White-collar lunatics
Alan Sullivan suggests that “it didn’t occur to [Joe] Stack that he would be giving statists a political weapon to use against those who would shrink the state.”
To which Mary P. Madigan replies, in comments:
Even if it did occur to him, he would have flown the plane into a building anyway because he was a self-obsessed yet completely un-self aware psycho and that’s what they do.
I see parallels between this jerk and psycho Amy Bishop — both were politically active and often obsessed, both thought violence was a solution and both made their professions look bad, but neither was trying to solve any political problems or change anything. They just wanted to express their anger and cause pain.
Stack may have claimed to have an agenda, but it was all over the place: basically, he hated everything that got in his way, with the notable exception of himself.
And I’d bet that every single provision in the US tax code, up to and including the requirement to sign a tax return, has pissed off someone at some point.
fillyjonk »
21 February 2010 · 8:06 am
I think in people like Stack, there’s a tendency, that can turn very dangerous: the ability to see fellow human beings as “its” rather than as “yous.” That’s the only way I can explain to myself why some guy POd at the IRS would think it was a good idea to attempt to kill (or in McVeigh’s case, actually kill) hundreds of people…people who, though they may represent a despised government entity, are still PEOPLE. They are not the IRS. They’re someone’s sons and daughters, possibly someone’s parents, someone’s friend. They have hopes and dreams and loves and fears.
I think when we begin to stop seeing our fellow humans as human, that’s an extremely dangerous thing. And that’s something that scares me a lot about society right now; there seems to be a lot of that dehumanizing impulse going around.
I think that would have to be true – even more so – for Amy Bishop. She WORKED with the people she shot and killed. She saw them every day. And yet, she was able to sufficiently dehumanize them to kill them. Someone doing that is something I find literally unimaginable. I don’t like having to hear things that were previously unimaginable to me on the news.
zigzag »
21 February 2010 · 5:59 pm
All of us who are “collateral damage” of the mighty American
empire know what he was challenging. And the rest, your turn may come. No day is guaranteed, no matter how thoroughly you identify w/ master. Under the spreading oak tree …