The one where everyone loses their minds

Isn't it interesting how seemingly the most non-political things can be used to make outrageously ridiculous accusations against your political opposite? Isn't that interesting? I find it interesting that something can happen, that, you would think, would bring everyone together into one cohesive and unanimous reaction.

And yet that's never what happens. And it didn't happen when Joe Stack, a man who was angry at the government, wrote a suicide letter, set his house on fire, and then flew his small private plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas.

At first glance, to the uninitiated on how things in America works, you would look at that and say "wow, that's a horrible thing to happen. We should mourn anyone who lost their lives, and see if we can see WHY this happened, and how we can prevent it in the future".

Instead, we have people on both sides of the political aisle, lobbing baseless accusations of "He was OBVIOUSLY one of YOU" and in the process, we all become a little less of a United Country.

There are some on the left who are accusing Stack of being a textbook case of being a member of the Tea Party movement, pointing to his hatred of the government, and how he was railing against taxes in his suicide letter, although many have since backtracked and "clarified" what they meant.

There are others on the right, such as Rush Limbaugh who are accusing Stack of sounding like a Democrat or Liberal, since he didn't like banks, insurance companies, or President Bush, and Limbaugh added that his writings were "almost word for word" like Pelosi, Reid and Obama.

Then you also have people on Fox News and other outlets such as NBC and even including the White House, saying that this guy was not a terrorist. Fortunately several people have pointed out that if Stack had happened to be Muslim, is there any doubt that Fox News would be screaming about this guy being a terrorist?

I mean, there were many on the right upset that we weren't labeling the Fort Hood shooter a terrorist, and yet this guy, who was vehemently anti-Government, flies a plane into a federal government building, and he's not a domestic terrorist?

I don't know man. I think that everyone is losing their minds in the process of trying to label blame and association on those they disagree with.

Raw Story, today, has had various headlines referring to newly minted Senator Scott Brown from Massachussetts who went on Fox News and, in perhaps a very poor choice of phrasing, said the following in regards to Stack:

"Well it's certainly tragic and I feel for the families obviously being affected by it. And I don't know if it's related, but I can just sense not only in my election, but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated. They want transparency, they want their elected officials to be accountable and open and talk about the things that are affecting their daily lives. So I'm not sure that there's a connection, I certainly hope not. But we need to do things better.

Well, yeah, of course it's extreme. You don't know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues, certainly. No one likes paying taxes, obviously. But the way we're trying to deal with things and have been in the past, at least until I got here is, there's such a logjam in Washington. And people want us to do better. They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way.

And I think we, I'm hopeful that we can do that, with a lot of the things that are coming forward. At least what I'm hearing through, and speaking with my colleagues this seems to be a diff feel there's kind of a message that was sent with my election, the fact that I was elected by a substantial margin taking the former Ted Kennedy's seat. They want difference up here and I'm hopeful that's going to happen.

And here is Raw Story's headline: (excuse the clumsy highlighting job I did there. lol)



Now, that's obviously not the way to perhaps go on TV and describe this, however what he said, while not the most tactful, isn't as crazy as many want to make this out to be. He said that people are frustrated and they are frustrated due to the fact that there seems to be nothing getting done in Washington. As much as you may want to blame Republicans for this, it's not all their fault.

Yes, they are obstructing damn near any and everything they can in an effort to derail Obama's presidency. The GOP has said as much, explicitly. However, a lot of the fault has to fall at the Democratic Party's feet as well, because they've got a majority of members. They had 60 votes and still couldn't get shit done, so, say what you will about Blue Dogs screwing things up, and Repub's in Dem's clothing and all, but at the end of the day, you have to accept responsibility.

And I think that's sort of what Brown meant, when he seemingly went off on a tangent about people being frustrated by Washington. Stack was OBVIOUSLY frustrated with the way things were going in Washington, he had aspects of his anger that was directed at the Liberals and directed at the Republicans.

So while I'm the LAST person to typically stand up for a guy like Brown, who I've ripped before, I think that for anyone to rip on Brown and say that he was sympathetic to the idea of someone flying a plane into a government building (or any building for that matter) is just reprehensible and deplorable. He was seemingly sympathetic to the things that get those of us into the mindset where they think this is a logical thing to do. There are many people out there who are not all there, in the mental category, and when they get pushed into a corner, this is their reaction. This is what they think is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

And these types of sleazy faux journalism is exactly what's wrong with our way of doing things, and it does us no good in the search for a common ground with those we disagree with.

Posting articles with misleading or inflammatory headlines, adding the most embarrassing and ridiculous looking images you can find of a person when writing an article criticizing them (as people often do to Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and others on the right, and those on the right do the exact same thing to those on the left) should be beneath us.

For the record, this guy, until proven otherwise, is not a member of the Tea Party, nor is he a card carrying liberal either. And to suggest otherwise is shoddy "journalism" and just flat out abhorrent.

I'll leave you with this video by The Young Turks. This video I watched yesterday and it was very good, and the host, Cenk, made a point to say that this guy was neither Tea Party member nor Liberal by all accounts. And then he brings up the great point that I referred to earlier, in which this is for some reason not considered a domestic terrorist attack. As he asks, if this guy's name was not Joe Stack, but a Muslim name, would those on the right still insist this wasn't a terrorist attack?

Check out the video, and feel free to leave comments below on this post. Just please be polite and civil, or the comments will be moderated.

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