MiSTing: Unabomber Manifesto Part 1 1/3
Chris Mayfield
Unabomber's manifesto. Due to the size of it, I'm doing it in four
parts, since that is what the web site has it conveniently broken up
into. Here is the first quarter of it.
As always, comments are welcome. Just send them to camf...@iastate.edu.
However, I would like to encourage any response on this MiSTing, since,
during the writing of it, I felt that I kept repeating myself (due
largely to the fact that the Unabomber keeps repeating himself). Since
there is still a lot of manifesto to go, I would like to know whether
this first part was any good, and whether I should go ahead and MiST the
rest, or whether to give it up as a losing battle. Thanks.
Enough with the talk! Let's get on with the MiSTing!
[General opening antics]
[1...2...3...4...5...6...]
[SOL. Everyone is behind the desk. Tom, Gypsy, and Mike are on one side,
looking at Crow, on the other.]
Mike: Hi, everybody. You caught us in the middle of a game of Twenty
Questions. So far we've figured out it's a man in politics.
Crow: Perhaps.
Mike: Perhaps. Anyway, now it's my turn. Is he running for election?
Crow: Maybe.
Tom: Is he a Republican?
Crow: Possibly.
Gypsy: Is he the Statue of Liberty?
Crow: No.
Tom: What do you mean "possibly?" Is he a Democrat or Republican?
Crow: No.
Tom: No?
Mike: Maybe he's independent.
Gypsy: Is he the Fourth of July?
Crow: No.
Mike: Maybe we can guess his political views. Does he believe in
abortion?
Crow: Maybe.
Tom: What's this "maybe?" What are his views on abortion?
Crow: Yes or No questions only, please.
Gypsy: Is he a dinosaur?
Crow: No.
Tom: Is he pro-choice?
Crow: Pro-choice is certainly a possibility. However, the issue of
abortion is a complex issue and cannot be distilled into simple
answers.
Gypsy: Is he William Shakespeare?
Crow: No.
Tom: You won't tell us what his party affiliation is, you won't tell us
what his views on are the issues, or even if he's running for election.
Is there anything you can tell us?
Crow: Yes. Oops, that was your twentieth question. Game's over.
Tom: Well, who was it?
Crow: Colin Powell.
All: Ohhhhhhh.
[light flashes]
[Commercials]
[Back on the SOL. Gypsy is excited.]
Gypsy: Me! Me! My turn! Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhm--OK! Got it! Ask me!
Tom: Is it Richard Basehart?
[Gypsy mouth falls open]
Gypsy: How did you know?
Tom: Lucky guess.
[light flashes]
Mike: Hey you guys, Ross's on the line. [hits light]
[Deep 13. The place is a mess. There are empty beer bottles everywhere.
On the techtronic panel is a copy of the Washington Post with the
Unabomber's manifesto. Dr. Forrester is crying into a nearly empty
bottle of booze.]
[SOL. All aboard look concerned.]
Mike: Dr. Forrester, are you all right?
[Deep 13. Dr. F. looks up from his bottle.]
Dr. F: [slurred] No I'm not all right. Look at that. [gestures towards
the newspaper] Look at it! He gets printed in the Post! He's striking
fear into the hearts of millions! What do I have? Nothing! Nothing at
all! Oh, I've got a man in space who watches bad movies. And not even
the first one I had. I couldn't even keep the other guy. My whole
life is a complete failure! [starts sobbing anew.]
[SOL]
Crow: Gee, that's really too bad. So does that mean we don't have an
experiment this week?
[Deep 13]
Dr. F: Experiment? I don't know. [picks up the paper] Here, read this.
It's not like everyone else hasn't. [looks around] Where's my liquor
gone?
[He wanders off lost.]
[SOL]
[Chaos.]
All: We've got manifesto sign!
[1...2...3...4...5...6...]
> [Unabomber's Manifesto]
Tom: Boy, Forrester looked really bad.
Crow: Yeah. You might say he's having a mad-life crisis.
Mike: I should melt you down just for that.
>
>INTRODUCTION
>
>1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
>for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy
Crow: Dear God! That is a disaster!
Mike: Worse, they've increased the standard of living, too!
> of
>those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have
>destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human
>beings to indignities,
Tom: Like what?
Mike: Oh, printing "The Bridges of Madison County," allowing Aaron
Spelling to continue to live, that kind of stuff.
> have led to widespread psychological suffering
>(in the Third World to physical suffering as well)
Mike: Bartender, a round of physical suffering for everyone!
> and have inflicted
>severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of
>technology will worsen the situation.
Tom: Hello readers! This last statement is know as the premise. Watch it
get endlessly restated throughout the manifesto without any support
except the paranoid rhetoric of a madman. Enjoy!
> It will certainly subject human
>beings to greater indignities
Crow: Like the new fall season of Voyager.
Mike: "Twisted," ugh! [shudders]
> and inflict greater damage on the natural
>world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption
Mike: This is why we have to stop funding the NEA!
> and
>psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical
>suffering even in "advanced" countries.
Crow: How old does a country have to be before it's "advanced?"
Mike: America, 219 years young.
>
>2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break
>down.
Tom: Today's weather may be sunny or cloudy.
Crow: Stock prices may go up or down.
Mike: This joke may be funny or unfunny.
> If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical
>and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and
>very painful period of adjustment
Mike: Is he talking about switching to metric?
> and only at the cost of permanently
>reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered
>products and mere cogs in the social machine.
Crow: As an engineered product, I take offense in that.
> Furthermore, if the
>system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way
>of reforming or modifying the system
Mike: Oh, didn't you even try?
> so as to prevent it from depriving
>people of dignity and autonomy.
Crow: This from a man who goes around depriving people of life.
>
>3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very
>painful. But the bigger the system grows
Tom: The harder it'll fall.
> the more disastrous the
>results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best
>break down sooner rather than later.
Crow: Yep, yer whole social structure's all shot ta hell. That's gonna
run ya around $600.
>
>4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.
Mike: Hi. I'm starting a revolution. Would you please sign my petition?
>This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden
>or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades.
Tom: Plus, it may or may not occur at all. We just don't know.
> We
>can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
>measures that those who hate the industrial system should take
Crow: 1. Blow stuff up.
Tom: A. Kill people.
Mike: 2. Write long manifestos.
> in order
>to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This
>is not to be a POLITICAL revolution.
Tom: This revolution will not be televised!
> Its object will be to overthrow
>not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present
>society.
Mike: This guy can't program his VCR, and now the whole world's supposed
to suffer?
>
>5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative
>developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological
>system.
Tom: You know, if you don't have something nice to say about the
Industrial Revolution...
> Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore
>altogether.
Crow: We can't let pesky little things like facts mess up our argument.
> This does not mean that we regard these other developments
>as unimportant.
Mike: Just that we haven't come up with really good rationalizations for
them yet.
> For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion
>to areas that have received insufficient public attention
Crow: The injustice inherent in the pork belly commodities market!
> or in which
>we have something new to say.
Tom: Oops, guess I don't have anything, then.
> For example, since there are well-
>developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very
>little
Crow: Since when is 35,000 words considered very little?
> about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
>nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
>
>THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
Mike: Is this an social science elective? Can I get credit for this?
>
>6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
>society.
Tom: Especially when terrorists get their own WWW pages.
> One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
>our world is
Mike: People sending bombs to innocent victims and killing them.
> leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
>serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
>society in general.
Mike: [singing] I am the very model of modern society in general.
>
>7. But what is leftism?
Crow: Ooh! Ooh! Me, Mr. Kotter!
> During the first half of the 20th century
>leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
>the movement is fragmented
Mike: Who broke Socialism?
Bots: Not me!
> and it is not clear who can properly be
>called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
>mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
Crow: So I guess Jesse Helms is safe.
>feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
>the like.
Tom: The whole filthy lot of them.
> But not everyone who is associated with one of these
>movements is a leftist.
Mike: But that doesn't mean we can't blacklist them anyway.
> What we are trying to get at in discussing
>leftism is not so much a movement
Crow: It's more of a feeling.
> or an ideology as a psychological
>type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
>"leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
>leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
Tom: There's over 200 paragraphs of this stuff? Noooooooo...
>
>8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
>clear than we would wish,
Crow: Since we don't know what we are talking about.
> but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
>this.
Tom: You could try rational thought...
Crow: Nah.
> All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
>way the two psychological tendencies
Crow: Tastes great!
Tom: Less filling!
> that we believe are the main
>driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the
>WHOLE truth about leftist psychology.
Mike: We by no means claim to be telling the truth about anything at
all.
> Also, our discussion is meant to
>apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent
>to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th
>and early 20th century.
Tom: He's going for the academic angle and he's just not cutting it.
>
>9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
>call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
>inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
>oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern
>leftism; but this segment is highly influential.
>
>FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
Mike: I'm OK, you're all screwed up.
>
>10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings
Tom: That would actually make sense.
>in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits:
Mike: From infrarude to ultraviolent.
> low
>self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
>defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
>to have such feelings
Tom: Uh, buddy, arguing don't necessarily make it so.
> (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
>feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.
>
>11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
>about him
Crow: How do you think the Unabomber will interpret this?
Mike: Hopefully, he'll never find out about it.
> (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he
>has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem.
Tom: However, when a person spends all his time in his basement building
bombs to get revenge for imagined slights, we conclude he's a loser.
> This tendency is
>pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong
>to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
>hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms
>"negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick"
Crow: Spic, broad, wetback, kike, queer...
Tom: Gook, chink, mick, dike, darkie...
Mike: Ah, America, the great melting pot.
> for an African, an Asian,
>a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation.
Tom: I meant "nigger" in a nice way.
>"Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents of "guy,"
>"dude" or "fellow."
Mike: Never mind the fact that there are ten derogatory terms for women
for every one for a man.
> The negative connotations have been attached to
>these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights advocates
>have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and insist on its
>replacement by "animal companion."
Tom: Because lunacy exits all along the political spectrum.
> Leftist anthropologists go to great
>lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could
>conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word
>"primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem almost paranoid
Crow: Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're _not_ out to get
me.
> about anything
>that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own.
Tom: Any culture without Geraldo is vastly superior to ours.
>(We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours.
>We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
>
>12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
Crow: Are Bill Meyer's fans.
Mike: Don't bad mouth him! He's God!
>terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,
>abused woman or disabled person,
Bots: [hum circus music]
Mike: Come on out to the Parade of Stereotypes!
> but a minority of activists, many of
>whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group
Mike: Again with the non-minority activists. What, doesn't this guy
think people do things out of compassion or justice or--
Tom: Mike, this guy has no idea what compassion is.
> but come from
>privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold
>among university professors,
Crow: Man the newspeak cannon, boys!
> who have secure employment with
>comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white
>males from middle-class families.
>
>13. Many leftists have an intense identification
Mike: I'm Sparticus!
Tom: No, _I'm_ Sparticus!
> with the problems of
>groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
>Indians),
Crow: [Native American youth 1] What do you want to do today?
Tom: [Native American youth 2] Let's play Nazis and Jews! I get to be
the Nazi!
Crow: No fair! You always get to be the Nazi!
> repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists
>themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
>it
Tom: I plead the fifth!
> to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
>because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with
>their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
>inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).
Mike: You know, for a guy who goes around killing people, he sure seems
to hate stepping on people's toes.
>
>14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong
>as capable as men.
Crow: Women can't fight in trenches. They get these diseases.
> Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT
>be as strong and as capable as men.
>
>15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
>good and successful.
Mike: Objection, your Honor. This is pure speculation on the part of the
prosecution.
> They hate America, they hate Western civilization,
>they hate white males, they hate rationality.
Tom: Actually, we hate long, pointless essays that make blanket
statements without having a scrap of proof to back up their views.
> The reasons that leftists
>give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their
>real motives.
Mike: Which only me and my invisible friend Boogles know.
> They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike,
>imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth,
Tom: But the real reason is that the West stole their date to the prom
way back in junior high.
> but where these same
>faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures,
Crow: Yes, mankind sucks wherever you go.
Mike: Hey!
> the
>leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that
>they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out
Tom: I just figured it out! The Unabomber is McElwaine!
> (and often greatly
>exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization.
>Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real motive
>for hating America and the West.
Crow: Hey! I liked Miss Lonelyhearts!
Mike: That's West as in hemisphere.
Crow: Oh.
> He hates America and the West because
>they are strong and successful.
>
>16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
>"enterprise,"
Tom: Are frequently used in the titles of Star Trek fanfics.
> "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
>leftist vocabulary.
Mike: Such words as "logic," "intelligence," and "having a life" play
little in the role of the fanatic.
> The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-
>collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
Crow: Those bastards! Trying to make people's lives bearable!
> take
>care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of
>confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his
>own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition
>because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.
Tom: You know, I could just scream "hypocrite" over and over again, but
it wouldn't make it hurt any less.
>
>17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus
>on sordidness, defeat and despair,
Mike: The MTV generation.
> or else they take an orgiastic tone,
Tom: The leftists keep calling me up and breathing heavily on the phone.
>throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing
>anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to
>immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.
Crow: This guy is starting to sound like the Conservative Literary
Revolution.
>
>18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
>objective reality
Mike: I'd like you to meet my objective reality. I call it a Louisville
Slugger.
> and to insist that everything is culturally relative.
Tom: E=M.C. Hammer.
>It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of
>scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective
>reality can be defined.
Mike: How about in cubic meters?
> But it is obvious that modern leftist
>philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
Crow: Sometimes a head full of nothing is a pretty cool head.
> systematically
>analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved
Mike: They coach little league, they organize bakes sales; they're just
really into the community.
>emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these
>concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their
>attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is
>successful, it satisfies the drive for power.
[all reread that last sentence]
Mike: Hmmm.
Tom: Yep.
Crow: He says it himself better than we ever could.
> More importantly, the
>leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain
>beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false
>(i.e. failed, inferior).
Mike: Conservatives like multiple choice; liberals, essays.
> The leftist's feelings of inferiority run so
>deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
Tom: Down with the Dewey decimal system! Death to Linnaeus!
> of some things as
>successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This
>also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental
>illness
Mike: Uh...
Tom: Just where did he pull that statement out of?
Crow: His a--
Mike: That's all right, Crow.
> and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to
>genetic explanations of human abilities
Crow: Them niggers jes' ain't smart lahk me 'n Bubba.
> or behavior because such
>explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to
>others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an
>individual's ability or lack of it.
Mike: So the leftists blame society for everything.
Tom: And, of course, the Unabomber differs in this in that he blames
society for everything.
> Thus if a person is "inferior" it
>is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been brought up
>properly.
Tom: So if society produces criminals which prey on society, does that
make society anti-social?
Mike: Huh?
>
>19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
>inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
Crow: A mad bomber.
>a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in
>himself.
Mike: Everybody, if you believe in liberalism, clap your hands! Clap
them loudly!
Tom: Every time someone says "I don't believe in welfare" a leftist
dies.
> He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he
>can still conceive
Crow: So at least he's not impotent, like some people...
Mike: You really want to get blown to shreds, don't you?
> of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and
>his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1]
Tom: What's that?
Mike: I think it's a footnote.
Tom: Great. More garbage to read.
>But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority
>are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually
>strong and valuable.
Mike: [singing] Nobody loves me; everybody hates me; think I'll go
support socialism.
> Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel
>strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with
>which he identifies himself.
Crow: We'd just like to bring up the fact that all evidence seems to
point to the fact that the Unabomber acts alone, yet he repeatedly
feels the need to state that he belongs to an organized group called
the FC and always uses "we." Thank you.
>
>20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics.
Tom: Which goes hand-in-hand with the sadist tendencies of certain
right-wingers.
> Leftists
>protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
>police or racists to abuse them, etc.
Mike: You know guys, this post is probably the best proof of liberal
masochism he could ever hope for.
> These tactics may often be
>effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
>because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
>trait.
>
>21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
>or by moral principle,
Crow: Conspiracy mode: ON!!
> and moral principle does play a role for the
>leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
>cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
>prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
Mike: Come on down to John Deery Ford's "Drive for Power" sale on
University Ave!
>Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated
Tom: OK, figure in the passive aggression, carry the one...
> to be of
>benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For
>example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
>people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
>dogmatic terms?
Mike: Yeah! What kind of moron would use violence to advocate social
reform?
Crow: Oops.
> Obviously it would be more productive to take a
>diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
>and symbolic concessions to white people
Tom: Come to think of it, the whole idea of equality is really too much
of a hassle. Let's just call it off.
> who think that affirmative
>action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
>such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
>Helping black people is not their real goal.
Crow: If he starts talking about UN forces trying to invade Montana, I'm
leaving.
> Instead, race problems
>serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
>frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people,
Tom: This hurts you more than it hurts me.
>because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends
>to intensify race hatred.
>
>22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
>have to INVENT problems
Mike: I just got a patent on "social inequality."
> in order to provide themselves with an excuse
>for making a fuss.
>
>23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
>description
Crow: I'm just making stuff up. But hey! I'm gonna get printed!
> of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a
>rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
Tom: Just a vague, straw-mannish description of leftism.
[continued in part 2]