General•Manifesto of the Texas Plane Crash Pilot

• • sepslugseven
  • February 18
  • Permalink

  For those who didn't hear about it, a man burned his house down and crashed a small plane into a government (IRS, but there were other unnamed agencies in there) building today.

  Here is the news article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586581,00.html

  Another article about who he was: http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpps/news/dpgo-who-is-joseph-andrew-stack-fc-20100218_6150145

  Here is the link to his manifesto: http://www.businessinsider.com/joseph-andrew-stacks-insane-manifesto-2010-2#comment-4b7d8ec4000000000093b0cf

  And here are my thoughts on his manifesto:

  While I disagree with his conclusion that he needed to kill or be killed to be a part of the solution, the problems he illustrated with the system are far from insane. I think we need to address the issues by encouraging our friends, family, neighbors and community to speak openly and become educated on how the political, legal, financial, etc. systems work. The only way to fix the system is to take part in it in a productive (and extremely challenging) manner. The problem is those who realize the problems often develop an overwhelming sense of defeat and resort to ridiculous tactics like flying planes into buildings to try to make a point.

  Continued....

• • sepslugseven
  • February 18
  • Permalink

  We need to make it socially acceptable to discuss the reality of the problems we have allowed to pop up in every institution we have. Then we can organize groups, grow, educate each other and use our collective knowledge to work on fixing the system. So what if they steal your money, while you educate yourself and others? As long as you can maintain your perspective they can never steal your dignity like they did to this man.

  Gi Joe was right. Knowing is certainly half the battle. The other half is communicating and getting involved in logical real world debates and solutions. We have a political system that allows us to elect our officials, and instead of working together to figure out who the best choices are, we accept the few choices given to us and base our political decision making on who had the best negative ad campaign. The system is a reflection of us. I know I am repeating myself, but if we educate ourselves and each other, without being afraid of reality, we can work together to change the system in a completely sane manner.

  We need to stop blaming the system for reflecting our own apathy. Take responsibility so no one else has to end up like this guy

• • sepslugseven
  • February 18
  • Permalink

  Another Comment from the Manifesto link in the original post. I don't 100% agree with everything he says, but I think it is a very intelligent analysis.

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  "As is so often the case, the insanity lies less in the roots of the frustration, than it does in the magnification of hat frustration combined with an inability to cope with it in any rational way.

  First of all, regarding what apparently was the commission of tax fraud, it's all too typical that people blame others for their own errors. This person wrote: "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." Firstly, after 16 years of school, he should have been old enough and mature enough to realize that neither the tax code, nor *any* law, code or legislation, is in any way written in "plain English". Only someone who doesn’t mind flirting with the risk of imprisonment and fines so as to make a political point, or conversely a complete unthinking nincompoop, would screw around with tax law. There are no details regarding the actual nature of the tax fraud, but it's pathetically absurd to imagine that an individual can somehow apply corporate/business or tax-exempt-organization to personal taxes.

• • sepslugseven
  • February 18
  • Permalink

  rather than admitting to being a fool, however, it's far easier, and sadly far more common, for people to erect the beginnings of a delusional world wherein their personal responsibility for their actions evaporates.

  That first step, that delusional rejection of personal responsibility for his initial nonsensical act, was the beginning of his insanity, because it was the first step that converted personal frustration (caused by a series of very poor decisions) into the echo-chamber of irrational obsession. that hears nothing but itself, with the echoes piling-up until nothing else at all can be heard, can penetrate the barrier of delusion.

  Although I have some pity for this individual's financial and mental problems, much like I feel pity for a dead squirrel on a highway, but I feel little mercy, because most of those problems seem, by his own account, to have been largely the result of his own poor choices, and making poor choices is no excuse or justification for his final actions. He did not, as he deluded himself into believing, "die for freedom"; he dies because he refused to learn from his bad decisions so as to take responsibility and make better subsequent decisions - it was merely so much easier to blame everyone and everything else,

• • sepslugseven
  • February 18
  • Permalink

  Unfortunately, and to be honest, IMO rather disgustingly, this is an increasingly-common meme in both the personal real and the political realm - ego-maintenance at all and any cost increasingly takes precedence over self-examination, analysis, and learning. Increasing numbers of people merely want the emotional comfort of believing, regardless of anything, that they are "right" - the problem being that belief requires no testing, no replicable observation, no objective observation; in short, no proof.

  It seems to me that this person looked at the world, drew a few correct conclusions, then used them to erect a host of thoroughly erroneous conclusions, and subsequent delusions, which served to absolve him, in his own mind, of responsibility for his own poor choices and his own inability to cope with their results. He murdered, and died, NOT for "freedom", but for his chosen belief that he was as innocent, and as powerless to take constructive action, as some young child, some proverbial babe-in-arms. Although it's pitiable that he evidently preferred to die for this delusions rather than seek help with his problems, the true tragedy is that he also murdered innocent bystanders."

  END