A week ago today an act of domestic terrorism occurred in Austin, Texas, when Joseph Stack flew a plane into an office complex housing an IRS field office. That’s right I called it a terrorist act, which is what it is. Maybe those of you on the right feel that no it can’t be terrorism. After all he’s not muslim or doesn’t have a funny sounding name, or that he’s one of us. Call it whatever you want and live in your own reality, but the fact of the matter is that it was a terrorist act.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines terrorism as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”
A dictionary definition not good enough for you? How about the legal interpretation of it under United States law – “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets.”
The argument here from the right would be that it isn’t terrorism, he was just someone disgruntled with the IRS, don’t we all hate the IRS? However the truth of the matter Stack’s actions were well premeditated and against a non-combatant target with the express intention to coerce people and government to change their action through his own political and ideological reasons. Sounds like terrorism to me. We have a winner.
Where’s the premeditation and ideology you ask? Well its quite clear in is manifesto of a suicide note he decided to post on his business website. Looking into the source code it became clear that the note had been originally written two days prior to the incident and revised a whopping 27 times before its final draft status to be posted that day before he decided to stick it to the man. The little piece has the usual ramblings of the right wing loon, government bailouts, tax laws, the Catholic church, big government, 9/11as the reasons things come to this. However also in the ramblings is a call for violent revolt hoping that his actions that day will cause other people to take such action against the government as well.
Sounds like premeditation and clear coercion based on political idealism to me.
It’s nothing new that we don’t like to call a spade a spade in these circumstances when a white man in America does an act of terrorism, heck Newt Gingrich and others sympathised with Timothy McVeigh.
Looks like history repeats itself as just earlier this week Iowa Congressman Steve King decided to come out and score points with the fringe nutjobs by sympathizing with Mr. Stack and his views and his actions and declaring they were justified because it will be a “happy day in America” when the IRS is gone. He also noted that Stack would not have had a target if we just would have abolished the IRS when he stated they should and Stack’s actions were noble. Granted the Congressman later came out with the usual my words have been taken out of context defense, but they were not as there is video evidence of it. Thanks for playing Congressman. The noble action I think should come out of this is for the voters of Iowa to vote his pandering arse out of office in November.
Anyways it is clear to me that someone spouting “violence is the only answer” and calling for others to do the same is just as much of an incitation to terror as Alalhu Akbar. Call it what it was TERRORISM.
And now for the bad nuts of the past month, other than Rep. King in no particular order…
Bad Nut No. 1: Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo
In his opening address to the Tea Party Convention he stated amongst many other idiotic and appalling things, that if we would have still had literacy test like they used to in the south then we would not have to had to deal with a President Obama, because if it was not for non white people he would not have been elected. For one thing Mr. Tancredo I would love to have an actual civics literacy test as a requirement when one registers to vote, because 99.9% of the teabaggers would fail. However the literacy tests you speak of wanting to return had nothing to deal with literacy of government and more of something like how many bubbles are in a bar of soap? And white people didn’t have to take the test.
Bad Nut No. 2: Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills in the 2010 Miss California Pageant
Move over Carrie Prejean. There is a new new flavor of the week in nutcase beauty queens seeking their fifteen minutes now that yours is well up. In a statement on same sex marriage Ashley stated that homosexuality is wrong because God says so and those who do will be put to death and then went on to quote a passage from Leviticus. “If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.” I guess God is all for boob jobs and swimsuits though? Ah the religious right, so picky and choosy with the biblical references that count.
Bad Nut No. 3: Politicians and People who joked, statused, tweeted, etc about the recent snowfalls in DC.
Not really a surprising thing, but it seemed to be the favorite thing of everyone on the right to do lately. Stuff like “Where in the World is Al Gore when global warming is debunked.” For one, a single occurence does not prove or disprove anything on the subject. But “Global Warming” is more the catchphrase put on the more basic terminology of climate change. Which a shift towards amounts of snow not seen before (if it were to be a continuing trend) in an entire season would be. Or maybe something like an unseasonably warm period wrecking havoc for Olympic organizers at the start of this years games. Didn’t see many tweets from the left about this proving global warming.
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