you talking about, WE decided? MY best interests? How do you know what MY best interest is? How can you say what MY best interest is? What are you trying to say? I’M crazy? When I went to YOUR schools, I went to YOUR churches, I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities. So how can you say I’M crazy?”
A favorite of mine.
HyperIon
As far as the “tried to kill his wife” unsupported allegation that has been challenged by kdaug @234 (with his own unsupported claim):
People, when making claims, provide links.
That’s the way it used to work here.
Bring back the merciless mocking of comments that make claims unaccompanied by links.
John S.
I think it’s awesome the lack of self-awareness on you and aimai’s part in this thread. The primary discussion is over whether or not to brand this Austin terrorist as politically motivated. I happen to agree with DougJ, Tim F. and others that one should not do that, because although this guy certainly was politically motivated, he doesn’t seem to line up with any particular ideology in terms of politics (in the sense of left/right Dem/Repub).
But you two and others want to advance the argument that somehow, men treating women badly somehow is not only politically motivated, but also ideologically motivated (in the sense of left/right Dem/Repub). And that getting a bad divorce is somehow a catalyst towards moving a man’s ideology specifically in a rightwards direction.
Not only does strike me as lazy analysis, but it really doesn’t seem to comport with reality. I don’t think conservative men have a lock on being assholes. If you can link me to a credible study that shows otherwise, I’m all eyes.
Catsy
@General Winfield Stuck: Dude, try checking which comment something is in reply to. You posted your apology while I was writing it.
Fuck you very much. I’m off to bed.
Bob S
@Corner Stone: My dad’s similarly obsessed with golf.
General Winfield Stuck
@Catsy: The go fuck yourself was for the other garbage you stated. Sweet dreams.
Church Lady
@Dr. Morpheus: I’d certainly agree with that. In my neck of the woods, there isn’t a day that goes by that our newspaper doesn’t feature some story about some guy killing or beating the shit out of his wife/girlfriend. Funny though, the majority of the time, the perp is either black or hispanic. I wonder how many of them are wingers?
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Well, Stuck, this is what you said in response to my saying that he had locked them inside:
Pray tell, how was I supposed to read that as anything other than you being skeptical that someone who set a house on fire when people were inside was trying to kill them? “Attempted murder? I ask you! Do they give Nobel prizes for attempted chemistry?”
(Yes, yes, I know we were arguing about phantoms, but that’s beside the point since you’re now trying to claim you didn’t say things even though I can quote them back to you. Because apparently I’m the liar when I point to things you actually said.)
Mnemosyne
@John S.:
Actually, I don’t entirely agree with aimai on that score. I don’t think partisan politics is a particularly good indicator of one’s assholery towards women. I’ve met plenty of “shut up and get me a sandwich” liberals who think my opinions are less important because I have a uterus.
However, I think that someone who subscribes to a political or religious belief that women are inferior to men and need to be submissive is going to be more likely to be abusive towards women. We can debate all day about the origins of that, but it’s pretty hard to claim that, say, there are a lot of liberal Taliban members who are participating in burning down girls’ schools.
John S.
@Dr. Morpheus:
Spot on analysis.
I only had to take one look at that paragraph from aimai and think, “What an unbelievable pile of bullshit.” You articulated that in a much better way than I ever could.
Tax Analyst
@srv:
Really? “Self-destructive” how? “Destructive” in the sense that these foolish wars degrade our society, well, yes. “Self-destructive”? No, I don’t see that point at all. That would make paying taxes that go towards anything I think of in negative terms, such as draconian prison sentences for victimless crimes “self-destructive”. I don’t like these things, and they might anger or depress me, but I don’t personally spontaneously combust or even begin a slow descent into doom at their mention.
But maybe some folks do.
Or maybe I miss your point. Maybe you’re talking about slightly-annoyed people using agitated hyperbole about participating in imaginery tax evasion or tax resistance. A lot of people from all across the political spectrum do that, you know.
When I used to do face-to-face tax interviews I occasionally had clients vow to stop working and just live off welfare and food stamps because they didn’t like their tax liability. I don’t know of any who actually followed up on their vow. I used to tell them, “Well, then I guess I won’t be seeing you next year. Good luck.”
Whiny clients are one of the main reasons I don’t prepare Individual Tax Returns anymore. It’s not like I was personally jacking up their taxes out of some fit of pique, I was just interpreting the rules, explaining and applying them. Did they think I was lying in my explanation? Take your tantrums somewhere else, por favor.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: Yes, that is what I said. Please show your quote about locking them inside, I didn’t see that and have not heard any reports as such. Please cite your source that he actually locked his family inside before setting the house on fire. My point was that the fact he didn’t actually kill them that maybe he wasn’t trying to. Because they survived.
You were the one who said it with certainty to back your argument he might have hated is wife. And this is what I also said.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Mnemosyne
@kdaug:
I’m not sure what your point is with this one. Are you saying it was a coincidence that he hit the building with IRS offices in it after writing a long screed about how much he hated the IRS?
maus
@General Winfield Stuck:
My god, dude. What the hell kind of break from reality does it take to not associate setting fire to a populated house with trying to murder the people inside?
John S.
I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Practically every religion was founded on the basis of women being subservient to men. That doesn’t mean every adherent to those religions practices what they are preached.
I think what got last in you and Stuck shouting past each other is that when it comes to men’s attitudes towards women, correlation is not causation. A lot of it really does have to do with hormones, natural aggression and physical prowess. But since humans are not quite on equal footing with animals, none of those things are an excuse.
Oh, and I don’t think there are any liberal Taliban members since their flavor of Islam is decidedly right-wing authoritarian.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Here’s what I said that you responded to:
Did you read hastily and miss the “he tried to kill her” part that I put in itals so it couldn’t be missed? Go back and check the original comment. The itals are there.
maus
I guess we’ll never know the true intentions of the 9/11 hijackers :(
What *exactly* were they trying to tell us?
It is a mystery.
General Winfield Stuck
@maus: Maybe he ran them out first, though they ended up not even being there in the first place. That is why I said wait to see if the cops called it attempted murder. They got out could mean all sorts of things.
John S.
Gee, probably the same kind of break from reality that has people asserting that an empty house counts as ‘populated’.
If the guy wasn’t dead, he would be charged with arson — not attempted murder. Now cut the bullshit.
Joel
@Mnemosyne: I’m still waiting for my Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry, FWIW.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: LOL. That is your conclusion only. Where is the “locked them into the house” keep digging that hole you’ve dug for yerself, or quit and call it a day, Your choice.
maus
I’m fairly certain they will, but legal definitions are not wholly representative of reality. I love it when people assume that the “court” of public opinion must wait for the trial to conclude to determine intention and motive. Since we’re not advocating vigilante action, there’s nothing wrong with having strong opinions on motive with the best possible information we have at the time.
General Winfield Stuck
@maus:
Really stupid comment dude.
maus
@John S.:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/feb/18/austin-irs-joseph-stack
Brachiator
@gwangung:
That’s OK. I find speculation about this guy’s motives in the absence of any evidence other than a rambling note to be the intellectual equivalent of looking at video of Terry Schiavo on TV and pronouncing, “She’s alive!”
I don’t even know what the point is of trying to link the flyer to the right wing, and I have absolutely no idea what the point is about any of the posts about hatred of women. This is not even the beginning of an argument.
But aside from this, the irrelevance of correlation is — or should be — so well known by now as a logical fallacy that I am amazed that anyone still attempts to use it. You might as well try argument by Urban Legend.
General Winfield Stuck
@John S.:
factors, not excuse. Crimes in fact ,that require punishment, often severe punishment
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that I, personally, had to specifically use the words “locked them in the house” and that you didn’t bother to read anyone else’s comments. Like, say, WereBear’s two comments well before that.
I suppose I should be flattered that you were so desperate to prove me wrong that you didn’t bother to read the rest of the thread. So, yes, I, personally, did not specifically use the words “locked in the house” and since you didn’t read any comments by anyone else, you had no way of knowing that it had been discussed by several people before you commented. Sorry about that.
(Edited to fix second comment: they were both linking to the same place by mistake.)
HyperIon
@General Winfield Dick:
I agree.
But where would the intertubes be without stupid comments?
Note: This is not an argument. It’s a rhetorical question.
maus
@General Winfield Stuck: Nowhere near as blindingly dumb as assuming that setting a house of people on fire (if they were in fact there, as has been stated by local sources) isn’t an attempt to murder. I’ll change my opinion if and when the statements prove inaccurate, but seeing as the guy’s already dead, the police are going to do a long investigation before they release the full report. I’m comfortable in assuming that the guy who attempted to murder IRS agents is capable of murdering his family. Murder-suicide is hardly outside the scope of his madness.
John S.
@maus:
Then obviously, there are conflicting reports. If they were in the house, it is attempted murder. If they were not in the house, it’s arson.
There’s really no other way to spin it.
maus
@Brachiator:
Besides that Texans have their own brand of political slant, so while there are definitely correlations and parallels, it’s hard to conflate them with the “safe” and easily distinguishable GOP/Teabagger brand wingnuts.
I would say that regardless of the level of allegiance to the Republican party itself, investigations of unstable “independents” such as these would probably come across more powderkegs before they explode.
@John S.: Of course, the previous argument assumed that they were in the house.
soonergrunt
@HyperIon:
A hell of a lot less entertaining, actually.
SB Jules
If he had survived would dick Cheney want to waterboard him?
soonergrunt
@maus:
“Nowhere near as blindingly dumb as assuming that setting a house of people on fire (if they were in fact there, as has been stated by local sources) isn’t an attempt to murder. I’ll change my opinion if and when the statements prove inaccurate…”
Commence opinion changing:
SOURCE
One would assume that he knew they weren’t in the house when he set it on fire. If he wanted to kill them, he probably noticed their absence, having not shot/tied up/taped to chairs his wife and daughter. Conversely, if he didn’t want to kill them, he probably waited until they left and drove off. Maybe he waited until his wife took their daughter to school?
As you so asutely observed, he is dead, and we can’t ask him.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: Keep digging mnen. You specifically claimed I responded to your comment
@Mnemosyne:
Bigger shovel. I like you mnen, we almost always agree on things political. I am sorry you saw fit to take up for a bonehead comment from Aimai, not withstanding my bonehead remark about her husband.
soonergrunt
@SB Jules:
Perhaps, but somebody would certainly want to ask him if he did this because he hates women.
Or maybe just the assumption would be made.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Yes, let’s discuss the fact that I did not specifically say the words “locked inside” when you were responding to a comment where I said he had tried to kill her. After all, there’s no way you could possibly know I meant that he tried to kill her if I didn’t use the specific words “locked inside.”
Clearly, if you can win this argument about me not using the specific words “locked inside” when I referred to him trying to kill her, that means that aimai and I are totally wrong and you never have guys who go on a shooting spree because of a divorce gone wrong.
Brachiator
@soonergrunt:
Why?
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: I am fine with why don’t we just forget this thread and go on complimenting one another during political arguments on this blog:) Nobody won anything here.
Corner Stone
Man this is epic.
So this is what it looks like when the freudes schaden themselves.
soonergrunt
@Brachiator: Sorry, I left the “painfully obvious snark” tag open.
kid bitzer
it’s kinda sad, but also kinda interesting for the light it sheds on the various subpopulations that have gravitated to balloon juice over the years.
if the bj commentariat were a coalition, we would just have discovered a fault-line in that coalition, i.e. issues related to feminism. turns out some of us, like myself, are feminazis. others apparently are not.
which is perfectly compatible with the coalition continuing to coalish on lots of other issues. but as often, agreement on a wide number of issues (including pop culture and pets as well as broadly left-wing politics) can conceal deep disagreements elsewhere.
john ought to design a poll for us to take, in order to map out the readership better. i’d love to see the stats.
Corner Stone
@kid bitzer: This is a sad post with absolutely no basis in reality.
But please, keep wanking away.
soonergrunt
@kid bitzer: Do tell–what’s your position on bullshit unsourced claims that exist to prop up a belief system regardless of the facts of the situation?
kdaug
@Mnemosyne:
No, precisely the opposite. You wouldn’t have known it was an IRS office unless you’d been inside.
More important, it’s not the IRS regional center in Austin. There IS one, right off 35, size of a mall with a big goddamn sign, has it’s own zip code, etc.
This was the investigative office. These were the people he was being investigated by.
He was some California boo-hoo bullshit artist who didn’t want to pay his damn taxes, and took it out on the local tax collectors.
Whether he was a jackass, a terrorist, or a misogynist, I couldn’t care less. Just glad he was as about as effective as the underwear bomber, with a built-in death penalty.
-K
kid bitzer
@soonergrunt–
i’m not really sure what you’re talking about. but if you mean the wild speculation about all kinds of possible motivations and affiliations this guy might have had, then what i think is: welcome to the internet.
speculating in the absence of facts is part of what folks do in comment threads. i’m just as glad that our hosts are trying to be restrained in the posts, but down here in the threads? let it rip!
that’s not to say that all of our favorite speculations point in the same direction. they don’t, and that’s where the fault-lines show up.
what do you think?
Tax Analyst
@kid bitzer:
Would it be something like this?
Please mark the box most applicable to you:
Anarchist
Asshole – General
Asshole – Major
Asshole – Enlisted
Contrarian
Fascist
Feminazi
Head-nodder
Ignoramus
Librul
Libtard
Misanthrope
Misogynist
Obot
Pet Lover
Pet Hater
Puma
Spoof
Wingnut
Other (Specify) __________
I apologize for not creating the little boxes to mark, but my graphical talents are severely limited.
Feel free to add your own categories.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Sad_Dem:
Yes, it’s clear that the piano was the straw that broke the camel’s back but I believe his underlying mental problems were caused by the fact that he was the bass player in band. The piano was the final cut, leaving him completely emasculated. He probably thought the next thing that was going to happen would be that he would turn into Elton John or Liberace.
He should have been a drummer. Admittedly it is a bit of a tradeoff since he wouldn’t have been competent enough to fly but at least he would have been one step above the bass player. That and the piano never would have become a problem, he would have sold it to buy a bigger drum kit.
I read his so-called manifesto and I came away with the impression that the guy is a libertarian. The Communism/Capitalism comments at the end came across (at least to me) as sarcasm more than anything, that both sides will screw over people like him for the benefit of others who either have too much (Capitalists) or not enough (Communists). I think he hated both sides equally and felt that he had no chance against ‘them’.
From what I have learned so far the guy was a selfish asshole, right up to the very end. All he cared about was himself. Was he a terrorist? Yes, I believe he was. He meant to hurt and kill, to scare people and to hope that his actions would lead to a more and bigger acts against the government. It’s not organized terrorism but it is terrorism nonetheless.
I don’t know if he was a teabagger but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he was.
kid bitzer
@taxanalyst–
yeah, all that and more–age, gender, state of birth, state of residence, years of education, years of military service, number of children, party registration, right or left handed, chicken or fish, every damned thing.
certainly sports team preferences, as well as: metal or classic rock.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@A Mom Anon:
Are you new to the place? ;)
@
Church LadyBible Thumpin’ Bitch: “Funny though, the majority of the time, the perp is either black or hispanic. I wonder how many of them are wingers?”You are one ugly bitch. Now pull the hood back over your face. Please.
soonergrunt
@kid bitzer: I think for a certain portion of people, that “speculation” starts and ends with “he did it because it’s in his nature as an evil white man.” I think that such “speculation” occurs because of an agenda that stopped encouraging critical thought and demands absolute conformity from its adherents, and that has a lot to do with these mindless invocations of same, followed by these defenses of this behavior that continue even after the facts come in and give lie to the original claims made in the initial invocation of misogyny and/or the patriarchal society and/or the rape society.
I think that at best it forecloses on honest discussion and discovery of issues that can be critically important to our civil discourse because it’s intellectually lazy. I think that at worst it’s a way to turn every single event that occurs into a treatise on how men, and white men in particular are animals unworthy of either civil discourse or the respect they are due as human beings because they are brutal vicious assholes. I think that this does nothing good to advance either study or discussion of women’s issues in the whole or the study and discussion of the specific topic at hand.
soonergrunt
@Tax Analyst: You forgot:
Misandrist
Sexual Assault or Rape Victim
Sexual Harrassment Victim
Falsly Accused of Sexual Assault or Rape
Falsly Accused of Sexual Harrassment
Get rid of feminazi
PurpleGirl
I’ve read about half of the thread, read some of Stack’s statement… he reminds me of a number of libertarians I knew in college and through science fiction fandom. (A good number of them were engineers of various kinds.) They were against government, period, either party, it didn’t matter because they saw no reason to have government. They were against taxes — all taxes at any level. If he got himself involved with any of the groups who have tried to sell various ideas about not having to pay taxes and the IRS was coming after him. yeah, there’s a lot of anger and rage and also desperation in his thinking and feeling. It was a political act because it was against the political system we have, it was not partisan because he probably didn’t see himself as on any one side. He wanted to create his own world with his own principles and he couldn’t.
kid bitzer
@soonergrunt–
okay. that helps me to understand your earlier comment, so thanks for that.
the behavior you’re complaining about certainly does sound reprehensible–close-mindedness and laziness and all are certainly bad things.
i didn’t really see that sort of behavior on this thread, but that may be where we disagree.
what i saw was lots of speculation about various sorts of partisan politics, widening out to include non-partisan ideological categories, and then also including gender analysis as a supplement to those categories. what motivated the guy? well who knows, but here are some of the things that sometimes tend to motivate people like him (or like whatever profile we can assemble about him yet): [followed by list of speculative motivations].
i don’t remember anyone making claims about what is in my nature as an evil white man, but if you’d like to make some about me, you may just get some right out of luck.
anyhow–mostly what i saw was just a wide range of different theories. and i spoke up to say: i think one of the theories that belongs under consideration are gender issues. that’s how i got into the thread.
where you saw “demands” for “absolute conformity” and all that, i’m not really sure.
but i’m not really trying to rehash the thread. i just thought it was interesting (and here’s where i got into the thread for the *second* go around) to see where people tended to agree and where they tended to disagree, and what this might tell us about the readership here.
General Winfield Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Yea, I agree. I hear it bandied about here in various ways. But it is a Limbaugh term, and I should have just said “drek” instead of attaching that term. Point taken. Off my vocabulary from hence forth.
Wordsmith
I read but rarely comment – but this!
How! How, could this devolve into a discussion about a suicide bomber – a real merikan – and ‘gender?’ The man flew a fucking Piper Cherokee into a building. He committed suicide with the intent of taking other people with him. I don’t give a good goddamn WHAT his reasons are. If he had a problem with women. If he wiped his ass with Charmin or paper towels. If he’d rather have french fries or baked potato.
All this bullshit to justify what he did when you all know that if ANY person of color did the same in short order that vilification of race, creed, religion, etc. would ensue.
Tax Analyst
@soonergrunt:
Except for “Misandrist” I think the others would go under “Other(Specify)”, if only for the lack of brevity in the general description.
Besides, I am loathe to make sport of anything to do with Rape, Sexual Assault or accusations, false or otherwise of same.
I guess I should add another category for myself – “Cowardly Blogger”.
Spork
“Even if a guy starts outvas a raving liberal if he has a bad divorce he’s going to end up on the libertarian/ant government/ republican side of the aisle. It is precisely at the break up of the patriarchal family that divorced men discover that they’ve always hated the courts, government, religion, education.”
Ouch, as a white raving liberal male getting a painful divorce, that comment really hurts. Anyone know a good place for flying lessons? Then again, maybe it’s just that losing your family and home and being rejected by the one you love is really fucking painful. Maybe it doesn’t have much to do with either the patriarchy or the IRS. Or being male.
Uriel
@Dr. Morpheus: Yeah, as probably the only person on this blog with a Phd in Sociology…
HEY! I tried, damn it! It’s not my fault that I ended up on the wrong end of inter-departmental politics. Thanks for rubbing it in, jerk. Maybe you should start your next post with something like, “as probably the only person on this blog that has maintained his youthful good looks and a full head of hair.”
Man, you’re worse than Stuck. Did my ex-wife set you up to this? I’ll bet she did….
(Joking!)
Dr. Morpheus
@Uriel:
Don’t worry Uriel, I’ve got a receding hairline. Plus all the Phd got me was a six month gig as a teaching adjunct.
I’ve spent the remainder of the last fifteen years writing code.
General Winfield Stuck
@Uriel:
That’s “Side Show Bob” to you buster.:)
@General Winfield Stuck:
soonergrunt
@Tax Analyst:
I don’t mean these to make sport. Really, I don’t.
soonergrunt
@Wordsmith:
As I pointed out in another post (easy to miss in this case) I’m quite certain that the people who tried to make this into a discussion about the perpetrator being a white male, and therefore inherently evil, would, if he were a minority or a woman be trying to make this into something about how it was a desperate strike against the evil white male power structure.
maus
Perhaps you have found yourself on the wrong side of the internets, strawman-friendly RedState is just over the hill ——>