Joe Stack - Tax Protestor, Tax Terrorist, Domestic Extremist?

On February 18, 2010, Andrew Joseph "Joe" Stack flew his single engine Cherokee Piper PA-28 into the Internal Revenue (IRS) offices, located at the Echelon 1 Building in Austin, Texas. During his apparent planned suicide, Stack killed at least one worker besides himself and injured thirteen others who were employed there.

Leaving behind what appears to be an online suicide note, Stack had spent weeks writing about his frustration, disappointments, and dissatisfaction with how his business life had progressed from the early 1980's. He wrote of business ventures that failed and the loss of income and personal savings because of current tax laws and based partially on the economy in general. Not just a single loss or failure, but multiple events over the years, even as Joe Stack continued to press forward, all the while attempting to realize the "American Dream".

He complained - as many Americans have complained over the last two years - about how the government was more than willing to bail out "big business" with tax dollars paid by the average ordinary American citizens. He complained that those bailouts did not extend to the ordinary working person as joblessness continues to rise and the creation of new jobs is barely creating a dent in any economic recovery.

Calling this writing a form of therapy, he soon discovered that writing about what he had gone through was not helping, nor was it making any difference. Instead, he decided that brutal and unequivocal violence was the only way he was going to get his point across to citizens and especially to those in power. He wrote, "Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."

His writing has now been called a rant, a diatribe, and a suicide manifesto. Or - was it purely an outpouring of frustration, pain, and hopelessness this man was feeling? Unfortunately, wrong as it may have been, his decision on how to handle the problem with a literal "body count" of multiple innocent victims will cause this final and futile gesture to be viewed as nothing more than a terrorist attack.

Already, all the government agencies involved, from the IRS to the FBI, are taking a myopic view of what happened. Focusing on Stack's frustration with the IRS, no one is really paying attention that this particular battle was only one of many over years that had stretched into decades of loss. Whatever caused his final steps to be set in motion, it was more likely "the straw that finally broke the camel's back".

From his own words, it is clear that Stack felt no one in power was listening to what he had to say and were even less caring about how to address the issues he saw as being broken and not working by their refusal to help.

"Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well."

Evidently, Stack meant this in a literal sense when he sacrificed his life rather than continue to lose his livelihood, his lifetime earnings, his self-esteem, and his self-worth. By writing what others have been saying all along, he made a dramatic, though futile, symbolic gesture by dying on the figurative steps of the IRS.

Unfortunately, nothing will change as the whitewashing will continue and as Joe Stack is labeled a tax protestor, tax terrorist, tax extremist, and a domestic terrorist. Others, like criminal investigative psychologist Maurice Godwin, who had never met or treated Stack, are already calling him a pathological 'self-loathing' narcissist who could not face reality. The closing of the circle has begun.

Joe, you have highlighted many of the broken parts of government and its inherent power over citizens. Others have long agreed with you and have considered these self-same issues and problems to be true. Though others may not (and rightfully will not) agree with your particular solution to make a very public stand, they do understand it. It would seem that you only said what others have been thinking.

Yes, Andrew Joseph Stack III (1956-2010), I can only hope that you also can "sleep well".

Sources:
Who is Joe Stack?, by Andrew Heining, Feb 18 2010
Texas Plane Crash: Joseph Andrew Stack Suicide Manifesto, Feb 18, 2010
Plane Crash Suspect's Online Diatribe, The Smoking Gun, February 18 2010
Profiler: Suicide Pilot Was 'Self-Loathing' Narcissist, by David Lohr, February 18 2010