Vernon Hunter, RIP

OK, before I turn to the important task of telling you what's wrong with the two photographs I posted below, here's some words about Vernon Hunter, who was killed when Joseph Andrew Stack completed his suicide mission.

Community mourns loss of victim in plane crash
By Bobby Longoria

Staff, Daily Texan Online (University of Texas at Austin daily newspaper)
Published: Monday, February 22, 2010

It was dark inside the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Members of the congregation locked hands and bowed their heads to pray for their friend, Vernon Hunter, who died Thursday when preliminary suspect Joseph Andrew Stack flew his plane into the federal building where Hunter worked.
Hunter was 68 years old, but friends and family say his vitality and happiness suggested a much younger man. Hunter, an Internal Revenue Services employee for more than 20 years, and his wife Valerie worked at the building located near the intersection of Research and MoPac boulevards. During Sunday’s services, members of Hunter’s East Austin church remembered him as a loving husband, father of three, stepfather of three and grandfather of seven.
“He was a gracious man, just an outstanding soul,” said Gaylon Clark, lead pastor of the church.
Hunter volunteered at the church’s food and clothing pantry and assisted church members with preparing their income taxes. He served two tours in Vietnam and was described as the life of his community.
[break]
Hunter’s family and members of the church said they harbor no ill will toward Stack or his family[....] church deacon Larry McDonald said. “We know Vernon would want us to move on and go on with our lives and be kind to people and giving to people. That’s the way he was.”
[break]
Funeral services for Hunter will be held Friday at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, and he will be buried with full military honors at the National Cemetery at Fort Hood. As the service ended, church members walked out into the sun bearing Hunter’s philosophy of kindness and love — for which he will always be remembered.
[full article]

It's curious, isn't it? A news search on Vernon Hunter turns up thousands of articles that are mainly about Stack. The article excerpted is the closest I could find to an obituary today. (I set up a news alert - I'll mention it if any/many others turn up.)
It makes me think of Crispus Attucks, generally considered the first victim of the British during the American Revolution, and, as Stevie Wonder reminds us, a black man, as was Mr. Hunter. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. made the bitter joke that students at a high school named after Attucks wore jackets that read "Innocent Bystander High." Will there be a high school named after Vernon Hunter? And what bitter joke might that inspire?
What will the monuments be for Joseph Stack?

Stack's tax beef "was legit"

That crazy libertarian communist teabagging anarchist site, Salon, opines "Stack's beef was legit."

more Stack

Glenn Greenwald at Salon also argues that Joseph Andrew Stack can't be slotted into left or right, and that the note/manifesto he left behind is in no way crazy.

Greenwald goes on to make very strongly the point that Stack was a terrorist, in any objective, unpoliticized sense of the word. Government and mainstream media are currently invested in not recognizing Stack's as a terrorist act, because "terrorist acts" can only be performed by a THEM, not an US.

If and when (I suspect it's when) gov and media start using the phrases "American terrorists" or "domestic terrorists," or some euphemism for such, that's the tipping point. That's when the arsenal of unconstitutional, unAmerican, extra-legal acts promoted by Bush/Cheney and excused or embraced by the Obama/Democratic administration will come to bear on the formerly US.

Don't dismiss Stack as insane, either, unless you're willing to posit that if he had survived his attack he would be unprosecuted or found not guilty by reason of insanity.

To see what your fellow citizens are saying about Stack, I recommend avoiding the politically identified websites, right or left, and reading the comments posted at ostensibly neutral sites, like CNN.com or USA Today. Lots of people identifying with Stark or defending the points made in his suicide manifesto.

Joseph Andrew Stack, Not Crazy

I've boiled down the suicide note left online by Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin today. How many of the first six paragraphs seem reasonable? How much of the eighth paragraph forward seems crazy?

1. Why did I do this? 


2. I was brought up to think that the government is on our side.


3. The actions of politicians show that they do not care for the public good.
4. The rich gamble and steal and the government bails them out. Drug and insurance companies prey on vulnerable citizens, but the politicians only serve wealthy corporations. 


5. I’m fed up. Justice? You’ve got to be kidding!
6. The tax system is too complicated for even experts to understand, but if an individual makes a mistake the system is merciless.
7. How did I get here?
8. I tried to be a good citizen. The government didn’t care. I met other honest people who tried to live by the rules and were ripped off by corporations, unions, cheating financiers. A powerful, corrupt religion got preferred treatment.
Finally, after a lot of time and expense, I thought everything was OK, but the government betrayed me. No matter what happened, they were determined to bleed me dry.
I tried even harder. I couldn’t get a break anywhere. It was like the whole world turned against me. I might have made some mistakes, but my family and I suffered while the fat cats thrived. When the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes. Even the president is just a puppet of the powerful.
....[V]iolence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing at, and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
I have just had enough.

Methodology: The first seven paras correspond to the first seven paras in the suicide note. The long section eight severely abbreviates Stack's grievances with the IRS and streamlines the rest of his general and personal complaints. The italic type is taken straight from the note (with one comma moved for sense).

I don't know if the wiring in his brain was the real villain (altho burning down the house that sheltered his wife and daughter indicates less than perfect equanimity). I don't know how if he was a Teabagger or a Trotskyist.

It doesn't matter.

Any given American plucked off the web or out of a crowd, any crowd, is likely to be in agreement with the assertions in the first seven paras or the sentiments in the eighth. I am. The most common exception would be about the uses of violence... and I think that Stack's conclusion is going to become more common, not less.

More angry people feeling that they have no recourse and nothing left to lose? Joseph Andrew Stack, American.