Indeed, They Did Grow Up Absurd

The theater of the absurd is now being enacted on the public scene. Letters recently sent to a number of corporations which were subsequently bombed stated that the bomb throwers were full of loving care for mankind and therefore felt justified in destroying the offices of death-dealing corporations. They seem to think of themselves as angels of death whose innocence is vouchsaved by their loving intentions. These Jesuits of the bomb seem untouched by reflection on the relations between means and ends. Since they are convinced of the purity of their motives, they apparently feel that everything they do should be judged in the light of these motives rather than in terms of the consequences for others. Theirs is in effect a kind of magical politics. As John Dewey wrote long ago, “The principle of magic is found whenever it is hoped to get results without intelligent control of means; and also when it is supposed that means can exist and yet remain inert and inoperative.”

In their desperate assaults against “the system” in general, these loving avengers seem to have the utmost contempt for human beings in particular. Like all executioners, they care not for their victims. While protesting against a “dehumanized system” they eagerly refer to its representatives as “pigs” and “vermin,” thus dehumanizing them in their turn. Pigs are to be slaughtered and vermin must be exterminated, and so these modern terrorists...