I don’t know everything about this yet. But this morning, a 53 year old white software developer crashed his own plane into the IRS building in a suicidal direct action against the government. What is fascinating is that he wasn’t a libertarian, pro-business type, he was concerned with the greed and destruction of the capitalist system. The news I’ve read implies that two people were hospitalized and one person is missing, though I don’t know if this list includes Andrew Stack.

Before the attack, he uploaded a six-page rant about why he did it. The really short version is that he has been screwed by tax law again and again in his life, in particularly gross ways. I’ve pulled some excerpts below.

Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. … the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

and he ends with this:

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

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.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

In a six page impassioned letter, the corporate media (Fox and the BBC (what, you didn’t know the BBC was bullshit too?) sum him up by quoting “violence … is the only answer.”

note: I’m not convinced that violence is the only answer (but notice how easily the government and the public get all in an uproar about violence coming from anyone but police and the government? Yet police and soldiers act with a weird ethical impunity?). I’m actually not convinced that it’s useful at all: the government is really, really good at violence.