ON THE RECENT CRASH IN AUSTIN

By: Ramus Dahl

February 20, 2010

Austin, Texas – Yes, a man crashed an airplane into an office building in northwest Austin on the morning of February 18^th – a Thursday morning — a beautiful, clear, sunny Thursday morning.

Friday was a dark day — a dark, rainy, dismal day in Austin, Texas.

I sat in on the editorial board meeting at The Austin American Statesman.  Headlines of The Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times screamed the terrible news.  Daunting words – terrorism, murder, insanity, revenge – bled off the page and stained the nation’s minds.  The masses sit back with morbid combinations of disgust and amusement on their faces as they sip their coffee and peruse the 24-hour news cycle.

“Why?” America asks as if they didn’t, deep down inside, have inkling as to why.

The tragedy with the human condition may lie in our fascination with disaster.  The brake lights and turned necks at the scene of a car accident on the highway.  Disaster, ironically, is the best drug we’ve got to remind us all of our fleeting mortality, our helplessness.  For some, it inspires and nurtures the seeds of compassion and selflessness.  For others, it ignites the fires of hedonistic nihilism and violence.  And for the rest, they immune themselves with superficial, asinine concerns via their appearance, their apparel, prime-time television, or Bravo.

The recent event in Austin, however, has given the country a very hard glimpse into the dangers of our thoughts and the efficiency of our propaganda machine.  Joe Stack’s suicide note could very easily resonate in the minds of a large constituency of the American public.  Granted, the man openly confessed to the fragility of his mental condition, but this disclaimer does not seem to sufficiently negate or jeopardize the tone of his manifesto.

It’s easy for me (and, hopefully, most of us) to readily dismiss Mr. Stack as a lunatic, but I fear that the dismissal may not be so easy for others in this country who find themselves disgruntled and abandoned by their government or its policies.  Our filters have been plugged up with so much access and so little “information” that the virtue of discernment and discretion has been lost forever under the climbing heap of news blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook headings, News networks and their tickers, and ratings-lust of talk-radio.

It’s convenient and easy to negate what we don’t agree with as “false” information, but only the few (and I’m not quite certain who that few is) are honest and persistent about what they consider to be “true” information.

My fear (with regards to the plane that crashed in my beloved city) is that Stack may be remembered (by some) as a sort of “folk” hero.  The unnecessary parallels to 9/11 have been made from CNN to the small-town prints, but the contrast between the two events must be taken into account.  The glaring disparity between the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center and the madman who crashed into the Echelon I is that we couldn’t (or didn’t want to) understand (at the time) why the terrorists held such a militant grudge against the United States.  Stacks, on the other hand, no matter how fanatical, has expressed sentiments that you could easily hear being mulled over in diners, truck stops, cocktail parties, luncheons, city council meetings, pulpits, or dinner parties around the nation.

Granted, not everyone is so gagged and strangled by their political frustration to the point of homicidal insanity, but I think it’s crucial right now for all of us to take a minute to stop, reflect, and evaluate the depth and degree of our convictions — political or otherwise — and consider the extent to which these viewpoints handicap our relationships, divide us as human beings, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers.

We have to.

Otherwise, given the incredibly small death toll (two, including the pilot himself) and despite the extent of damage, we risk allowing space in the popular political conscience for this man and his ideas to fester.  I’ve had countless conversations, dire discussions, that hint at the grave possibility that this man’s actions may be considered by some as “brave” and even (dare I say it) venerated.

No one wants to say it.  I hate to say it.  I hate to even be writing this right now.  But it has to be written and it has to be said. We all want to believe we’re above this (and I’m sure most of us probably are, thankfully), but we can only honestly account for ourselves.  The people who knew Joseph Stack seem (by and large) oblivious to the extent of his mad frustration, which makes me repeat the age-old adage, “You think you know someone…”

Herein lies the responsibility.  We must draw a clear line at some point between what is wrong and what is right — a line that we, as a country, have been all too quick to erase or ignore entirely from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor.  We must also do a little more to actually get to know each other and learn, for ourselves, exactly how to do that without pushing each other further apart.  This is a profound and difficult task to be responsible for, but it’s crucial to the survival of our species.

I have a three-year-old son.  Recently I had to sit him down and talk to him about his anger and the dangers of acting on its behalf.  Anger is a perfectly valid human emotion — an essential part of our existence in many ways, and a catalyst for good when one is angered at perceived injustice.

“We don’t hit when we’re angry,” I tell my son as we sit together on the kitchen floor.

He nods his head.

“Any coward can hit someone when they’re angry.”

He looks up at me.

“But son, only a real man can express his anger with a open heart and an open mind.  You want to be a real man, don’t you?  A good man, right?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

And a small drop of rain falls from the heavens to nurture the seed of the tree that will one day bear the fruit that feeds the hungry.

Joseph Stack was and will (should) be remembered as one thing and one thing only – a coward.  Nothing more.

We all have frustrations from our jobs, our marriages, our relationships, our friends, the government, our bosses, the copy machine, to the toilet overflowing…but we live, regardless.  We live regardless!!

Heroes and folk heroes are principled people — virtuous icons of our most firmly held beliefs.  Heroes are not cowards and cowards are not heroes.

Draw a clear line.

Above all else, love.  Love, because our lives depend on it.

Author’s Note: I would also like to point out and acknowledge the deft efficiency of the Austin Police Department, Austin Fire Department, EMS services, and the unsung heroes of the Austin general public who saved a fortunately unknown amount of lives that might have otherwise been lost Thursday morning.

These are heroes.

Header image by Jasleen Kaur