Here are the inconvenient truths about Joe Stack

The convenient truths are that he was mentally and emotionally disturbed, that his life was too filled with self-absorbed scheming, that his actions were despicable and tragic, that he choose a cowardly, pitiable path of nonsensical violence.

Those are the convenient truths.

Here are the inconvenient truths:



The inconvenient truth? In my experience, I find that this is more frequently true than it is untrue. I'm 32 and there aren't many politicians that I believe have cast votes in my lifetime where the needs of working class individuals and families are prioritized ahead of the whims of the financial elite. That's one of the fatal flaws of our contemporary plunder capitalist system. And its a flaw that no politician I'm aware of - at least no president, party leader, or house or senate leadership - has ever shown any interest in seriously addressing it.




The inconvenient truth? I find little to disagree with here. True, I would perhaps fine tune the rhetoric. But substantively? It is absurd and obscene that our government privatizes corporate profits and subsidize corporate losses, or that it rushes to the aid of wall street or businesses that have ignored every warning sign of insustainability for decades only to throw a complete hissy fit over the "absurd" notion of Medicare for all.

Health insurance and drug companies are profiting off of people's deaths or misery. It's just that simple. And our politicians love to talk about the health care crisis, but as far as I'm concerned I'll stand by what stack wrote word for word on this point: it's clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don't get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in. Yep. Exactly. I and a large number of DUers I've read basically agree.



The inconvenient truth? Folks, our tax code sucks. It is utterly absurd. People ought to be disgusted and outraged by the insanity of it. It is a system that liberals understand that we need, but it is also a system that is so ridiculously complicated that most of us don't remotely understand it. The number of absurd taxes on the middle class (and yes, even the software engineer is middle class) compared to the number of exemptions, exceptions and loopholes for the rich is sickening. And if anyone has ever had a run-in with the IRS, you'll understand how infuriating the experience it is, how helpless it makes a person feel - even if you're intent has been to pay every penny of taxes you've ever owed.



The inconvenient truth? I find little here to disagree with. Well except to say that elections are only a joke when we keep accepting the two variations of corporate-flavor candidates we are offered each election. We could demand better Democrats. But when we keep accepting that? Yes, they seem to be kind of a cruel joke.



The inconvenient truth here I think should be self-evident.

Thoughtful analysis.

The issue for me, is the characterization of the guy by the mainstream media. Partly understandable because of his deplorable actions, I guess.

But I find it not-surprising that they called his letter a "manifesto" and are trying to characterize him as completely loony.

Think it might be because he sounds surprisingly sane right up to the point where he decides he's going to kill himself. Pretty chilling.

;)

This guy preferred to kill himself over the prospect of becoming working class.

Seems to be the message blasting over every airwave.

He clearly doesn't deserve it.

In the wake of the scores of people calling him a tea bagger and a right wing nut case, I think its worthwhile to point out how many things he said that I agree with, that many DUers agree with.

Perhaps the oversimplification and caricature being invented by the M$M doesn't totally serve the situation all that well. :shrug:

to what the teabaggers are angry about - it's not really much different than the stuff that pisses the liberals off (without the racist overtones)

They've just been co-opted and re/mis-directed by the propaganda machine into who it is that they should be pissed off and it's not the liberals who've been trying to correct the in-balances.

Every conversation I've had with any of my RW relatives I've started out saying that we actually agree on about 95% of the issues, but it's better for those in power if we focus all our energy arguing over Right vs Left - it will keep us from paying attention to the fact that those in Washington are selling us out to the corporation and lobbyists ever chance they get

I understood you OP - you weren't trying to excuse the guy's actions as some have dramatically claimed. You were pointing out the similarities in many positions.

Could it be because the anti-establishment populism that they tried to funnel into their purely partisan politics becomes a little scary to them when they start to realize that these people think R's are as much a part of the problem as D's are?

Could it be that when they discovered a whole bunch of these Tea Partiers - people who were staging tea party rallies and protests long before the Republicans attempted to bring them into the media mainstream - are actually fighting a bottom vs. top battle instead of a right vs. left battle?

I'm not saying they people attracted to this "movement" aren't confused about some things, or hold some ugly ideas. But there's something bigger and deeper going on that I think its completely foolish to ignore.

Some on DU will stay closed-minded on this though. This may sound crazy, but if no one had died in the attack...I really wouldn't have a problem with it. The very fact that innocents lost lives changes the dynamics a ton. The guy was pushed over the edge. We should pity him, not demonize him which is what the MSM wants us to do.

Gawd forbid that a lot of people actually read his screed and see that they agree with some of what he said. His desperate, demented act cannot obliviate that.

Don't think the Tea-baggers will be canonizing this guy, those last two lines take care of that. Nor should anyone else, he's just a sign of the times.

k&r

is not the totality of who he was.

If you identify with some or even most of what he wrote, that's one thing. Who he was in 3-D day by day is not necessarily the same or even approximate to what he wrote in that piece.

interesting.

Very different from the "OMG HE'S A TEABAGGER" knee jerk I've been reading all night.

put up a page for him on Facebook.

:hi: Tudo bem? :hug:

:hi:

:hug:

in between.

By the way, "those people" don't operate in unison.

Better to just look at his words.

any more than a screed represents who this man was.

Its his other personalities that I'm worried about. You know, the ones that didn't own their own plane or owe more in taxes than most people earn a year.

would astound most folks who have never seen it happen.

Bullshit, top to bottom. They were the selfish self-defensive ramblings of a shamed man who wouldn't admit he was wrong and decided to kill people to cover his own shame. He filled a page with self-absorbed excuses, some common-place platitudes (most of which you accept, sadly), and a violent non-sequitar to cover his own criminal actions. I'm sure Al Capone and Jeffrey Dahmer uttered truths now and then, too, but if you have to look to deranged killers for support of your ideals, you probably don't have shit for ideals.

Hope its okay

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/18/2010-02-18_austin_plane_crash_full_text_joe_stack_manifesto_posted_on_website_embeddedartco.html

Honestly, I just forgot.

I honestly don't think there is a solution. It's unfixable

Obama was supposed to be the change we believed in but he's just been sucked into the existing system and has morphed. He was hope and now it's gone.

now that the powerful "un-rec'ers" rule-the-roost here on DU....

....just my humble observation.

It doesn't offend me.

Bringing up anything that sounds in anyway apologetic toward someone who just crashed a plane into a building is going to be hard for a lot of people to "hear" well.

That's really ok. I just found his letter interesting in that there is a great deal of it that I basically agree with. Except of those tragic conclusions.

with a guy that becomes so unhinged he would set his home on fire and fly a plane into a building.
Yet, in his more lucid moments Stack wrote about the frustrations many are able to relate to.

Saying they never have voted for anything with you in mind ...is an asinine statement.
How do you know what they think about each and every day?

Are you saying that no vote EVER has EVER been beneficial to you?

Utter horse shit.

The 'inconvenient truth' is that so many people are swallowing this crazy man's loony b.s.

to fear, and killed at least one of them.

I don't give a fuck about his reasoning, how badly he felt he was being persecuted, or whether or not he got enough love as a child.

He forfeited EVERY bit of sympathy I might have had for him or his situation when he made up his mind to take the Coward's Way Out.

that's the truth plain and simple. People can cry if they want, but his crap he wrote to justify the unjustifiable is just that.

There are many things he wrote which may coincide with my own opinions on certain topics, but he poisoned his own well the second he decided to commit suicide in a way that endangered the lives of hundreds of other people. That pretty well trumps everything, and has no bearing on the factual accuracy or ideological soundness of any particular subset of his numerous beliefs. His actions have as much to do with populism, pacifism or socialism as the 911 hijackers' crimes did with Islam and "lifting the yoke of western oppression from the middle east" or whatever else they were into at the time.

The man complains about taxes, and then ends his own life in such a way that the state he so deplored will spend millions cleaning up the mess. What a maroon.

maybe there's also an inconvenient truth in that populism doesn't run along a left-right axis. it runs along the axis of class. maybe there's a glimmer in this tragedy, that there's something that people from either side of the spectrum can agree on...that we're all getting equally screwed.

it's a brave post, PH. and a good one, too.

done anything for him. In a way it is all our fault. Somewhere along the way, people were only interested in sports, serials, and shopping. Congress knew we weren't watching them and we didn't have fast knowledge of what they were doing. It changed with C-Span. Then it changed for the worse with the corporate buy out by Republicans with Democrats not doing or saying much. It got better with some radio truthtellers and the internet. And too many heroes are dead and former ones are quiet.

There were some places where he spoke for many. The truth hurts when it is brought in ugly ways.

You don't suppose he used a remote control to operate the aircraft and left the country and his wife for a new girlfriend and a secret stash of cash.

and the manifesto is just a bunch of cut and past crap of the internet. (that will keep them all busy)

I could almost be reading of a list of names that I compiled for a separate, although probably related, reason.

It makes my heart feel super happy.

:hi:

Go with god.

It doesn't make me feel good, though.

It would creep me out just ot have to spend one moment of my life trying to understand this guy or his motivations. I wonder why you cared so much.

I can see the man tapped into your anger, but your thinking here is seriously fucked-up. You're indirectly condoning terrorism.

Since I started out my post by discussing the obvious facts we all know. That his murder/suicide is reprehensible, appalling and tragic.

Sorry but I don't accept the notion of "indirectly" condoning things. A person can be right in their facts and wrong in their actions. When you acknowledge that they were right in their facts, there's no automatic connection to condoning their wrong actions.

I'm quite able to independently look at something written apart from actions taken. And yes, I do find it interesting - maybe because I'm a social worker. Or maybe not, who knows.

The line between "sane" and "insane" is thin. But it is there. Forming the conclusions this man formed based on his grievances is a tragic and horrific ill.

What's more interesting are the people that get so emotionally wrapped up in stuff like this that they can't view anything analytically. I find his letter to be fascinating precisely because its not as crazy as I thought it would be. It's really not much more than that.... at least up to the point when everyone started trying to pin the guy as right or left just to score some cheap political points.

Honestly I found all of that to be a little sick.

I had a thread like this locked early on, and got flamed a lot. I made the outrageous inference that his manifesto was more like a DU post than a Free Republic Post.

The hostile and defensive reaction was very telling about my fellow liberals. Usually when I'm hyper-defensive it's because I'm conflicted over a truth about myself.

Oooh ouch, yep I do that too.

A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have agreed with you about that. But since the last election...

wise:fistbump: :fistbump:

"but your thinking here is seriously fucked-up" Sorry there, ya goofed a bit!

I didn't get that at all.
Yes he had valid gripes, but to do what he did is just loony.
But I don't see any "condoning terrorism" here.

Rec'ed

even if indirectly?

That's like saying I condone bringing my mistress home to live with my family because I find Carl Jung's work compelling.

A cogent argument is cogent regardless of the craziness of the person speaking it. And the same can be said for a weak argument spoken by a perfectly sane human.

I can separate the wheat from the chaff. I can use my rational mind to see the distinction between being justifiably angry and crossing the line into illegal, immoral action. I'm intelligent enough to do that. If you cannot, then I would posit that it is your thinking that is problematic and not the OP.

:hide:

that the big guys get. A guy who fell for all that anti-tax, "How to avoid paying income tax" seminar crap of the 1980's and got caught and made to pay. A guy who didn't want anybody withholding tax money and so wanted to have his income on 1099s instead of W2s. A guy who couldn't even hire a reputable CPA when his wife had $12,700 in unclaimed income.

You know most people with IRS problems would try selling their house, business, or private plane to cover what was scammed, but not this guy.

I have absolutely zero sympathy for him. I don't agree that he wrote a lot of 'truths'.

:thumbsup:

That he is being painted as a terrorist is worrisome to me because what does that say about those of us who agree with many (though not all) of his points?

How long before we are all thought to be terrorists just because we despise the banksters and the corrupt insurance companies?

No? Not a terrorist then.

The line seems pretty obvious to me.

In this country, you're allowed to hate black people, hate abortion doctors, hate the IRS, hate gays, think INS is building concentration camps or DARPA is collaborating with a planned Martian invasion.

You're a terrorist when you *act violently* on those beliefs (or instigate others to commit violence based on those beliefs.)

it does not MATTER whether or not his beefs were legit - he became a terrorist the moment he decided innocent people had to die because of his beefs

"That he is being painted as a terrorist is worrisome to me " - WTF WTF WTF that bastard was a TERRORIST

All I said is that I don't like the terrorist label flung around so carelessly because it could easily be flung at innocent people who are nothing more than mentally ill!

The terrorist label is a dangerous weapon and if you don't know that after living through eight hellish years of * & Cheney, I don't know what to tell you!

:wtf:

plane into an office building full of people.

Plain as day.

Scott Brown Yawns At Plane Attack On IRS Building: ‘Everyone Hates Taxes’

Anyone who thinks crashing a plane into a building is justified by hating taxes is a moron, yes, moron.

:eyes:

a lie perpetuated by those who would preserve to status quo.

The Right is Capital

The Left is the Workers

Ya can't get more opposed than that.

Capitalists and socialists (''workers'') are indeed the direct opposites of each other but neither are fringes of their respective political orientation.
The most left orientated believes that everything belongs to everyone (everyone has the rights to everything), thus they are supporters of anarchy. Those on the far right believes that they are free to do whatever they want(''no rules'', everyone has the rights to everything)thus are supporters of anarchy as well.

Our dear friend mr. Stack is on certain issues most definitely a supporter of the anarchistic thoughts and that is why he can be portrayed both as a left and a right wing lunatic, without anyone able to put up a decisive conclusion.

I know of not one leftist that believes that. I do know lots of right wingers who like to build up that straw man, however.

Well, ever read Rousseau (one of the guys that inspired Marx)?
Now I don't know Rousseau well enough to quote him by heart but he does state that until one, once upon a time, claimed a certain thing his own everybody had the right to everything thus; in the nature of things everybody owns everything.
This idea, that in nature of things everybody is ''sharing'' has later in history been picked up by ultra-left wings (together with a bunch of other stuff)and has been ''exploited'' so to speak.

Thats the theory part, in the real world it can especially be seen in some sub-cultures in Europe, for instance the Danish community of Christiania, situated in Copenhagen, has evolved around this idea.
We are further out the left wing than when talking just Socialists or Marxists (there are equalities though) and I'm inclined to say that there are no examples of these beliefs in USA.

you don't kill innocent people whatever your beef is...

i've paid a shitload of taxes in my time too mr joe

Because his actions don't jibe with any of those things you find agreement with. Yeah, he mentions the communist manifesto, and needs. Well, here are a few needs that the IRS helps make happen for a lot of people:

http://www.govbenefits.gov/govbenefits_en.portal
http://www.disability.gov/benefits
http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/

For a start.

Dear fucking god can you not see that there are people in parts of this world whose entire lives are shit and if they are lucky they die by the age of 50.

Yet a fucking whiny ass american cries a river because he paid too much in taxes while traveling the world and living in a 2500 sq foot decent house and he even owned his OWN FUCKING AIRPLANE.

Have we no fucking shame any more. He needs to be ridiculed for the whiny ass loser he was. Fuck him and fuck anyone who thinks like him.

Doesn't mean they will crash airplanes into buildings, nor does it mean they would every support anyone who would do such a thing.

A guy who embarks on a path of suicide/murder has had a mental and emotional break - the results are tragic. But the oversimplification and sort of cartoon caricature of the man being promoted in the media and right here is basically about the fact that its more comfortable for us to label someone as merely "crazy" and create as much distance and "otherness" between them and ourselves as humanly possible. The more we can objectify, the easier it is to ignore.

It's less comfortable to see the troubled human being, who was not simply a media caricature, who believed a lot of things that we believe, and saw a lot of the same problems that we see - and had a metal break.

It's never comfortable to find common humanity with someone who has lost it and done heinous things. But the common humanity is still there to be found, and its wise to understand an accept it rather than trivially dismiss it.

It's interesting to me how emotionally hysterical you sound in your post above. Eight curses in three sentences? Perhaps step outside and smell some fresh air for a few minutes and ask yourself why you are so worked up?

He had a perfectly decent life and should have paid his taxes like everybody else.

your opinion is just that- not some undying truth.

secondly, it's utterly predictable that a guy who quotes Marx in his selfish, rambling screed, would endear himself to you.

Lastly as you mention, the guy was disturbed and filled with hate, trying to find wisdom in his words is the errand of a total fool.

Oh, and edited to add that the revelation that your 32 explains quite a bit.

Yeah, I'm 33 now actually, not sure that was a secret, was it? What age do you have to be where it officially stops "explaining" things for you? :)

Now its run its course with devastating results...

We need an UP GRADE...which is exactly Obama is slowly doing...in his own widdle way...

Not all of his programs/projects are doing well due to the GOPers and their anti help stance

But many of President Obama's successes go unnoticed as the GOP Media downplays them.

Yes, we are in the grips of some very selfish peeps out there...some of them made it all the way to the white house and worse, they brought their thieving friends along to gorge at the Trough...

"Country First" my ass

However, he was not someone who had no wealth. He owned a plane and a pretty nice home. I consider myself middle class and I don't own a plane nor a large home like he had.

Why didn't he just sell his plane to pay for his taxes instead of ramming it into a building and hurting other working stiffs just like him trying to make it through life. He didn't exactly run his plane into Murdoch's home or some Bank CEO scum bag.

No one's disputing the flawed thinking. And once someone crosses that break point where they are ready to harm themselves or others, they are suffering from mental/emotional impairment by APA definitions.

Though, I don't fault him for having money. It's tragic that whatever dim awareness he have had stumbled into about our political and economic absurdities, was overshadowed by fucked-up-edness :)

He's not a hero, I think we all agree on that.

But neither is he a martyr, though the fact that I dared to point out that his "manifesto" isn't neatly pegged as "teabagger" caused some to accuse me of saying he was.

He is simply - a tragedy.

on the grounds he didn't to support the war machine any longer and the flew his plane into the HQ of Blackwater or KBR. Like you post, he made some valid points that we on DU discuss on a day to day basis, now it seems we are running from our own ideas and arguments because we want to classify this guy as a "teabagger" and use him as a political hammer to hit our opponents with.

Even more fascinating are the vehement reactions condemning what you wrote.

Years ago, I was taught that anger is a secondary emotion that arises out of fear, fear being the true root emotion.

We are all so sure of ourselves -- we could NEVER experience a mental/emotional break so profound that we would commit such an unthinkable act as this man did.

We are good, he was self-evidently bad. We want to assure ourselves that there is a clear bright line that separates us from Stack. A post like your OP challenges that certainty of the bright line.

We don't want to hear that. We don't want to look within ourselves and see that each one of us is just as capable of evil as anyone whom we delight in pointing to as being a monster, as being "other".

The fear that we might, indeed, be just as capable of "snapping" and transgressing all bounds of rational action inspires great anger. Do not question our enlightened consciences! Do not point out the commonality of human suffering with the worst among us!

sw