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I, Unabomber?

Sacramento-based writer A. Lin Neumann Is Not the Unabomber By A. Lin Neumann After the Unabomber's FBI-approved tome-launch party in the Washington Post last week, Jim Freeman, the G-Man-in-charge of the investigation, had this to say: "There is a high likelihood that (in reading the manuscript) people will recognize an individual who held similar philosophies whether in college or even in high school. We think it will have a very positive and productive influence on our investigation." Holy Eliot Ness, guys, hold on a minute here, you're giving me a rash. I'd better read those 35,000 words, I thought, and see what I can see. Read, I did and just as I always suspected, I might be the Unabomber. I already knew the most obvious facts. The FBI suspects that this guy might live in Sacramento. Well, I live in Sacramento. He's somewhere around 40 years old. So am I. He's got at least a high school education. Guilty as charged. I even went to college. Okay, fair enough, all of that is not much to go on. The real clue, as Agent Freeman knows, is in those tricky "philosophies" expressed by the Unabomber. That sent me scrambling to the manifesto because even what little I knew about the Unabomber led me to conclude that the guy sounded uncomfortably familiar. Let's start with his central point. As I get his main thesis, the "industrial technical system," as he calls it, "is a disaster for the human race." Bingo. I know one guy who has held a version of that philosophy for about three decades now. Yep. Moi. That's just the beginning, though. Early in his piece, the Unabomber spits venom at leftists and socialists. That's me. Leftists have driven me nuts for years. Too many rules, too much self-indulgent guilt-tripping. Besides, would you really want the former Soviet Union as a model for anything? The Unabomber reminded me of the times when I was darn near drummed out of any cause I joined because I couldn't get along with the leftists. I even spouted, you might say, a philosophy behind my irritation. But it's not just words we have in common, the Unabomber and I. "Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles," the Unabomber notes with disapproval, calling this a "masochistic tendency." Here I am again. I have never laid down in front of a vehicle to protest anything. The Unabomber has a thing against animal rights activists. Me too. He feels that calling a pet a "companion animal" is stupid. I agree. He can't stand politically correct anthropology professors, with their tenured seats and good salaries, who want to do really dumb things like replace the word "primitive" with the phrase "non-literate." That's me.. He's even got major problems with a lot of feminists but I think it best that I not say anything about that for right now. (The FBI I can handle, but I am not about to enrage any spokespersons for half the world.) Moving on, the Unabomber writes that we are "over-socialized" as a nation and I think he and I are still swimming in the same lane. "We are not supposed to hate anyone," he writes, "yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time." I know I do. I have a list. (Speaking of which, the FBI says, in their profile of the mad bomber, that he probably makes a lot of lists.) Finally, after railing against leftists for a few dozen paragraphs, the Unabomber stops anybody who might mistake him for a freshman Republican Congressman from Idaho when he writes, "Conservatives are fools. They whine about traditional values yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth" that undermines traditional values. Well, if you've ever gotten me talking politics in a bar late at night, I am certain that philosophy sounds pretty familiar. And surely I am not the only who agrees with the Unabomber when he writes that the condition of industrial society is "abnormal." Has anybody out there watched the fall schedule on the Fox Network? I rest my case. "Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves," the Unabomber concludes in one section of the manifesto. Later he adds, "Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them." This is getting scary. I couldn't have said it better myself. So much for core philosophies. The Unabomber wants a "radical and fundamental change in society" and that is definitely something I once wanted, at least before I got tired and cynical. If you knew me in college, you know I wasn't prone to moderate statements. This is what it gets down to: the Unabomber is an anarchist. I used to be an anarchist. I read Kropotkin and Bakunin and George Woodcock and had a pretty romantic view of the Industrial Workers of the World. I thought the notion of one big union and a huge sit down strike to bring the wheels of society to a halt was a pretty darn good idea. I got a lot madder at really big bomb throwers, like Robert MacNamara and Henry Kissinger, than I ever did at small bomb throwers like the Unabomber. Guilty? Here I am a Sacramento-living, 42-year old, former wild-eyed anarchist with some pretty deep philosophical distaste for what's become of society in general and this country in particular. The Unabomber says he wants to drive a wedge between the power holding elite and the general public. How can I disagree? What has the "power-holding elite" done for any of us lately? But am I the Unabomber? Uh, no. I don't believe in killing people by any means, so Mr. Unabomber and I have to part company for good. I don't throw bombs and never have. But I strongly suspect that a lot of what he says is going to resonate disturbingly close to home for people who might have forgotten their flirtation with these philosophies at one time. Not that this guy is a poster boy for rational thought, mind you. In one section of the manifesto the Unabomber says he has done these things -- 14 bombings, three killings -- because of his anger. Sorry. I think he's wading a few feet too close to the deep end of the pool to use that as sufficient justification for sending bombs in the mail. And his notion that by making things crazy the conditions for revolution will occur, is a pretty straight approximation of what the conservative mossbacks in Washington already seems bent on accomplishing. Maybe the Unabomber wont throw any more explosives down the mail chute because if he sits back and waits long enough, were capable of creating our own wildly destabilized society, divided between rich and poor, power and powerlessness, good taste and really bad television. Finally, any of you who knew me when, don't turn me in to the FBI. They have enough to worry about without tracking down my philosophy. [ CyberScape | MetroActive Central ]