Hello, Crow.
Excerpted, you wrote:
"...then his ideology is obviously not merely a symptom of his mental illness." You do realize that he could be both crazy (insane) and schizophrenic (mentally ill) at the same time.
Also excerpted, you wrote this:
"iamwhoiam, I imagine that Ted Kaczynski understands his brother's rationale for turning him in. It's not difficult to grasp, and he's had plenty of time to think it over."While understanding motive doesn't necessarily guarantee forgiveness, generally, I would think, that with such an understanding one could and would be forgiving. Ted is not, and has never to my knowledge expressed even an iota of remorse towards any of his victims or their families.
Crow, you also wrote this:
"By that standard, any revolutionary act could be classified as "madness." To which I say, Nonsense!
I don't feel comfortable discussing my past experiences in such a public forum, but I will divulge just a bit. Once, a very long time ago I was more than a participant in a national action that for me entailed traveling to DC, demonstrating with thousands, personally presenting testimony before a special committee of Congress and then back to NYC for its culmination involving more than a million people. We rallied at Battery Park and then marched en masse to the NY Stock Exchange where we planned to rush the floor and upset the day's trading, at best hoping to shut it down. We realized our turnout was much greater than we had expected and hadn't enough attorneys or enough cash to post bail for those who would surely be arrested. So we demonstrated outside for an hour or so before we headed the crowd uptown to Mobil Oil's building where we entered the building and jammed all the elevators with our people and flooded into the President's office, overflowing it and overwhelming their security, who shut down their elevators trapping dozens for hours. (IIRC, it was the "Reclaim America" event.)
Had I acted alone, I certainly would have been locked-up and immediately labeled a nut, not because I was, but because what I had done would have been considered "nuts" by most.
I know of no revolution that was successful that was initiated through the solitary actions of an individual...do you?
Now that may be a poor analogue, but it's all I can offer because I do not engage in acts of violence and would not for any purpose whatsoever.
And please, let's not look at Ted's actions as revolutionary or worse, noble. They weren't. He is a murderer. "From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23."
[1]And you really believe this:
"If Kaczynski's goal was igniting widespread curiosity about his philosophy via the publication of his manifesto, then he was successful"?
Are you friggin serious? Starts bombing, killing and maiming in '78, writes his manifesto some years later and demands it be published in '95 or he'll continue killing and you call him successful in raising widespread curiosity? What widespread curiosity? I must have been sleeping when it swept by.
Unless,of course, you're considering the half-dozen people commenting here as 'widespread curiosity.' And because you agree with Crow on this point, too, Hacktavist, I must say imo, your logic in this matter is severely flawed.
However, Hackavist, I don't think you are wrong in making this observation:
"... a few others have just decided you dont much like me and are now going out of your way to nitpick at every little thing I have to say, which, really is fine, but it doesnt do much good for the forum of the thread in general, you may perhaps consider taking such personal issues to PM where it wouldnt be such a distraction to everyone else and also wouldnt derail an otherwise excellent discussion about Ted, his brother and the experiments he was part of wrt the CIA and MKUltra."Let's please stick to the topic and save our passion for the more polarized threads.
