>>Cox: I don't know. I do know that the only account of Weather from a
>>former Weatherman that did not seem entirely self-serving to me was tha
>>by Mark Rudd, as published in Radical History Review a few years ago. I
>>was pissed off at Dohrn 40 years ago and I'm a bit pissed off at her
>>still. She did a lot of damage to people then, and she seems entirely
>>unapologetic for it now. Having said that, I still reject the idea that
>>we can "learn from mistakes of the past." Those mistakes, when they face
>>us again, will be in entirely different circumstances and in quite
>>different 'dress,' and most self-labelled "criticism" of them is merely
>>self-important puffery. We can, if we study closely, and abstract
>>carefully, learn from what the past did RIGHT. Perhaps there is a
>>parallel here to Tolstoi on good and bad marriages.
>>
>>Carrol
Some of what Rudd writes on his web site reinforces for me why some women thought he was a sexist asshole. But he did post something I thought worthwhile, and he bills it as the best thing written about Weather. All I can say about most of it is, "no shit. double no shit. triple no shit."
The important thing, I think, in considering the Weathermen, is that we remember what America was like in the days when the Weathermen began. Hysterical days, to be sure, but I have a hunch that many of us saw our own nation more clearly then than we have since. Certainly it was clear back then that, in relation to other nations and to large segments of our own population, we acted as a nation in ways destructive and sometimes genocidal, and also that the myths and mystifications with which we surrounded our own activities kept, and would go on keeping, most Americans from realizing what their nation was or did.
I mean to say that groups like the Weathermen and the Panthers saw America quite clearly. But they were so unprepared for what they saw, and were so clearly lacking in any sense of viable strategies for dealing with what they saw, that they slid quickly and tragically into modes of reaction which were almost always hysterical, self-destructive, and self-defeating–to say nothing of their ineffectuality.
<no shit> Yet as easy as it is to say that, one must remember that the tactics the Weathermen adopted were nothing at all compared to the brutality to which they were reacting. This is what we tend to forget. .... </no shit>
<double no shit> Does this justify or explain their tactics? Maybe not. But remember this: Few of those who criticize the Weathermen or counsel other tactics actually practice other tactics or effect change in other ways. I know (as you do) all the criticisms of the Weathermen, and I can recite, also, the tactics for change that all agree are superior to their violence: patience, politics, reason, passive disobedience, peaceful protest, education, exhortation, etc. But we also know (though we pretend we do not) that none of these approaches has accomplished very much, save in the area of civil rights. And meanwhile lives end and bodies pile up, and how is it possible to be fully aware of this, and not be tempted to violence against those responsible or complicitous? </double no shit>
...
<triple no shit> They tried, as best they could, through violence, to topple or simply nudge the weight, the rock, of what it was they had discovered, and the fact that it moved not an inch is not necessarily what proves their tactics false. It may, indeed, be precisely what proves them necessary. </triple no shit>
<massively quadruple no shit>
I say all this reluctantly, simply trying to follow the thought through. I am by nature pacific–I can afford to be. But I do not know whether that is evidence of superior "wisdom" (compared, say, to the Weathermen) or merely the fact that my sense of immediacy and the presence of evil is not as sharp as their. Nor may my heart be quite as exposed or vulnerable to human suffering. Too much of our present day wisdom is simply exhaustion, complicity, and a taste for comfort. Had the Weathermen existed in other nations, we might have understood them better. But because they were Americans, their behavior called into question the whole issue of what the rest of us, as Americans, should be doing; and I suspect that there is something self-justifying and self-indulgent in the way we see the Weathermen today. What we say about them may be true, but we do not say it because it is true, if you see what I mean. </massively quadruple no shit>
read the whole thing. it's damn good.
shag