Similarities between the Austin plane bomber and the Tea Party Movement

 

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

It's hard to swallow the hand-wringing over Andrew Joseph Stack (another triple-name psycho) and whatever mental illness led him to fly his Piper Cub into a building and murder at least one (and possibly more) people. It's heartbreaking when anyone commits suicide, but Stack's disjointed, rambling diatribe (you can't really call it a manifesto) would have never made these pages on The Smoking Gun, or the headlines of most 'papers, if he had merely committed suicide. "I have had all I can stand," he wrote. He then decided to make a splash by killing some innocent people, although no one in that building probably had anything to do with his woes.

He wrote and posted a deranged and muddy screed, lit his house on fire, and flew his plane into an Austin building that housed the IRS, who went after Stack for not filing tax returns or paying taxes he owed. He owned a house, he owned an airplane, he played bass in a rock band. He doesn't exactly sound like he had been ground down into poverty.

He, earlier, ran two of his businesses into the ground. In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona CA. Its business license was suspended by California two years later. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, CA in 1995 and that entity was suspended in 2001. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies. He then moved to Austin to save them from themselves (according to his screed) with his development/programming prowess.

His web site was removed by its host this afternoon and in its place his ISP posted the following:

"This web site has been taken offline due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI."

His rant, at various points, attacks the rich, the Catholic Church, Austin--one of the great hotbeds of art, food, music, technology, and film in the world), and the American People, or as he pegged us, "zombies." It is full of half-baked conspiracies against him, and builds up to him finally striking a blow against tyranny.




What strikes me most about his rants are the themes and keynotes--very similar to those of the Tea Party people--similar muddy logic, paranoia, disenfranchisement, pent-up rage, and a nearly identical sense of victimization. No doubt some of the Tea Bagger's twisted rhetoric resonated with Andrew Joseph Stack.

Had Stack been a Moslem/Muslim that flew into the building, we would now witness a national debate on The President's policies and about our "war on terror." That was not the case, and we now face up to the grim fact that, as Pogo once said, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."
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