on self-made martyrs….

So the guy who flew his plane into a building here in Austin had some poignant and important things to say.  Unfortunately, he hurt people and killed himself in order to draw attention to those things.

A dear friend of mine recently raised an important question:  Does all the fuss over labeling people who are driven to extreme acts completely miss the point?   Whether a person is “crazy” or “terrorist”,  should more attention be drawn to the state of affairs that made them that way and not the act of violence itself?

Maybe.   But then it has to be okay for anyone to use violence as a way to be heard.  Is that acceptable?

Dig:  A man is justifiably angry about something that happened at work.  He has been disrespected, ripped off, and overworked for entirely too long.  He feels trapped and worn out…but mostly he feels angry.  When he gets home he needs some quiet time to clear his mind and calm his spirits, but his wife starts bugging him. He asks her to be quiet so he can talk about how angry he is…she won’t.  He begs her.  She doesn’t seem to hear him.  He really really needs her to get what he is trying to say, but he doesn’t feel like he will ever get through.   He hits her.   She is quiet now.   In the future,  will she reflect upon the series of unfortunate events that led this poor desperate man to that state?  Should she have to?  Will she and all her friends be in awe of his bravery for doing something most people never would?  Or did the act of violence itself become something that will define him?

Using brute force to make your point, whether with your fists or an airplane,  defeats the point itself.  Whether you are blowing up a school bus in Pakistan or flying a plane into an office building, of course there was something legitimately infuriating which came before the mental break that made you so sick you wanted to literally explode.   But still you are sick.  And glorifying your words after your “martyrdom” becomes glorifying the words of a madman.  You may have been a madman who was correct about some things,  but then you chose to hurt or even kill some people in a really vicious way and then off yourself too to avoid facing the ugliness you left behind…so,  fuck you and the plane you flew in on.  Your cause died with you, and I’m sure the cause doesn’t appreciate it much either.

Then again, if the point is that these folks are sick,  of course they shouldn’t be revered or reviled.  And yes, attention should be brought to whatever societal virus is affecting folks in such an way.  But isn’t that true to some extent of all criminals?  It is always very sad what leads anyone to need to violently break laws like “Don’t Kill”.  But once they do…is it unfair to “label” them as criminals?

The IRS is a criminal organization: Yes.  The government is run by crooks and thieves:  True.  Flying a plane into a building to make your point against what-the-fuck-ever makes you a criminally insane terrorist:  Also true. I lived in NYC and I know exactly how it makes people feel when some asshole flies a plane into shit to make their point.  Fuck those assholes.   ALL of them.

And that is my two cents.