The irony of the Weather Underground
Reading David Horowitz’s 1989 book Destructive Generation—and particularly the chapter entitled “Doing It,” about the Weathermen who morphed into the Weather Underground (notably Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, as well as several fellow travelers)—I am struck by the irony of their life trajectories.
What a group of nihilistic, self-aggrandizing, angry, reckless, power-mad, ignorant, arrogant people they were. But say what you will about them, they showed they could learn from experience. When all these destructive characteristics of theirs came together to cause three of their number to blow themselves and a Greenwich Village townhouse up instead of their planned target, soldiers at Fort Dix, it scared the survivors among them into another mode of action.
What they learned from the incident was this, according to Horowitz, who quotes their 1970 position paper “New Morning – Changing Weather”:
Claiming that they were communicating “not as military leaders, but as tribes at council,” they dealt publicly with the townhouse for the first time, admitting that the explosion had “destroyed our belief that armed struggle is the only real revolutionary struggle…It was clear that more had been wrong with our direction than technical inexperience…This tendency to consider only bombing or picking up a gun as revolutionary, with the glorification of the heavier the better, we’ve called the military error.” After noting that “a group of outlaws who are isolated from the youth communities…cannot develop strategies that grow to include large numbers of people,” they said they planned to build a mass movement of youth into a Weather Nation.
Dohrn and Ayers went through several other incarnations before Horowitz’s 1989 chapter ends, leaving them wandering in an aimless wilderness, unfocused and unfulfilled. But in the years that followed they certainly got the last laugh, didn’t they? Most of America may have rejected their ravings, their violence, and their romantic narcissistic views of themselves as great revolutionaries. But academia and especially the universities bought (in the form of professorships and honors) what they ultimately decided to sell, which was nothing less than the slow Gramscian march through the educational institutions, which ended up transforming younger generations and moving this nation in the direction they had planned all along.
Not so fast. Yes, they have taken over academia, and spreed their ideas to business, politics, medical, research, and the rest. On the other hand, just as when they were lost, their plan never works, and economic reality is going to crush every aspect of it, one way or another, before a generation or two passes, and probably sooner.
If you get your way, make sure your way leads to something other than an early grave, slavery, impoverishment, starvation, and war. I suppose, at this point, they are in cya mode, unless they are still believers. Most likely they realize that you can’t change the world, and fiddling with it only makes it worse. Most likely, they are simply hoping they can keep their good life until they die, thinking that will be the end of it. I can’t wait to see them on the other side. There are no lies there. One cannot even utter them, even those bound for hell. Should be interesting.
Neo: “But in the years that followed they certainly got the last laugh, didn’t they?”
Not necessarily the “last laugh”. They don’t have exclusive rights to the activist method. They’ve been winning only because they’re the only ones playing the social-political game seriously.
It’s not hard to win the activist game when the opposition refuses to play it or begins to play it, but is diverted off course at either the first signs of progress or setback.
In their minds, “the movement” could not survive without them, so they had to stay alive–even if it meant looking like the cowards they truly were–they owed it to humanity.
And I think this is the driving force behind the majority of liberals’ refusal to fight in any wars.
It’s far from over.
They also launched the political campaign of one Hussein Obama.
That was the real last laugh.
On one level, the story of the last half-century is the story of the radical left’s march through the institutions. On another level, though, I think it’s the story of how the same cultural forces that produced and empowered that “destructive generation” kept operating until much of our society suffered from the same pathologies. America is a more nihilistic, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, angry place than it used to be. And sadly, I’ve come to believe that the problem goes well beyond the left.
America is more nihilistic and angry because of the Left. It was way too tolerant of the personal liberties allowed the Left. How did the Left do it? It took advantage of America, played and preyed on America by American rules, starting in the days way before Alinsky.
We condemned McCarthy because of his alcoholic behavior and ignored his charges. We condemned George Wallace for being a racist and ignored his rants at the “pointy-headed bureaucrats” in Washington. We deemed Theo. Roosevelt, one of the fathers of progressivism, as one of our greatest presidents and a national hero. We praise Lincoln for saving the Union despite the horrific cost in lives and treasure and principle of such salvage. We elected Woodrow Wilson, who was the white Barack a century ago.
Just a few examples. It’s been a long time coming.
One source I was talking to in 2008 said something to the effect that Ayers and/or Soros were just private citizens, clueless and not real revolutionaries that we need worry about. That source took the Leftist alliance very lightly. He did not believe that someone like Ayers was dangerous, mostly because there was no one following in Ayers shoes that had power or was willing to kill/die for their beliefs. A few years later, I told him that I had an answer to his question. Ayers does have a successor, a revolutionary, and that was Hussein. Which, if he isn’t willing to die, is certainly “good at killing” as Hussein O himself said about himself.
It is proof positive of the power of Democrat propaganda that Lincoln, a person voted in to respect property rights of everyone in the Union, was rejected by the Democrat party, became known as a tyrant mostly due to the efforts of a founding member of the current Leftist alliance. If people here can be so deluded by centuries old propaganda, there’s little hope that the newest generation will see through the veil of illusion.
Slavery was not completely eradicated by US Civil War I. Most of the masterminds and plantation lords survived and utilized the KKK, even to the modern era with Robert KKK Byrd demonic senator for life. If WWII was inevitable because of the actions in WWI and afterwards, so the same is true for the US. Gulf War 1 – > Gulf War 2. America’s beef, so to speak, with the Democrat party, those who betrayed everyone in America, South and North, black or white, Red or yellow, is long in coming. That historical crescendo cannot be stopped by any mere mortal or any mere leader.
There is a certain lack of due reverence and respect here. Ayers and his ilk are our moral and intellectual superiors. If you don’t think so just ask them. They’ll tell you. They are largely from privileged backgrounds and attended prestige colleges. And those on the left certainly worship them.
True, they may be totally ignorant of history and the lessons it has to offer. And they may lack an understanding of human behavior and motivation. And their proffered solutions may have decimated the communities they claim to champion. But those are really only minor faults. Right?
The Lefts and their feminist slaves think Ted Kennedy was a lion of a man. The woman that drowned should be proud her death led to the political campaign of such a man.
That is what they think. What is what they have written. That is what they have made into being.
It’s not faults, but merely necessary sacrifices for the greater good of human utopia.
The whole reason why Ayers is free now, is because their houses were illegally searched by the FBI. On whose orders? Why, on the orders of the person who orchestrated Richard Nixon’s watergate scandal from beginning to end. So called Deep Throat