A Review of the '96 Olympics Bombing

Reflections on the reasons for and implications of the Atlanta bomb.

I will assume, for the purposes of this review, that the perpetrator is in this case, a fringe member of the militia movement in America.

The first point to be made here must be to criticize the President's characterization of the perpetrator as a cowardly murderer. I believe this characterization to be incorrect on both counts. Mischaracterization cannot aid us in attempting to understand what is afoot here. This person must be viewed as a politician making a political statement and, in desperation using death to underline what he has to say. We also use death in our political statements, when we feel sufficiently threatened. So, calling this man a murderer for doing no less than we ourselves do must be denounced as demagogic.

I believe the crucial issue that now threatens us is our failure to pay sufficient attention in these feminist times to the demands of manhood. The Bible points out that we were created in our creator's image. One of the more difficult statements in the Bible, to comprehend. What it attempts to point out is that the creator is, in the first instance, creative, and, in the second, masculine. Thus, we are given to understand that, masculinity will, in an instinctive way, demand to be creative.

With the rise of population density, one thing that has been lost, in large degree, is the opportunity for males to express their creativity. Consider the life of the frontiers person as compared to the wage earner in modern America. Next, consider the impact of feminism on this aspect of masculinity in recent years. For the least among us, the prospect is for a domineering foreman instructing our every activity at work and a domineering wife doing the same at home.

Thus there is no opportunity, for many among us, to express the most basic feature of their being. It is like reducing the possibilities of women to give birth and to raise families. These features of sexuality are so basic, they must occur, or the humans who find themselves frustrated will question their right to continued existence. An identity crisis will ensue.

Now, we come to the Olympics Bomber. I suggest that he is just such a one. He has looked about for somewhere to express his creativity and in so doing has considered two ideas. First, that a man likes to be a hero, and second, that some evil entity must be responsible for the meaninglessness of his life. On pondering those two notions for some time he has concluded that the evil entity responsible for his pain is the central government, no doubt because of its support for affirmative action which may well have put him at odds with a female boss and under the thumb of his wife.

So, now he has identified an evil influence and has the opportunity of acting in an heroic manner by attacking it in some creative way that can do significant harm to it. He is not so irrational as to think that he alone can seriously threaten it but he can do what one man can do and, if it is noticed and taken up by others, might well triumph in time.

From this analysis, I think it prudent for Washington to consider its position and reflect on what can be done to bring it back into favor with its constituents. There is no essential difference between the Atlanta Bomber and the United 800 bomber, which I will take to be, for the purposes of this exposition, a Palestinian or sympathizer. He also is attacking what he has identified as a focus of evil in the world, for the same reasons.