The Hepburn Manifesto: a manifesto about manifestos
It is 2024 and the world is a mess.
We demand change.
As humans who care deeply about effective communication and believe in the power of language, we deserve manifestos that are memorizing and mobilizing. A folk hero’s grotesque rationalization that preys upon the anxieties of a suffering nation will not do. We deserve a manifesto worthy of its cause.
We demand a manifesto that identifies its community. It must make clear: to whom does this apply?
We demand a manifesto that identifies the problem it aims to solve. There must be a plain statement of the issue requiring the production of a manifesto.
We demand a manifesto that outlines how the issue will be addressed. A manifesto must clearly describe the group’s desired outcome, and lay out how its ideal future state will be achieved. There must be tenets to abide by, ethics to adhere to, edicts to enact. We demand that a manifesto be actionable.
We demand that a manifesto have a snappy title. A folk hero’s screed must be easily distinguished from all the other manifestos out there.
We demand a manifesto that has been drafted, revised, and edited prior to publication. In a world of autocorrect, text prediction, grammar checkers, and LLM writing tools—as well as an abundance of analog writing supplies—there is no excuse for half-baked ideas, slapdash style, and self-contradiction. Or, at the very least, be interesting in your delusions and errors. In the absence of writing skill, a touch of madness, wildness, or oddity can rectify the lack.
We envision a future of well-written manifestos. It is a future in which the actions of a manifesto’s proponents are congruent with the professed symbolism of those actions. Our future is one of manifestos that mean something.
We commit to calling out inadequate manifestos whenever they appear. We commit to rejecting any manifesto unworthy of the genre.
We commit to writing our own manifestos with care. We will draft, revise, and edit, always with an eye to communicating effectively. We will act in accordance with our manifestos.
We commit to a strict policy of nonviolence in making our demands and fulfilling our commitments.
A manifesto is a powerful call to action that lays out ideals and principles, and illuminates a path to achieving its aims. The symbols of our rage and anguish must inspire us to have hope, compassion, and continued energy to advocate for and enact change.
Give us a manifesto—and a hero—we can stand behind.
To me, it's particularly telling that his so-called "manifesto" pointed readers to his planning documents. He had nothing to say about healthcare but did want to show off all of the clever tricks he used in planning and carrying out his plan. (Also, his GoodReads reviews sound absolutely like a dude who thinks he's super smart but there isn't actually any 'there' there, ya know? The type of intelligence required to get good grades is very different from knowing how to actually think.)
I'm entirely unsurprised, however, that the public response to the murder has been... what it is. The US healthcare system is basically indentured servitude. I used to wonder why Americans weren't constantly rioting in the streets over their medical system—then I lived in the US and payed the insane premiums and made decisions based on whether or not I would have health insurance and payed more money on top of the insane premiums and it was all real eye-opening for a naive Canadian. It is simply impossible to make free and autonomous decisions about your individual life when access to such a basic need as healthcare is out of your control. (Same with basically everything thing, of course; we're all choking to death on this big bowl of Oops All Capitalism. Americans are just chewing on some extra awful crap.)
I guess what I'm trying to say with this postamble is that murders shouldn't commit murder in the first place and they belong in jail when they do commit murder, and that applies to CEOs as well as psychos.