I've got a million other things to do today, but I went to bed angry and I woke up mad about the lack of an outpouring of heartfelt compassion for dead IRS employee Vernon Hunter. Actually, "angry" isn't the right word. I'm upset. I'm incensed. I am in a foul mood. To put a finer point on it, I am in a "put a match to gasoline soaked cracker-assed crackers who dare to utter one word of praise for Joe Stack" kind of mood today about the lack of press coverage of Vernon Hunter, or any real information on his life, or any concerted effort by any media to talk to his family members.
It wasn't until I went to my hometown this weekend in South Carolina that I realized Mr. Hunter was from the very same place. I have been stewing ever since. I wrote an article about it at Big Think.com, where I do my thing on my own media platform of sorts on my blog "Resurgence". It wasn't enough. It wasn't until I read jimstaro's diary "Son Speaks Out" this morning that my fingers started getting itchy and my head started to throb. It wasn't until I thought about all the bullshit we waste time cauterwauling over that I knew what I had to do.
I'm from a small college town - Orangeburg, South Carolina - which has been quietly grooming black men like Vernon Hunter by the thousands since Reconstruction. If the ROTC program at South Carolina State University hasn't produced the most black military officers in the US, it is in the top 3. Ordinarily, I'd look this kind of shit up and provide you with a handy link but I'm not in the mood today.
Vernon didn't attend South Carolina State, but I am damn sure it affected him because it affected me every time I passed its gates. My father, who is a couple of years older than the late Mr. Hunter, didn't know him, but he knew the man the local paper quoted who had grown up with Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter went to Vietnam and came back alive and sane, which I have been told is a major accomplishment, not once but TWICE. Two tours of duty in a fucking war zone, and the man ends up getting killed by his fellow countryman, a cowardly assed cracker who didn't want to pay his fucking taxes.
Maybe Mr. Hunter needed to have sandy blond hair and mournful blue eyes so I could see his image plastered all over my TV. Maybe Mr. Hunter's son Ken needed to be standing by a fucking pickup truck with a pair of shit kickers on in order to merit more than the barest of attention from the shills who pose as our Fourth Estate.
So what the fuck are we doing about it? Why the fuck are the radio towers that spew the "Joe Stack is a patriot" garbage into the air for its cracker assed cracker talk radio audience still standing? Why isn't Joe Stack's face photoshopped under a turban with the caption "J. Stack Bin Laden"?
And why isn't Ken Hunter's face on every TV screen in America right now? Ken is a bigger man than me, because if you sat your overprivileged ass down in your upper middle class home and premeditated the murder of my father, I couldn't forgive you.
Not never.
Not for one god damned second.
Where is the outrage? Where is the pushback? Where are the wholesale, 24 hour a day condemnations of ANYONE, from Fuckhead #1 Rush Limbaugh to the rest of the Cracker Convention acolytes and the ridiculously transparent, whiter than white Tea Party that is three sheets away from being the Klu Klux Klan?
These people who champion a man for killing employees of the government, employees who make no policy decisions, command no armies, but carry out the will of our Congress are now the enemy? Were these people asleep in civics class? Or have they decided it is open season on government employees, many of who are black, the same way their forebears decided it was open season on black people whenever we seemed to be getting a little bit too "uppity"?
Why aren't the white people with good sense - if you read this far that means YOU - as fed up with these fools as I am?
There is no communist or socialist ideology that is as poisonous as the one that drives these rabid people like Joseph Stack to kill people because he has run into a few of life's challenges. Because his fantasy lifestyle has run amok. Because that bullshit of superiority he has built his whole fucking life on was shown to be nothing more than air.
So why aren't my white friends with good sense rooting these people out instead of worrying about why the president doesn't call up to let them know their wish list is being processed at the new "Where Dreams Come To Life" building in D.C.
You have done it before. You can do it again.
Call, write, and email these lazy, wouldn't know the right end of a story if it stared them in the face media companies, and tell them YOU ARE OUTRAGED that they have more footage of the killer on TV than they do of his innocent victims...
...and then beg, badger, cajole, or irritate the shit out of the next three people of any color who have good sense to do the same.
Don't do it for me.
Don't do it because Joseph Stack wasn't worth pissing on.
Do it because this man from my hometown deserves better than this.
Do it because Vernon Hunter's family deserves to have their father's face on TV for the next two weeks so America can see what A REAL PATRIOT, THE KIND WHO DUCKED ENEMY BULLETS, looks like.
Do it because you champion humanity, not insanity.
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