The Case for Doing Less
A guy stole a plane. A woman can’t stop running. Maybe we should ask why?
There is no question that what Richard Russell did when he stole a plane from SeaTac International Airport last weekend was, in terms of an event, sensational.
It is not every day that you look up from a picnic and see an airplane barrel-rolling through the sky, “chased by fighter jets,” as one Instagram user put it.
Even more fascinating is the fact that we have a short audio clip of Russell, a Horizon Air employee, from air traffic control, describing himself and his life just before it ends. “Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.”
The world quickly jumped to judgments: Most headlines describe Russell as “suicidal.” Yet the audio does not reveal a man motivated by the desire to commit suicide. In fact, when attempting to explain himself, he offers that folks could “chalk it up” to minimum wage.
The story could easily end there. We could argue that this event was an outlier. Perhaps due to Russell’s race, he has not been cast as a terrorist; Fox News describes him as “warm, gentle.” We could accept this explanation — just a guy with a few screws loose, as he suggests in the audio — and move on.
