THE LESS JUSTIFIED:

‘Attention Must Be Paid…’: Understanding Joe Stack, anger, and ideology (Lee Harris, February 19, 2010, The American)

The blind spot of the political class is that they systematically tend to overrate the importance of their own stock in trade—namely, ideas and ideologies. In their model of human behavior, people first examine various political theories and positions, and, after careful reflection and suitable debate, they adopt whatever political position most agrees with all the facts. Only after this process of rational analysis has been completed do human beings decide to become political actors, supporting whatever policies seem the most reasonable under the circumstances. Now while this may or may not accurately describe how the political class makes up its mind about what political position to adopt, it is an appallingly bad account of how most people decide on political questions. It is also an extremely dangerous account, because it overlooks the immense influence of irrational factors in the shaping of our political ideas, both at the level of the individual and at the level of society—factors like anger, fear, frustration, resentment, and the sense of being wronged.

No ideology motivated Joe Stack to kill himself by flying his plane into the side of a building. He was motivated by rage and his sense of utter helplessness. One of the features of his suicide note that has received scant attention are those passages in which he explains he once sincerely believed in the American dream, and thought that he could achieve it for himself. His intense bitterness was that which comes from a keen sense of betrayal. He believed that the nation that he once trusted to be on his side, and to stand for justice for all, had cruelly deceived him and all the other little guys, like himself, who have been marginalized and ignored, who have no say in how they are governed. Worse, the government he grew up trusting had become a mere tool of corporate greed, forcing ordinary hard-working Americans to bail out the filthy rich or conspiring to force them to cough up money to fill the coffers of insurance companies, under the specious guise of healthcare reform. President Obama is as bad as President Bush. Liberal Democrats in power are as corrupt and uncaring as conservative Republicans. The political system is rigged. It cannot be amended or ameliorated through normal channels. “Violence ... is the only answer.”

This is no ideology—it is a cry of visceral anguish.

Which is exactly the sorts of people who seek ideologies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 23, 2010 2:40 PM