Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ARTICLES.
The Nation.
305
Is There Method
I n His Madness?
The a stands for adme because one early target was an alrhne executwe, but I rernam unconvmced that thls was a genulne Unabomber victim
Id render hlm Unlbomber, consldermg nine of the slxteen bombs were
almed at unlverslty targets or professors
The Nation.
306
support that.) FC is variously citedas the initials for Freedom Club or Freedom Collective, although it is popularly
thought to stand for a vulgar comment about computers; it
is not explained in his text.
The sixty-six pagesthat follow begin with two pages of trivial
typo corrections, showingthe kind of fastidiousness (sovle
should be solve, poit should be point) onemight expect from a craftsman whose bombs the F.B.I. has described
as meticulously constructed; then come fifty-six pages of
argument divided into twenty-four subtitled sections and 232
numbered paragraphs; and it all ends with thirty-six footnotes, mostly qualifying statements in the text. That form,
plus the leaden language and stilted diction, the fondness for
sociological jargon and psychobabble, and the repeated use
of we argue that andwe now discuss and the like, make
it certain that this was written by someone whose writing
style,
and probably whole intellectual development, was arrested
in college.
The F.B.I. has said that it believes he was a student of the
history of science, but on the evidence herehe was a social
psychology major with a minor in sociology, and he shows all
the distressing hallmarks of the worst ofthat academic breed.
He spends twelve pages,for example, on a strange and somewhat simplistic explanation
of something that we w
l
icall the
power process, consistingof four eIements we call god, effort and attainment of goal, plus autonomy,all in an effort
to explain why people today
are unhappy and frustrated. Only
someone trapped in the social sciences would talk that way.
Various professor types have been
quoted in the papers saying howbright this fellow must be, but the arguments here
are never veryoriginal and the line of reasoning often
is quite
convoluted. He has read a lot in certain areas-no poetry,
though, Ill bet-and has thoughta lot about theparticular
things that concern him, but aside from a few flashes there
is no suggestion of anything more than a routine mind and
a dutiful allegiance to some out-of-the-ordinary critics of
modern society. Imsure he makesgood bombs, but grading
him on his intellect I wouldnt givehim more than a C + . I
venture to say he didnt make it to his senior year.
The opus isnt helped by the fact that atleast a third of it
is essentially irrelevant, social-psych padding and scholarly
back-and-forthing, one-hand-and-the-othering.
Two long sec-
GUTTING THE
CLEAN WATER ACT
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Burt,one of the New YearsGang that bombed the Army Math Research
Center at the University of Wlsconsm In August 1970 and who has been a
fugltive ever smce. I f so, he probably was steeped beyond human endurance
In the kind of fractious sectarian stews abollrng~nthose days and comes by
hls disllke of what he thmks IS leftlsm legitimately
t Oddly, the
The Nation.
308
..
...
Not inspired, but thoughtful, perceptive enough, when abstracted from its labored context.
310
The Nation.
September 25,1995
The Nation.
ATR~~uIEM
1902.1995
311
0, in sum,
THE
WAR