The Suicide note he left is long. But in it, the Texas resident that flew his plane into IRS offices feels the whole system of the US is based on a lie. He rails against the government, big corporations and the IRS. He says he didn't file taxes one year because he had no income. But the IRS, according to the note, thought otherwise.
In the note, Stack explains his hard work getting through engineering school, his difficult economic circumstances, and his previous business crash.
He comes to the conclusion, after years of bad economic stress and injustice, that violence is the only answer. The system had never done anything for him but abuse him, according to Stack.
The Capitalist Creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Joe Stack,
1956-2010
Years and years of perceived injustice and economic calamities drove Joe Stack over the edge. Or perhaps he was always off balance to begin with. At any rate, he saw a system in which there could be no justice and no response in helping in his plight or others like him.
He came to the conclusion that violence is the only answer.
Many, like myself, have warned that social and economic injustice has its terrible consequences. Often people just live with it and suffer through their emotional and physical breakdowns and die from years of trauma. But sometimes people break down and take their frustrations out in violence on others, like Joe Stack evidently did.
The individual breakdowns that we are seeing in the form of shootings and violence could easily translate into a mass breakdown of society. We have seen periods of this, like in the LA Riots of 1992. People at some point, are pushed over the edge and react in violence.
At present, the technological police state that we see in the US and Great Britain is geared to prevent and handle this 'people's backlash' against what is being perceived as a gross injustice in a system that isn't working or even helping the ordinary citizen. The removal of individual rights and protections by the government isn't to protect the people from al-Qaeda but to protect the Military Industrial Complex from the people.
Former President John F. Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. It might also be said that those that make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable.
Obviously, there will always be people that are mentally unstable that will resort to violent actions. But human beings have to live and function in a society. When that society is viewed as grossly inequitable, unjust, abusive, and predatory then some people will react in violence if they believe that societal change is beyond their ability to manifest any real or meaningful change.
There will be many more Joe Stacks unless modern economic globalization doesn't develop into a more humane and just system. It is also possible that there will someday be thousands or tens of thousands of Joe Stacks that take their frustrations out in violent civil unrest.
Of course, it doesn't have to be this way.
Our system can evolve into a more democratic, responsive, and humane structure.
Let me be very clear. I view the actions of this disturbed man as horrendous. I am in no way advocating any violence, and in fact I abhor it. I have worked all my life for peace and that is why I am writing this piece. I am openly and honestly warning that a failed system that is highly stratified and works only for the interests of the very few of society will likely have to come to terms with the violence of some of its citizens. Or that system may collapse, like in the Soviet Union, from a lack of support from its own people. Unless our Military Industrial Complex reorganizes economic globalization and unregulated, disaster capitalism into a more representative and humane structure it will be entirely possible that a massive breakdown in society will occur.
