In Defense Of Joe Stack

[Ed Jewett]

I think that the Stack event needs to be considered only after a step-back and some deep breaths to clear the amygdalic autonomic response mechanism. Let's keep some perspective. America at this moment is a political tinderbox teetering at the edge of economic collapse, extended war, massive shutdown of freedoms, its people under a decade at least of media-stress from induced chaos, economic warfare on the middle class, dupliciities and abuses from leadership, and a variety of existent and burgeoning political COINTELPRO. The nation is near a tipping point, a point -- I could call it spontaneous combustion, but there is nothing spontaneous about it -- at which it will burst into any number of outbreaks. We can decry violence as a political counter-reaction all we want; meanwhile, the state is bringing violence, chaos, trauma, destruction, and degradation to the world, including its own people.

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"I tend to view people like Joe Stack as canaries in the coal mine -- people on the margins, mentally and situationally, that fatally explode at the early onset of severe societal and economic pressure. Here's what's driving them:

• Extreme frustration/hopelessness. A great many people have seen little to no success in the US commercial sector despite a considerable effort, for decades. For workers below the median wage this current environment is a depression -- from the duration to the rate of the un/underemployment. Any status gain they might have achieved before this occurred is now gone.
  
• Few mitigating influences. Most of the community and familial structures that historically buffered people in the US against economic failure have been ravaged. Even functional families are now atomized.
  
• Rage and a loss of government legitimacy. Time worn beliefs that have underpinned the American experiment, such as the idea of a level playing field, the correlation between hard work and success, and the underlying basic fairness of our system have been savaged by the government response to the financial crisis. Frankly, the perception of many is that Wall Street's pros are guilty of criminal fraud and even traitorous behavior (they damaged the security and future of the US for personal benefit). Worse, they not only avoided punishment, they were rewarded for it.
  

Will we see more of this violence? Most assuredly. Domestic terrorism, as a result of systemic failure, can be an existential threat in a super-empowered age. "


Posted by John Robb on Friday, 19 February 2010 at 11:48 PM | Permalink

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The Taoists of old used to say "Wu wei." Silent observation, witnessing, contemplation, etc. may be of value. I would suggest that characterizing Joe Stack as wrong in any sense is to take sides in an arena that is forcing everyone to take sides. As Bush said, "you're either with us or against us". Even withdrawal, disconnection or indifference plays to the enhanced power of a system running amok. Debates of this nature, as evidenced in another thread about another event decades ago, serve merely as distraction or division. The empire's OODA loop is running at 83 mph; everyone else's tops out at 52 .. on a good day, freshly-fueled with coffee and some information. They have Echelon and ganged main-frame computers, extremely sophisticated economic warfare software, etc. that has succeeded in raping the nation of a large share of the wealth it has built up beyond decades, and we are shooting the dead canary in the corner like the Empire's schutzshtaffel shot the dead corpses in Nissour Square.