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Wing-nut Kamikaze in Austin, Texas

Below is a portion of the text of a rambling letter that a pilot left before crashing his small plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, on February 18, 2010.
Here’s the story at MSNBC; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35460268/ns/us_news-life/
Here’s the complete text;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35461747/ns/us_news-life/

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ’80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

The first reason I quote this section is that the man is throwing some sort of indictment in the direction of the Catholic Church and it bears noting that first;

the Catholic Church is one of many organizations that have charitable status under the tax code, so he could have as easily mentioned Jimmy Swaggart, another Texan, second;

this notion that a lot of people have, that this huge monolith, the Catholic Church has a whole lot of money and treasure, when actually each diocese under its own Bishop has its own separate financial structure. Within the the diocese, each Church has its own financial structure and from its budget it supports the diocese. Separate religious orders also have their own financial structures as well as each chapter house being separate but supporting the order’s central offices. But third;

and unrelated to the specifics of Church financial structure and tax-exempt status per se, it seems from this that the suicidal pilot, Joseph Stack, had been involved with some sort of activist and lobby group that seems to have primed him early in his career to have a highly negative view and a chip on his shoulder. It is too bad he didn’t give a more explicit reference to this group, perhaps even a name.

Reading the entire statement and checking out the links, I can see what he was upset about, but even so, it doesn’t seem to me like an insurmountable problem, an inconvenience yes, but not the great mountain that his angry rhetoric makes it out to be. The only way that this would have the kind of effect that it apparently had on him is if he was pre-disposed to look for this kind of tax issue and see it as a conspiracy against him.

Which leads me back to his mention of this original group with an agenda against the Catholic Church and its tax exempt status. It seems that he was carrying around a huge grudge for much of his life and so any set-backs that he had seemed him to be the fault of everyone else, the politicians, the Church, the IRS, etc. It was all a conspiracy against him.

I’ve met people like him, and I’ve found for myself it is even a temptation to think this way when times look futile and just when you don’t need it, some government regulation comes around to kick you in the butt. The thing is that most of us don’t take our own lives and the lives of a few others in the process. His last paragraph talks of using violence as a method and he concludes that is all he has left. But for what?

If you look at what he complains about in the beginning, that everything about freedom that he learned as a child is not really true, then by the end we can conclude that he has not grown up, because he finally concludes that he must use violence, and this is because his life has been a failure as a result of the world not being like the world he was told it was when a child.

Faced with that conclusion, the rest of us do a reality check and say to ourselves, “I don’t like it but this is the way the world is, so how can I get around it or make the best of the way it is?” Clearly, the man was in need of some kind of counselling, but it appears to me that his problem was long-standing and it would take an astute and patient professional to unwind all the tension that had built up over his lifetime.

There have been those who have done a knee-jerk and suggested that this Joseph Stack was another Timothy McVeigh, and others try to paint him as a “right winger” or “right wing nut.” From what I have read here, his politics are pretty murky. He seems to be an equal opportunity hater, attacking on one hand the right and the other hand the big brother left. I think he was as much a “left-wing nut” as he was a “right-wing nut.” The best description is perhaps just a plain “wing-nut.”

His last lines;

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

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

That would seem to me to suggest that he had no use for either one. The entire world was against him, communist and capitalist.

Beside all of this, it seems to me that he wasn’t doing too badly. A plane is something that I haven’t been able to afford yet.

Saturday, February 20th, 2010, by admin and is filed under "American Politics, Commentary, Hmmm, World Affairs ". You can leave a response here, or send a Trackback from your own site.