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Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
71–80 of 218 posts
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you be so quick to assume the terrorism label if he hadn't used an airplane to commit his crime? I do think that's going to color a lot of people's perception of this wording issue. I suspect they don't believe the term applies because he didn't claim to be acting on the part of an organized group or even a very specific ideology. His note made it pretty clear he thought of himself as some kind of lone warrior…
Read the final two paragraphs of his screed (posted in this thread). He says that he wants his act of violence to initiate change - I assume in the IRS specifically, but also in American politics in general. That's the definition of terrorism. Terrorism does not have to be initiated on behalf of a group or a specific ideology. The definition is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for politi…
In my mind the difference here is that he was alone, committed his crime in a singular act, and now he's effectively out of commission. There's no terrorist at large to further perpetuate the terror. There's no looming sense of threat from this guy personally, and since he wasn't part of an organization, there's no nebulous "other" threat from that, either.
Had he enacted a long term plan where he was shooting at people randomly for days and making demands or something like that, then that's different in my eyes. At that point it becomes about using the fear of further violence as a tool and that's when you cross into terrorist land.
But who knows. I think DHS decided it'd be called a criminal act for now - so I guess that's what it gets to be called. Perhaps that label was politically motivated, but I can certainly understand the decision. Everything need not be a conspiracy and every large scale crime need not be a terrorist attack.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#73Problems that this creates:
1) Because of how governments deal in collective punishment, private aviation is likely to suffer further regulatory decimation even though events of this type are extremely rare, statistically speaking.
2) His rambling, narcissistic screed will be broadcast widely, and his immature and senseless actions used to paint those with legitimate and sensible criticisms of our tax system or systems of governance.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You, sir, have obviously failed to memo that in this post-9/11-world, only brown people are terrorists. Here's a key, in case it gets confusing again: - Guy in an airport with a Koran and an accent: terrorist. - White software developer who flies a plane into buildings for ideological reasons: not terrorist.
While I agree with your point, I'd like to point out that McVeigh was white: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh
"post-9/11"
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#75The Department of Homeland Security released a statement calling this a criminal act, not terrorism. I am confused. A few years ago everything was considered terrorism and now nothing is. This guy wasn't targeting individual people in the IRS, he was targeting the whole establishment. This is akin to the Oklahoma City bombing. If that was a terrorist incident and 9/11 was a terrorist incident, this is too. He even ha…
The FBI's definition of terrorism: The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. He was angry and violent, but he didn't have any objective he was trying to achieve through the act. The objective in terrorism isn't the violence, it's a means to an intended end (s…
And nor was he part of a group or even a sympathizer of a group looking to revolutionize or effect change. McVeigh was.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#76The site was pulled down, here's the copy of the rant: If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Need…
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Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It made perfect sense to you? Did we read a different note or something? The one I read seemed to ramble and drift and eventually lose the thread of logic by the end. I saw no great injustice perpetrated that necessitated the need to fly a plane into a building.
It did ramble and drift a bit but it all added to his story.. just very slowly. I don't think he should have flown a plane into the building. However I believe he did it because he tried the proper way spending over $5k of his own money and months of his time to change it. No one listened/cared (which is the main problem) about his problem. So when push came to shove and the government and businesses took everything…
But what, really, was his problem that no one was listening to? I couldn't really figure that part out. It seemed to me that he was just pissed off the government wanted to collect taxes and annoyed that some people were a lot richer than he was.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately - and not surprisingly - it's barely readable anyways. I read most of it and I still don't have a clear picture of what made this guy so mad. [Edit: While I don't agree with lliiffee, I think it's a valid point of view and I wouldn't vote it down. I wavered between wanting to understand this person's state of mind, and not wanting to "reward" him with attention. But even if he were alive I don't think he'…
It sounded to me like he made a lot of really stupid money choices in his life and blamed all his losses on the IRS, the government, and anyone else of "power" that happened to be nearby at the time rather than taking personal responsibility and manning up.
I think his distaste was that when he made some mistakes, he got caught and shafted by arcane laws, yet when some richer folks deliberately committed fraud, the government barely did anything about it or rejigged the laws for them.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It made perfect sense to you? Did we read a different note or something? The one I read seemed to ramble and drift and eventually lose the thread of logic by the end. I saw no great injustice perpetrated that necessitated the need to fly a plane into a building.
It did ramble and drift a bit but it all added to his story.. just very slowly. I don't think he should have flown a plane into the building. However I believe he did it because he tried the proper way spending over $5k of his own money and months of his time to change it. No one listened/cared (which is the main problem) about his problem. So when push came to shove and the government and businesses took everything…
He spent $5000 lobbying dozens of government officials, but what was he trying to change? Does it really all come down to the rule determining whether programming consultants are treated as employees for tax purposes? Was he even able to explain his case to them coherently, without using phrases like "declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave"? And then he makes ludicrous choices like taking an IRA distribution (which in most cases results in taxable income and/or early distribution penalties) without reporting it or paying taxes on it:
"I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed..."
Why is he just assuming that there's no need to file, rather than looking it up himself or asking someone for advice? Oh yeah:
"After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again."
...because he once had a bad experience with accounting (which as far as I can tell he never actually describes), he decided that all accountants are frauds and there is no way to find an honest person to help him. It sounds like he was an antisocial crank long before flew a plane into a building.
Re: Anti-IRS Rant of Software Engineer who Today Flew Plane into IRS Building
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just a bug in our design as humans, IMO, but it's that same bug which allows us to occasionally do monumentally amazing things. It just depends how you spin your perceptions to yourself, I suppose, and if you can accept that greatness is, more or less, a large scale way of turning a frown upside down. :)
Oh, I'm a nut too, and humanity would be much worse off without its nuts, but what concerns me is that particular, Timecube-esque variety of nut -- not particularly creative or ambitious, but turgid and cramped. Why do people end up like that...?
I can't really say why, but I think the common thread they share is they get lost following a path of information that becomes self-referential - and rather than seeing that as a flaw, they apply a kind of naive mathematical reasoning and assume that because they ended up back where they started it proves the whole system is consistent - and that's therefore a good and universal truth.
If you've ever listened to any significant amount of Coast to Coast AM, you've probably heard any number of conspiracy theorists and paranormalists justify and build their books and beliefs upon the books, beliefs, or incidents of others. My untested hypothesis is that if you unraveled all those interdependencies and book citations, references, etc. you'd end up with an entirely self-contained cloud of "evidence" that is disconnected from objective reality.