« Research Notes: WIlliam Ayers in 'Fugitive Days' - Part III | Main | On this date - October 14th 1912 »

Research Notes: William Ayers in "Fugitive Days" Part IV

Day one ---

I was just thinking of a line from the movie "Minority Report": Watch out chief, you go diggin up the past, and all you get is dirty!"

I have to say that before this exercise, I didn't really know that much about the Weatherman except for little bits of this and that. After spending about 6 hours crawling around in the debris they left behind, I wish I didn't know what I know now. I do feel a bit dirty for my efforts. Over the past few years since 9/11, I have always struggled to deal with one thing that has always dropped my morale every time I think about it. Its not that there are people in the world who want to see everything we have destroyed (and us along with it), that I can accept. In an odd way, I think its almost an honor to know that certain people can't stand the idea and ideals of America.

That's not what gets me down. What gets me down is that there are so many people here, who have lived in the US, people who have benefited from its strengths and values, that think the exact same thing. I find it so hard to accept that so many people right here at home make a fetish of destroying this country and the people in it. They live right next door, they go to school with me, work in the same place as me, only when they see the flag they don't get a jolt of pride, instead they feel the urge to spit at it.

To put my feelings on what I've read so far in clear terms; The Weatherman and their generational ilk simply make me sick to my stomach. To read this book and the parallel efforts gives me the same reaction that I get when I read about the people in "Berlin Diaries" or "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" People who saw evil and didn't just do nothing but actually took steps to help the evil occur, then justified it later under a crazy quilt of half truths and rationalizations. These are deranged people. They are sick and very sad. They live in a deep dark place that I cannot quite see into. They live in world that is populated by the cartoon like figures on the front of Communist propaganda leaflets, angry workers rising up, cold hearted capitalists enslaving the working man while trampling on his children. Imagine living in a world where those goofy puppets that are in each and every protest are real, and thats the world these folks live in, only the 20 foot tall statues of Bush with blood dripping down his teeth are actually real. The reality I live in is nowhere to be found in this book. Where I would look out at the horizon in the morning and see the Sunrise and I would see it for the miracle that it is, they would see only a source of skin cancer and a burden to the oppressed working man picking fruit while the greedy rancher whips them from his air conditioned truck while it sits there belching its industrial fumes.

Every sentence is a pronouncement of class, race or privilege and each motivation is one made of revenge or retribution. They want to excuse their violence behind the shield of some sense of vigilante street level justice but its just violence for hates sake. There is no rhyme or reason in their acts, no strategy beyond the shock of it, no real end to justify the bloody means. It seems that the more bloody the means, the better.

From what I can see, until they managed to kill themselves in one big "todo" in Greenwich, it was all great fun to them. It seems to have brought meaning to their lives as if to say that this all had more to do with establishing their own sense of self worth to their poor wounded upper class "daddy didn't love me" egos than it ever did with "changing the world".

I simply do not get these people.

Posted @ October 14, 2008 08:32 PM | Current Affairs

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://varifrank.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/1164

Posted by: Vootie at October 15, 2008 05:04 AM

Posted by: Vootie at October 15, 2008 05:08 AM