‘Middle Class’ Loser Ends His Life the Way He Lived It

AUSTIN, Tx., Feb. 21 — Much has been made in the last few days about the suicide bombing of the Austin federal building by Andrew Joseph “Joe” Stack. What hasn’t been made by the pundits, politicians and even some leftists, however, is much sense.

On one side are most politicians and most of the corporate media. They have denounced Stack’s actions and his long, rambling “manifesto” as “insane” and “disturbed.” They have latched on to his comments about the IRS being “Big Brother” as evidence that he was “crazy” and “paranoid.”

On the other side are some rightwing politicians, Fox News, the Tea Party Nativists, Ron Paul’s libertarian fascists and the assorted reactionary “patriots.” They, too, have latched on to Stack’s ranting about the IRS and the “sleazy government.” But where the rest of the corporatist structure has put a minus, these elements are putting a plus, calling him a “hero” and a “martyr” to “the cause.”

What that “cause” is, they won’t say.

Holding the “left” flank of this reactionary assortment are some self-described socialist and communists, who themselves have latched on to the desperation that oozes through Stack’s “manifesto” and have shamelessly attempted to make it their own.

Some of these elements even try to pass off Stack’s rationale for getting in his private plane and ramming it into a federal building, killing one and injuring dozens of government workers, as something that “identified himself ... with the working population and recognized a common enemy in the capitalist state and the giant corporations.”

Baloney! If Stack’s “manifesto” did anything, it showed that the last people he sought to “identify himself with” were working people. Indeed, Stack’s entire life was led with the goal of lying, cheating and stealing his way to success, and getting as far away from the working class as humanly possible.

Stack’s preferred method was to ... not pay the taxes the IRS said he needed to pay. Stack sought to set himself up as a one-man business, an independent professional contracting with companies and making big money. But because he had to contract through a third-party agency (like Manpower or Kelly Services), he was treated as ... a temporary worker when it came to tax time.

And every time Stack tried to get around the tax code, or sought to hide “unreported income” or declare it to not be “tax-related ... transactions,” he got busted by the IRS.

So, after failing to make it into the big leagues as an independent professional and small business owner (and, in the process, getting nailed by the IRS for tax evasion) not once, not twice, but three times, Stack, fearful that his multiple failures may mean he has to become working class, decided to end his life as he lived it: crashing and burning.

Stack represents a growing layer of “middle class” professionals, managers and small business owners becoming increasingly fearful that the economic and political crises convulsing corporatist capitalism over the last decade are going to ruin them and their chances at becoming wealthier or more successful. And, increasingly, they are willing to turn more and more to the use of force and violence to assert their opinion and power.

When “middle class” elements begin to lose hope in the “change” and reforms promised them by the exploiting and oppressing classes, when they begin to feel that their ruin is all that lies ahead for them, they are prone to fits of fear, anger, rage ... and violence. Stack’s admonition that “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer” echoes a growing view among the “middle class” — as evidenced by Tea Party Nativists showing up at their protests with automatic weapons.

And a central part of that fear is the misplaced belief that they will be forced to leave their “middle class” lives (and dreams) behind, and become part of the working class.

Today, these “independent” sections of the “middle class”  despise the capitalists and those sections of their own class that do the bosses’ bidding (politicians, bureaucrats, officials, etc.). But they both despise and fear the working class — not because the working class is ready to make a revolution in its own name and put them to work, but because the working class has yet to organize and fight for its own class interests, and thus continues to absorb attack after attack silently.

Because of this, “middle class” losers like Stack, who are ready and willing to turn to terrorism and violence to get the “justice” they think they deserve, are increasingly looking to the Nativists and other trends of fascism to “save” them from their ruin.

Such elements need to be neutralized and scattered before they are allowed to coalesce into a political movement that can challenge the existing parties of capitalism. Only the working class can do that job.