Image from Jesus' General
I heard about this yesterday afternoon, and have been sitting with it, trying to figure out what I could write.
The blogosphere is abuzz with this story, although it is slowly filtering into the mainstream national press. (the exception? The Washington Post) On Sept 12, the body of a 51-year old Census worker was found lynched, the word FED scrawled across his chest, in the Daniel Boone Forest of Kentucky.
The details are sketchy. The body was found September 12. According to AP reports,
When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drew on years of experience for a warning: "Be careful."
The 51-year-old Sparkman was found this month hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.
"Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as 'the government.' I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there," said Acciardo, who directs an after-school program at an elementary school where Sparkman was a frequent substitute teacher.
The case leaves one with more questions than answers.
WHY is the case being treated as a potential suicide? What, did he hang himself after scrawling FED on his chest?
WHY would a man who had beaten cancer, had a job he loved, and by all reports, had a zest for life, kill himself?
WHY has it taken this long for the story to break? The body was found on September 12. September 12.
Writing that date gives me chills. We know what 9/12 was. It was crazy anti-government day in Washington, DC. It was fomented by Glenn Beck, and as MSNBC has documented, (on the Rachel Maddow Show, 9/22), the crowd was being whipped up in at least one instance, by a FOX Producer, just off-camera, who was giving the crowd signals as to when to really make noise.
The theatre in DC that day was frightening. I still don't know if the people of the Right Wing Hate Machines are really cognizant of what they are doing. Sure, they're whipping up the masses, but we've seen this before. They're no more going to hand this country off to the ignorant sops than any of the demagogues who came before them. They appear to be doing it, not only out of some theatrical hatred for Obama and government, but also in order to increase their own power, give them back their access to their government--a government that long promised the frightened, the ignorant, the insane, and the genuine racist nutjobs--that all "those" people--feminists, gays, people of color, Jews--would all magically disappear under their rocks once they were re-elected.
I'm not identifying "they." To be perfectly honest, I am no longer sure who "they" are. Is it the Republican mainstream, which has either gone off the rails, or has allowed the inmates to take over the asylum? Or are demagogues/talking heads like Rush and Glenn the "they" of which I speak? Or have they all joined together and become inseparable?
Why, you may be asking, would a census worker be the first victim in the war on the government? Perhaps it's because Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann have spread rumours that the 2010 Census is being conducted by ACORN members as a means of rounding us up.
Beck thinks the Census will take away your guns. Bachmann says the US census was used to round up the Japanese to be up in internment camps. That's right. Bachmann is telling folks on the Glenn Beck show that census workers are collecting data that's going to result in the rounding up of Americans to be put in internment camps.
(By the way, as Greg points out, Rachel Maddow jumped on the story last night. You can watch the segment at her web site, where it is featured prominently.)
So, when a census worker is found lynched, with FED scrawled on his body on Sept. 12, is it any wonder thats some of us are wondering if this, finally, is the sign that those whose paranoia, ignorance, and hatred of "the other" are beginning to act out in ways that present dangers to us all?
UPDATE: I've continued to think about this blog post. One of the things that strikes me about the possibility that he may have encountered moonshiners is this: wouldn't it have been more likely that he would have been shot? Is there not a prevalence of guns in this area?
So why lynch him?
Lynching is a symbolic act. I've written before about lynching, and I don't want to reproduce the photographs here. But lynching is intended to terrorize, to silence, to shame, to humiliate, to send a message that "your kind" will not be tolerated here.
It's why I think the fact that a government employee was LYNCHED is so important.
Just more thoughts this morning.
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Comments
This was exactly my first thought when I heard of the story. It's possible the guy came across a still or a marijuana crop. I lot of that goes on in that area, but they usually don't kill people anymore over it.
Thanks for this post.
It COULD be that this was just some bonesuckin' 'billy with a meth lab, which would even explain the "FED". But I doubt it. At the very least this was influenced by the bech/bachman culture of paranoia and inane fear. And as the reporter on MSNBC said last night: why would the feds still be pouring resources into this if it was just an "ordinary" crime?
And the details of this single father, community volunteer, dedicated friend, ordinary guy? Heartbreaking, that he would be deemed a ZOG zombie and killed. Few deaths are as undeserved as his.
Cut off the snakes head and the problem is gone.
I was going to comment on the fact that meth dealers and pot growers are in the area, but they tend to go after park personnel. (Many people may not know that attacks on national park rangers and affiliates are increasing.) This may be an extension of that, but I'm still struck by the significance of the date (after all, it turned out to be no coincidence that McVeigh chose 4/19) and by how hard the FBI and local officials tried to keep this under wraps. If it's coming out now, it may very well be that local officials have not been able to round up the usual suspects and are now looking at the possibility of it being related to the anti-government foment going on in the nut-o-sphere.
1) Some nut jobs actually responded to the right wing hype and went out and "got them a guhmint worker". Or
2) Someone is trying to deflrct suspicion and misdirect blame for an act they commited totally unrelated to the current political atmosphere and context....
Either way, someone was able to keep the lid on for way too long and if you ask me that's where the homicide investigation should begin....
I was very disturbed by this. It has the feel of an "opening salvo" in the new war that seems to be fomenting.
Welcome to America.
What they do is reprehensible and akin to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. I fail to see how they are allowed to broadcast that kind of ridiculous crap.
What are we coming to?
Thanks, Cartouche and Jeannette, for thinking this is too important to ignore.
And to all of you for your discussion of what the consequences should be?
Them same hillbillies are still there, not only there but all over this country and they apparently watch Glenn Beck. This is very scary.
If you were a census worker how would you feel about doing your job now? The breakdown of society imminent? Jeez who knows...
Thanks for this post. I hadn't heard about this at all.
me@glennbeck.com
And, I can't believe she made a big deal about the census asking for a phone number? Has she never heard of a phone book? Does she think the government doesn't have access to a phone book or can't get whatever they want from the phone companies? Jeeze.
Bachman and Beck scare the shit out of me. They are aware that a census is taken every ten years? The last one was conducted under Bush. I just don't get it.
When will these talking heads of hysteria learn how dangerous their bullshit is?
If your hypothesis is right, then Glenn Beck can be seen as a murderer.
The rush to judgement by so many here is equally frightening. Law enforcement has not even released a suspect yet, much less a theory on motive.
The killer(s) may have been incited by Fox News and the like. Or paranoid and anti-authority without the input of cable television. Or running a meth lab. We don't know.
Immediately jumping to conclusions and looking to restrict free speech makes things worse, not better.
I hope law enforcement finds whoever is responsible. It doesn't sound like an area where people are going to volunteer much information to investigators.
This is how I feel - I am lost thinking about his last moments, begging for his life, while he was strung up and hung . Let's not pussyfoot around it - he was murdered in the most heinous way possible. Oh, wait, there are more heinous ways. But hanging is pretty heinous.
Did he beg for his life? Did he ask to be shot instead? Did he know exactly what was happening?
This brutality is beyond my comprehension. Oh wait, it isn't. I can clearly imagine his last moments. None of us should sleep well knowing that this happened and it was covered up.
I lost a huge part of my humanity today. I'm scared and disgusted and all that hatred is creeping in to me.
I'm not identifying "they." To be perfectly honest, I am no longer sure who "they" are. Is it the Republican mainstream, which has either gone off the rails, or has allowed the inmates to take over the asylum? Or are demagogues/talking heads like Rush and Glenn the "they" of which I speak? Or have they all joined together and become inseparable?"
The hate machine murdered Mr. Sparkman as surely as those rednecks did. Lies and hate and fear have been whipped up ON PURPOSE by powerful interests in this country, and we all knew this kind of thing was coming. Hopefully it's an isolated incident and not the beginning of a pattern; I know the kind of people who lynched that man, and they're a lot scarier than most Americans can imagine.
For us all.
I never knew Mr. Sparkman, but my heart goes out to his family.
I worry about the effect this will have on other field representatives.
- Mark
My first thought about the apparent murder of Sparkman is that it would not likely be an anti-government political murder. Mr. Sparkman could have been killed for getting too close to a marijuana patch (Kentucky is a huge marijuana state), too close to a meth lab, or even too close to somebody's house. I know people who have gotten death threats for trying to build houses out in isolated areas. Other people in those areas were determined not to have "neighbors." Another possibility is that people could have killed Sparkman more for the kicks of it than anything else. I can see where Beck/Bachmann anti-government sentiment might be the motivating factor. But there are a lot of reasons to be anti-government in Eastern Kentucky.
NOW, if he had been a young, blonde, attractive female college student who had disappeared from a cruise ship, this story would be usurping anything else going on.
I'm becoming oh so cynical.
The MSM is starting to say that this was either a suicide or an accident. Then how did the word "FED" get sprawled across a man who either hung himself or accidentally caught his neck in a rope?
I think Nancy Pelosi is right to be concerned about violence.
I'm sure those folks who marched on Washington 9/12 thought they were recreating the marches of the 1960/70s. However, those protestors didn't show at town hall meetings with loaded guns. The only ones who did that were the Black Panthers and they would never have been allowed to stand outside a venue where the President was to speak "armed and dangerous."
Those who are being manipulated by fear are the same kinds of people who used to form lynch mobs and were in favor of internment camps. Some of them are also the kinds of people who killed Matthew Shepard and dragged James Byrd behind a truck.
These people will never convince me they're the victims of anything but their own fear and are the very ones who would be most likely to do the things they claim to be so afraid the government will do.