From <>:
Michael Bérubé - American Airspace: I’m a bit puzzled by the indirectness of Ayers’s reply. Not that I expected him to say, “up against the wall, Walter motherfucker,” exactly, but perhaps something like “yes, we went too far, and we alienated just about everybody. But surely you’ll remember, Walter, that it wasn’t as if nonviolent protests and marches were having any effect on the war policies of either party. And it wasn’t like proper parliamentary procedure was working in our favor, either. What’s more, people tend to get their chronologies all confused and compressed when it comes to the New Left, and everybody now thinks everything happened in 1968, as if we had a demonstration in Chicago, got beaten up by police, and went out blowing shit up the next day. Lots of stuff happened in between the Democratic National Convention and the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in March 1970, such as, oh, the secret bombing of Cambodia. So when you say that the violence of the Weather Underground allowed Nixon to get away with pursuing the war, I think maybe you have things a bit, how you say, ass-backwards.” Maybe something like that. Certainly, something better than “I don’t think we were the cause of any kind of reaction.” Anyway, I’m curious about what you all think—if you’re interested in having this argument again, of course.
Comments