Friday, February 19, 2010
Politics Towards an Understanding of The IRS Plane Guy's Politics
Posted by Mark Asch on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:07 PM
Think about it, you just pay your taxes and they'll come and take away all your problems. It's wonderful, real talk, and this is why I'm having such a hard time understanding the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin.
Now that he has, though, do you think that the tough-on-terror right is going to start demanding more rigorous airport screenings of middle-aged white guys with histories of writing angry letters to the IRS?
Because make no mistake, this particular suicide dive-bomber's anti-government rhetoric is straight off the teabag box—a fact which even Scott Brown seems to recognize, hilariously. (He's telegenic but not very smart, the junior senator from Massachusetts, which should be fun.)
It briefly seemed, since the guy approvingly quoted Marx in his sign-off, that there would be enough ambiguity about Austin Plane Guy's political leanings to disassociate him from the movement. But it appears that Communism was just a red herring—there's nothing collective or cooperative in his paranoid-libertarian screed, though there is a sadly large amount of blind-spotted human pathos. Despite the frequently personal nature of his gripes, all the bailout rage and "my tax money" quotes mean that, as with Tim McVeigh—another domestic terrorist who hit his boiling point early in a Democratic administration—Joe Stack has become something of a Don't Tread On Me moment for ever less fringe-y lunatics. Even Fox News is willing to make the connection, rather through overaggressive trend-creating 24-hour-news-cycle story-chasing, or genuine punditry. Your call.)
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
Top Commenters
