He “Could Have Had Other Issues” — Such as Extreme, Psychopathic Beckism

New Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown:

You don’t know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues. Certainly, no one likes paying taxes, obviously.

He could have had other issues.

Brown, as part of his same answer:

They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way.

The issue here is a homicidal act of extreme domestic terrorism, and new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown appears to be  trying to turn it into a platform for the legitimization/explanation of anger at the government.  To wit; they are angry at the government for not “solving problems,” while, Brown neglects to mention, simultaneously in many instances being angry at the government for trying to solve problems rather than stay out of the way.

Consider the following, unfortunately, very real situation — the very same one to which the new Massachusetts Senator was referring:

Man is angry at IRS.  Man burns down his house (where his wife and daughter live), on purpose. Man flies his airplane into an IRS building killing and wounding innocent people – just like al-Qaeda did in New York and Washington D.C., in 200 (but  thank God, with far fewer casualties).

Scott Brown’s response?  ”People are angry.”  ”They want us to help solve problems.”   “He could have had other issues.”

The Dallas Morning News Reports:

Stack apparently set fire to his house in Austin and posted a long anti-government screed on the Web. It had Thursday’s date and was signed “Joe Stack (1956-2010).”

In it, the author cited run-ins he had with the IRS and ranted about the tax agency, government bailouts and corporate America’s “thugs and plunderers.”

“I have had all I can stand,” he wrote, adding: “I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at ‘big brother’ while he strips my carcass.”

While he “strips my carcass.” Is there any chance this person did not listen to a lot of Glenn Beck?

Read about what Beck is really telling people, while arrogant and privileged pundits, who seem to have little understanding of what is going on with Middle America, while ironically scolding other arrogant elitists, scoff at his influence or importance. Here is Beck, the same person whom the Washington Post promoted:

Beck: “I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.”[xii]

Beck, further back, “I want to kill [Rep.] Charlie Rangel with a shovel,” several times.

…[Beck] – playing out a mock poisoning of Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and stating he was thinking about doing just that…”“every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames”…..he even poured pretend gasoline (water) out of a gas can onto a guest, and held up a lit match to simulate what he suggested President Obama was doing to the American people…

…[Obama's] “letting the terrorists onto the streets!”

[Showing a picture of Obama and other Democrats made to look somewhat ghoulish] “…These bloodsucker vampires are not gonna just be satisfied with sucking the blood out of (business),  their thirst for power and control is unquenchable. They will not stop… Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or ya drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers“…

“Al Gore’s not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. … And you must silence all dissenting voices. That’s what Hitler did.”…

““Gun sales are going through the roof,” because “…a lot of Americans aren’t paying attention to this…the poem…first they came for the Jews and I didn’t stand up because I wasn’t a Jew? ….in the end, I think this is the problem. First, they came for the banks. I wasn’t a banker….I didn’t stand up and say anything. Then they came for the AIG executives….Then they came for the car companies — and I didn’t say anything………Until it gets down to you — most people don’t see they are coming for you at some point.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Beck:  Riling up hatred, and blatantly misinforming people left and right.

The way to fight encroaching  Big Brother is to work for limits on corporate power, work for better and more accurate information, work against misinformation, work for transparency and accountability in government, work for increased, rather than continually decreasing privacy rights, and work to increase checks upon government and majority power. Many of those who are complaining about government the most, have been the more active supporters of the opposite of many of these same things — particularly when it comes to unchecked, government power, and civil liberties.

But this American, non Islamic Terrorist, suicide airplane bomber named Andrew Stack thought Big Brother “stripped” his carcass. This person who had a tax issue (who apparently wanted to use his home as a church deduction) thinks, or thought, everything he did, he did himself?  He never drove on roads built by others? Attended schools built by others?  Enjoyed the freedom of a country protected by a military, composed of others? He never sold, bought, or used a product that depended upon the creation of wealth from millions before him, and millions other during his own time here?  He lived in a vacuum?   Even the plane he flew, he  built from scratch, from materials he created out of tree branches in his back yard, after figuring out how to build an airplane, and also how to fly, himself, just like the Wright Brothers did, right?

No. Perhaps he purchased the airplane.  And he was able to make the money to buy it because of his own efforts, and the efforts of everyone else, now, and before him.  Not in a vacuum.  And he was able to buy it because of the efforts of others;  to be able to build it, to be able to create and gather the materials and technology to build it.  And for the knowledge of others to build it. Just like almost everything he probably ever did outside of the the one thing that the same far right seems to rail against — relate to nature and the outdoors, smell fresh, unpolluted air, dive into unpolluted waters, gaze across unpolluted vistas, eat unpolluted food.  Pretty much everything else, aside from the other things that matter most besides justice — friendship, family, love — evolved with and from the multiple efforts of others, creating, working, laboring striving, both before him and contemporaneously.

This is not in the least any type  of  screed against individualism or individual liberty.  This is by far one of the more pro individualism, and pro strong individual liberty websites out there.  But it is a brief screed against anarchy.  The idea that we all do things in a vacuum, is a sad fiction. Yet we want Washington to “butt out” when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals from the potential infringements by others (or, sometimes, perhaps for better reasons, but those seem to be more classically Liberal causes today), but help “solve our problems” at the same time.

We all benefit, and, in some ways, occasionally, are harmed, by the efforts and productivity of those who came before us, and who exist with us now.  It can’t be any other way.  If mankind truly were Angels, it might be that way.  But we would have no reason for government. No form, no order, we would all be perfect beings.  (And there would be less purpose in existence — everything would already be perfect, the unattainable, that toward which we strive, measuring our success by some barometer of what we think it might be, and how far off from it we are.)  But it doesn’t work that way. We’re human, not Angels painted on a canvas come to life.

This is also a brief screed against blatant misinformation, propaganda, scapegoating, and hatred.  Because that is blinding us to the threat of actual encroaching government power, while scapegoating only those we disagree politically, or “government” itself — whenever it is a government, it seems, that we did not vote for — for all fears, real and imagined.

As the third comment quoted here, notes:

…It’s interesting that this movement was quiescent during the eight years of the Bush administration, when the federal government clearly violated people’s civil rights…

Think back to 1995, when the deadliest act of terrorism prior to the September 11 attacks was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was a member of a militia, he was partial to libertarianism, he blamed the federal government for just about everything wrong with society…

Or think back even farther. In the 1920’s there was a certain political party that started out in Bavaria. A grass-roots party when it started, it attracted people who hated the federal government, and who were partial to conspiracy theories especially ones about Jews. It had no clear leadership until an enterprising fellow named Adolf Hitler came along. The rest, shall we say, is history.

Think this is a complete fiction? Here’s a random comment from the Seattle Post Intelligencer link above going over Brown’s statements:

Posted by unregistered user at 2/18/2010 5:14 p.m.

Deceptive choices – you have been getting lessons from capital hill.

My selection: He isn’t rationalizing it, he’s trying to understand it.

We all should. Just because you can understand or empathize with someone doesn’t mean you justify their decision as rational. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Brown was trying to undersand his actions.  People are “frustrated with Washington” (what else is new), so he flew an airplane, in a suicide bomb attack, much like Al-Qaeda did, into a building filled with innocent people. Now Brown understands it.  People are frustrated with Washington. But overseas, people of course are not frustrated with America.  Then there’s the far more troubling “emphasize” suggestion:

Empathize with someone? He empathizes with someone who purposefully flew an airplane into a building, murdering and maiming innocent people? What do we think about people overseas that emphasize with al-Qaeda?

America better wake up, or Glenn Beck will be right about one thing, that ironically, our collective (and, most notably, media) acceptance of his ignorance and hate filled rhetoric is contributing to; America will unravel from the inside.  Exactly what al-Qaeda — which, also ironically, is an overseas Middle Eastern version of conservatism taken to extremes — wants.

(Edited 7-29-10)