The quote on the picture above is not from Bernie Sanders. It’s from a manifesto by Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. I ran across it on Twitter, where Anne Thériault observes with inscrutable emoji that it has been shared 11,000 times on Facebook. But just because the Unabomber said it, is it wrong? The Unabomber is definitely wrong in his position on mailing bombs to people. But his position on antidepressants, at least in this quote, echoes an idea from Sartre, who argued that depression is the only sane response to modern life. It’s worth thinking about the fact that millions of Americans must consume drugs to tolerate daily life. On the other hand, context matters. If the next sentence after this one in the Unabomber manifesto is “that’s why depressed people should be allowed to die,” we should probably withdraw our tentative concession that the murdering Luddite has a point. I was going to look it up, but then I realized that if I type “Unabomber manifesto full text” into Google, I’ll probably end up on a list.
Tag Archives: antidepressants
Friday links! Amazing America edition
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQzDqM0XbFM
That right there is the theme song to Sarah Palin’s new show Amazing America, which presumably celebrates everything great about the United States—including, at :59, “the dogs and the horses and the trucks and the guns.” Finally, basic cable is giving dogs and horses the credit they deserve. As one commenter put it:
Speaks straight from the GUT! The way it is presented it gives us ALL a DEEP SENSE OF PRIDE! Isn’t it a gift from our God when each can take PRIDE not necessarily only from what we have done but love the PRIDE we have in sharing ALL INCLUSIVE OF EACH THAT HAS THEIR PRIDE AND SATISFACTION OF GIVING TO OUR GIFT TO AN “AMAZING AMERICA!”
Today is Friday, and it’s high time we all took pride not necessarily in doing things, but in proudly including ourselves in the satisfaction of giving our gift to America, which is us. Won’t you speak from the gut with me?