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If you've never heard of Killdozer: https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/06/sometimes-reasonable-men-must-do.html
or, quickly summed up:
Marvin Heemeyer was an American automobile muffler repair shop owner, who was forced out of business, when town officials, neighbors, the local press, and various other citizens imposed strict zoning rules which impeded Heemeyer's ability to operate his muffler repair shop.Over about eighteen months, Heemeyer secretly armored a Komatsu D355A bulldozer
Then he demolished numerous buildings with a utterly "Mad Max meets the Iraq war" with lots of 1" steel plate welded onto an ordinary Komatsu bulldozer in Granby, Colorado, in June 2004.
Heemeyer used the bulldozer to demolish the Granby town hall, the house of a former mayor, and several other buildings.
He killed himself after the bulldozer became stuck in a hardware store he was destroying. No one else was injured or killed. He made a point of not hurting anybody during his bulldozer rampage.
Heemeyer's machine was posthumously labeled by some members of the media and later adopted by some of Heemeyer's supporters as the "Killdozer"
It took them two days to peel it open enough to get his corpse out.
I think it is very important to remember and accurately portray Heemeyer as the malcontent jerk that he actually was.
ReplyDeleteHis zoning and land dispute was repeated attempts to go back on deals he had already made as a spiteful cash grab and the thing that got him shut down was not an access road or right of way issue but a conflict over his refusal to pay to properly hook up to city sewers or install a proper septic system that resulted in him draining his literal 'poop tank' into a local waterway on a regular basis...
Dude was a monumental a-hole not a folk hero. He was a big baby, unhappy with a mess of his own making that he then used as an excuse to act like a dangerous moron.
I wasn't there, and have no skin in the game, BUT, according to the online info, he DID hook up to city sewer, because the property he bought was only draining sewage into a buried cement mixer tank. He didn't make it that way, he hooked up to city sewage, unlike the previous owner, according to online info.
Delete"The property had a rudimentary sewage storage solution in the form of a buried cement mixer left by the previous owners.
City officials told Heemeyer that putting in a septic tank was a less expensive alternative, but he rejected both options and said that the government not paying for the sewage line hookup was "extortion by government fiat".
Despite ... he ... subsequently became part of the sewer district."
I think that refutes what you stated.
As for his personality, it seems he rubbed everyone the wrong way, who blocked everything he was trying to accomplish.
That doesn't make him an asshole, it just proves he was not among similar minded people, and was doomed from day one to get wrongways with everyone.
Did they deserve his retribution?
Well, I wasn't there. From what I have read in the last decade, and seen on documentary type video clips, he avoided hurting anyone, he only took out their businesses temporarily unlike the way they had permanently blocked his business from typical profitability.
Sure, he went overboard, but, in a glorious way, that ended when he suicided.
I think that makes the point that he knew there was one way out, and he drove off that cliff flipping everyone the bird. I hope he got drunk after the killdozer run, and before pulling the trigger.
By the way, he was already dangerous, and those townspeople only activated danger mode, it was already there. He took 18 months of building that dozer into a tank. THAT is a dangerous man.
Stupid morons grab a gun, explosives, or use arson to get revenge.
This dangerous guy planned for over a year, how to go out perfectly, with revenge.
THAT is what makes him a folk hero.
I think that accurately portrays him, unlike the terms you used.
Because, here we are, a dacade later, debating his legacy, that makes him a legend.