1/9/23

 Monday, January 9, 2023

In bed at 11:45, awake around 6:45, tried unsuccessfully for more sleep.  24 degrees, wind SW at 10, wind chill 13.  Sunrise 7:22 (finally a minute earlier), sunset 4:34, 9+12.

Pickles by Brian Crane

 

Mother Country Radicals.  I've been listening to early episodes of this podcast produced and narrated by  the son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, trying to understand the mindset of radicals in SDS, the Weathermen, and others dedicated to violent confrontation with the American Power Structure in the late 60s and early 70s, and what light, if any, it may throw on the mindset of today's right wing radicals. OCD?  Dohrn, Ayers, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis and the many other radicals saw clearly the inherent 'sinfulness' of American society:  racism, white sovereignty, capitalism's and consumerism's   and materialism's need for accessible foreign sources of raw materials and markets for goods and services and hence economic imperialism.  But these inbred characteristics of our culture, our economy, our country were apparent to many, many others who did not turn into revolutionary communists, as Dohrn described herself.  What psychic process drove or led some to become violent demonstrators, some to become deadly bombers?  How does a very smart, very pretty, White middle class cheerleader from Whitefish Bay High School become a demonstrator, a fomenter of riots, and ultimately an endorser of murders?  I suppose it's never one thing but rather a confluence of event and conditions believed to be intolerable.  In the late 60s we had a perfect storm of such events and conditions, principally police brutality and killings of  Blacks and anti-government demonstrators, assassinations of leftist leaders including MLK, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Bobby Kennedy, and looming over everything else, the war in Vietnam and the draft.

What are the components of the perfect storm now, the confluence of events and conditions that preceded, led to, and survive January 6?  The first thought that comes to mind is the huge difference between the radicals of the 60s and 70s and todays radicals: age.  The 60s/70s radicals were young, 'draft age'.  Todays' radicals are mostly middle age and older.  The young radicals looked forward to a brighter future; today's radicals look backward to a brighter past.  Dohrn graduated from U. of C. in 1963, the same year I graduated from Marquette.  She graduated from law school in 1967, the year I left the Marines for law school.  It was in 1966, starting her last years in law school, that she marched with MLK in the Marquette Park housing march, where King was hit by a rack, knocked to one knee and stunned.  But I suspect it had to be the extraordinary revolutionary year of 1968 around the world, and in Chicago, that concretize her conviction of the deep corruption of America society and government and turned her into, in her own words, a communist revolutionary.  The second fundamental difference between the radicals of the 60s/70s and today was socialism/communism.  The earlier ones were pro, today's are anti.  A third was attitude towards race in America.  The earlier radicals were allied with Black Power activists, today's are at best against any special reparative treatment for minorities i.e., non-White males, and at worst, bigoted racists and White Supremacists. 

Despite the radical differences between the 60s radicals and todays, are there any commonalities in terms of radicalizing events and conditions?  The preeminent one is race in America.  The earlier radicals were moved in large measure by the historic and then-current mistreatment of Blacks, crystallized by the 1964 KKK murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi.  A preeminent mover for today's radicals was the 1908 election of Barack Obama.  A Black president, Black First Lady, Black Attorney General, a Blacker government that we had ever known.  This followed decades of Affirmative Action programs in hiring and university admissions and other programs targeted at improving conditions of traditionally 'underserved' minorities, again non-White males.  Today's radicals view life very much as a zero sum game in which advantages for Blacks = disadvantages for Whites.  A program designed by the Department of Agriculture to compensate for decades of invidious discrimination against Black farmers is viewed as invidiously discriminating against White farmers.  Decades of compensatory programs since the 1960s have preceded current deeply-felt feelings of White Grievance.  And the focus again is on Government requiring or encouraging preferences throughout much of the economy to prefer minorities of all kinds, including women, over white males, in hiring  and promotion and the allocation of other benefits.  The infamous 14 word creed of ultraright terrorist group The Order is  "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."  The Proud Boys adopted it only changing "white" by  "Western," code for 'white.'  Blacks aren't the only minorities targeted for hatred and opposition by current radicals.  Jews rank high, witness Charlottesville and "Jews will not replace us," and immigrants, especially Hispanics, Asians, and others, witness 'the Great Replacement Theory" championed by Tucker Carlson and embraced probably by millions of Americans.  Is there a coalescing factor other than race that accounts for the growth of today's radicals?  More precisely, is there some modern equivalent of the Vietnam War and the draft , that coalesced 60s/70s radicals?  Some suggest it's the "deconstruction of the Administrative State," championed by Trump aide Steve Bannon, and indeed that may be implicit in the radicals' idea of "Liberty" and "Freedom."  Grover Norquist famously said his group's goal was "to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  Any other predominant motivating factor underlying today's radicals?  I can't think of any but I need to spend some time on this.  I just note that my gut instinct for years now has been that the biggest factor is Race. But wait a minute.  I'm missing the Orange Elephant in the room: Donald John Trump, lies, conspiracy theories, Q-anon, and highly significantly, social media.  I need to think about this some more.