5

These speeches are rather remarkable, and so I want to include a few more examples. I believe they provide an invaluable glimpse into the curious Martian resistance to the Aliens. Instead of seeing a superior civilization that could bring them forward by great leaps—they reacted to the Aliens as if they meant them harm. Of course, every rapid advance occasions some harm, but the benefits on offer were so great. Well, anyhow, one of Ross’s favorite topics was what he liked to term the Martian addiction to Alien goods and technologies. For instance, once night he said this:

‘When the Aliens first came, it seemed like trading with them would be a good deal, or at least the benefits would outweigh the costs.¹ And all that stuff seemed so great, even the people who were skeptical started getting things from them.² But the whole thing only moves in one direction: dependence.³ Once you get used to a thing, it becomes harder and harder to live without it.⁴

‘Many people out there, just average people, like your mom and dad or your friends from high school, they don’t know how to live without the Aliens anymore. They’re more likely to teep than they are to talk to you. And I’ve actually seen this myself: when they do speak, they handle language awkwardly, like they are forgetting how to use it. All this may have started as a convenience, but it’s becoming a necessity.⁵ They’re gaining ground on us. How many people, at this very hour, are living in a state of bondage to the Aliens and don’t even realize it? How many are going to spend the rest of their lives using only what the Aliens provide? Everything is on their terms. We don’t tell them what we want, we just take what they have to offer.’⁶

Ross became increasingly violent in his language, and often described Alien habits and customs with great relish, as if they were disgusting.

‘They don’t even wear clothing! They’re just running around with those floppy white penises of theirs...can we even begin to imagine what contact with something so foul and loathsome is doing to us?⁷ The way they live is revolting!⁸ These Aliens are not only half-civilized and ignorant, but they’ve begun to infect our own people, our brothers and sisters with a kindred ignorance.⁹ And it gets worse: I’ll only say that the sexual impulse knows no boundaries.¹⁰ Personally, I’d rather see our whole civilization nuked into oblivion rather than slowly but surely destroyed by this maelstrom of Alien infection.¹¹

‘Some people say the way to get rid of the Alien is to refuse to buy a dollar’s worth of goods, or to have any dealings with those who buy from them.¹² But I don’t think that goes far enough. We want security for the future, not just relief in the present.¹³ Now, I am opposed to war; I am opposed to bloodshed; but when the rights of a free people are disregarded, trouble will follow.’¹⁴

Truly, I cannot grasp the reasons that some of the Martians had such a strong revulsion toward the Aliens, except that everyone thinks that what they do not understand is gross.¹⁵ Of course this sort of language was bound to appeal to Rae. After weeks of the hardest labor he had ever known, with no moment of idleness, and with the certain knowledge that the nearest alcohol was many miles away on the mainland and completely unattainable, Rae was the happiest he had ever been.

And so as he listened to Ross each night, he came to associate his own alcoholic struggle with the larger Martian turmoil that began with the arrival of the Aliens. Rae came to believe that the addictum was the addiction. Alcohol, like the many products offered by the Aliens, could only ever result in addiction. The only way to freedom was the removal of the object of the addiction. While the mental framework was obviously wrong, it did lead Rae to his longest period of sobriety since childhood, as well as the commission of a great number of atrocities.

Obviously, any Martian could have become radicalized. Some stopped at mild forms of bigotry and hate, while others, like John Rae, eventually traveled all the way to terrorism, and the killing of hundreds of people.¹⁶ But what I find fascinating is not who these people were, but what led them to commit such horrific acts. Although mass radicalization was never a pervasive threat on Earth, the key driver of radicalization—namely, lots of horrible things happening to the Martians—was always a factor.¹⁷ It seems true that radicalization was a process that primarily affected losers: people who were odd, or ugly, or who smelled bad.¹⁸ Such people came to hate society and other people, and thus easily believed absurd theories.¹⁹ Really, some of the things the Martian terrorists believed were just completely incomprehensible. But at their core, such extremists usually maintained that other versions of reality weren’t acceptable,²⁰ and there can be no question that such extremists were dangerous and the only solution was to utterly defeat and destroy them.²¹

When it comes down to it, it is clear what these terrorists were after: they wanted attention.²² and they thought they could seize it by killing people. So, in the end, these terrorists were really just people who failed in their attempts at celebrity, and gave in to the desperation.