Fox’s crackpot psychiatrist once again is looking like he could use a good shrink. In a FoxNews.com column, he turned to Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, in order to accuse liberals of being “psychologically disordered” because, supposedly, they use technology to gain control of others and erode their autonomy. (H/T Media Matters)
In his June 25, 2013 column, Ablow both condemned and praised Kaczynski. “What the Unabomber did was reprehensible” Ablow wrote. Kaczynski’s ideas, on the other hand, “cannot be dismissed, and are increasingly important as our society hurtles toward individual disempowerment at the hands of technology and political forces that erode autonomy.”
Really? The ideas that came from the same brain that had “ideas” about sending letter bombs? Apparently so. Despite that little thing called “four life sentences in federal prison,” Kaczynski nevertheless passed the Fox News test for punditry cred: he hates liberals:
(Kaczynski) saw the political “left” as embracing these technologies with special fervor, because they were in keeping with the “leftist” ideology that centralized power was the way to govern men.
He saw these “leftists” as psychologically disordered—seeking to compensate for deep feelings of personal disempowerment by banding together and seeking extraordinary means of control in society.
Not only that, Ablow was able to extrapolate from Kaczysnki’s book (which Ablow said “deserves a place alongside” Brave New World and 1984) a condemnation of President Obama:
And having seen Barack Obama elected, in part, by mastering the use of the Internet as a campaign tool, then watching his administration preside over eavesdropping on the American public, monitoring their emails and tapping their phones, denying them their due process and privacy, and making a play to disarm them, Kaczynski, must wonder what it will take for Americans to wake up to the fact that their individuality and autonomy—indeed, what constitutes the core of a human life—is under siege (by the very forces he predicted—technology and leftist political leaders).
Who will Ablow turn to next for inspiration and insight? The Boston Strangler? Casey Anthony? If they expressed hatred for the left, anything is possible on Fox News.
As usual, rightwingnuts — in their zeal to smear progressives — never look too deeply at the source . . .
It’s bad enough that Ablowme is is using the Unabomber as a source — but, even worse, Ablowme apparently didn’t know that Kaczynski had some unkind things to say about conservatives:
(thanks to poster bintexas at Media Matters)
The Unabomber’s opinions of conservatives: The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.
I’ll conclude bintexas’ line in her post at MMfA:
“Point being is that you shouldn’t quote a murdering lunatic. It’ll bite you in the butt.”
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