Hypocrisy over IRS Bomber
If you hate the US government for collecting taxes from you and are willing to fly a plane into a Federal building, you just might be a terrorist.
But, nah, not if you're a white guy.
Some Tea Partiers, who likewise are outraged at paying taxes, are eager to adopt this domestic terrorist.
If he'd been a Muslim or a member of another minority group, they'd be calling for the posthumous beheading of his ashes.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/19/2010 12:51:00 AM
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Not only will it not be considered terrorism because it is domestic and the perpetrator is white, but I suspect the same right-wing commenters will discover that the race and religion of the criminal is not important. Then same people who called for racial profiling of Muslims, who approved of the mass sweep of Muslims after 9/11, and who approve of American policy to search all persons from certain countries such as Pakistan, will suddenly discover that he is an individual and not representative of all white middle-aged males who support the Tea Party movement. They will strongly argue that this is a sign of anger but he is a lone wolf - an extreme example. I would like to applaud their ability to have a more nuanced view of the world and realize because a member of a group who commits a crime does not necessarily mean the whole group is guilty or should be targeted. Unfortunately, the hypocrisy of people like Michelle Malkin is such that a defense of the Tea Party group will quickly be followed by another call to hold Muslims indefinitely without trial.
The headline in USA today reads: "In Austin, a Chilling Echo of Terrorism."
An echo.
It's kinda like terrorism, only not. It reminds you of terrorism, but it's not actually terrorism. Not really. It can't be, of course, because the guy wasn't a Muslim.
If he'd been a Muslim or a member of another minority group, they'd be calling for the posthumous beheading of his ashes.
Thanks for the laugh but it's Sad at the same time, what a country we've become. The new Amerika.
jo6pac
Perhaps I'm naive, but it's utterly mind-boggling to me why no one anywhere in the press or the political establishment is calling this an act of terrorism.
Let me see:
Suicide bomber... Check
Plane Full of Explosives... Check
Deliberately flown into building... Check
Motivated by hatred of US Government... Check
How in the world isn't this terrorism?
Too bad he didn't survive. Then we could watch the verbal gymnastics over why he should or shouldn't "lawyer up" and be read his miranda rights, be tried as an enemy combatant, etc.
Could it possibly be the case that the problem here is the careless and broadbrush way everybody uses that willies-causing word "terrorism?" And wants to engage in solidarity-building or enemy-naming as a path to power and self-righteousness and self-justification? As opposed to whether or not this, well, they used to call folks like him a "madman," should be "properly" pushed into that category which is so abused as to be emotionally evocative but practically meaningless?
Stop with the squishy thinking already, hey? Go look up "REIFICATION," like maybe here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy). Maybe there's a better use of time and thought than arguing about whether the sociopath like Texas Pete or Tim McVeigh or M. Atta ought to be lumped together in the same Category," like maybe embracing the complex reality that the body politic is just like our own bodies, which produce many types of cancerous cells every hour of the day and which our immune systems, our "police departments," are either able to identify and render harmless and recycle back into our metabolisms, or they're not.
And maybe we could all be a little healthier mentally and not so fearful if we could stop thinking and speaking as if "America" or "Hamas" or "Israel" or "Costa Rica" or "Iran" are unitary "things" that can be characterized and analyzed and are going to "act" like they are individuals instead of complex collections of elements that all pull and push in random directions?
You political scientists ought to know that you can't represent a whole nation or other group as some kind of "vector sum." Last I checked, we don't even have the intellectual tools to predict the interactions and motions of more than maybe 4 or 5 pool balls, let alone whole populations.
Categorize him as "crazy depressed suicidal desperate Caucasian-American guy with a plane and pilot's license, driven mad (in several senses) by a lot of things including maybe too much Country Rock into focusing all his existential despair on a black building housing government bureaucrats." Does that make him a "terrorist?" I guess, if you insist on that Lycra Spandex body bag that so many of us want to shove everyone you denigrate and despise and fear, for whatever reason, into...
Anyone with a clear political rage that leads him or her to kill perfect strangers who are the objectified personae of that hatred, is a terrorist.
Too many are hailing him as a hero. Oh? So you want to kill your neighbors - many of them working for just over minimum wage, because they work for the government? Or are something else you hate in the abstract? Then you are terrorists as well.
Many are giving him a pass - saying he was mentally ill. Oh? Are you qualified to judge, and even if you are, why did you not label the military doctor that way?
What is horrifying is that we seem to accept without reservation that if we're furious at someone or some institution, we can kill people. We can kill people who have done us NO personal harm. We don't even try to justify it, we just make them dead. Period.
Americans need to ask what has the government done to harm you? I can see where the corporate world has blasted too many of us to smithereens, but I don't see the hate of the government. We have free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of petition - no one is stopped from any of that. I hear fear put into the future, but not evidence of any repression in the here and now.
Here is the bottom line. If you hate America and its government, ask why. This man's miseries were borne of his own criminality. He did not pay his taxes - so, YOU paid his taxes for him. He brought this on himself then blamed everyone BUT himself. Where is the much-vaunted "personal responsibility"? He took none. Zip. Nada. Zilch. It was always someone else's fault he had troubles.
Well, it was his own fault. Most of the terrorists in America have big problems, but instead of looking at themselves, they fixate on the government, immigrants, people of color, women - someone.
I have news for you - even if that were true, and it is NOT, you do NOT have the right to kill those with whom you disagree and especially do not have the right to kill innocent people. There is no such thing as 'collateral damage'. There are only victims with families, kids, dogs, mortgages, and taxes. Just like you.
Stack is not a hero. He was a sniveling narcissist, and he's deprived at least one person of life and all that means and many more of peace of mind. Damn him to hell.
Am I the ONLY person alive who understands and appreciates WHY this is not being called terrorism?
Once you put that one little word to something it opens the floodgates for unlimited spying, infiltrating, profiling and funding of all things Big Brother here.
I sure as heck HOPE it's not called "Terrorism"
and who cares if the guy wasn''t Muslim?
All of you please be very careful what you are wishing for. It's EXACTLY what TPTB desire to tighten the grip on this country quick gone to hell.
Meh, as far as I could tell from his suicide note the guy had the a similar view of our government as I - corrupt, owned by corporate interests, and more often than not willing to screw the poor and small business owners to serve the needs of the rich. That said I cant possibly understand how poor he can claim to be when he owns his own plane and recently purchased a 250K house in Austin, nor would the IRS be the targets of my rage if it all finally proved to be to much. What will it take to turn these anti-government, disaffected people willing to kill themselves and take others with them toward a more worthy target like bank CEO's and corporate stooges. How can they think killing some file clerks at the IRS is a way to fight the system?
it's "terror" but not terrorism because there is no apparent threat of some organized intent to encore = hit you again. The distinction is "finiteness" -vs- the dread of never knowing when or how some related antagonist will/would put YOU in jeopardy. That you survived / are an observer to an horrific event may be frightening ~ even terrible... but unless you have some notion that, "This could happen to you, next!" it is not terrifying, and you are not left terrorized by the catastrophe, thus.
That some political leader(s) or the corporate media create a narrative such that any accident and/or random crime that occurs within any given news cycle is periodic ~ likely to happen again in some future news cycle ~ re-defines that event as "an act of terrorism," ironically, making the media, or the political leader(s) themselves, the terrorists who are terrifying you and your culture.
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