Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Vietnam rage syndrome
The rightysphere is writing about Paul Auster's absurd defense of sixties vandalism:
Being crazy struck me as a perfectly sane response to the hand I had been dealt — the hand that all young men had been dealt in 1968. The instant I graduated from college, I would be drafted to fight in a war I despised to the depths of my being, and because I had already made up my mind to refuse to fight in that war, I knew that my future held only two options: prison or exile....
Forty years ago today, a protest rally was held on the Columbia campus. The issue had nothing to do with the war, but rather a gymnasium the university was about to build in Morningside Park. The park was public property, and because Columbia intended to create a separate entrance for the local residents (mostly black), the building plan was deemed to be both unjust and racist. I was in accord with this assessment, but I didn’t attend the rally because of the gym.
I went because I was crazy, crazy with the poison of Vietnam in my lungs, and the many hundreds of students who gathered around the sundial in the center of campus that afternoon were not there to protest the construction of the gym so much as to vent their craziness, to lash out at something, anything, and since we were all students at Columbia, why not throw bricks at Columbia, since it was engaged in lucrative research projects for military contractors and thus was contributing to the war effort in Vietnam?
Speech followed tempestuous speech, the enraged crowd roared with approval, and then someone suggested that we all go to the construction site and tear down the chain-link fence that had been erected to keep out trespassers. The crowd thought that was an excellent idea, and so off it went, a throng of crazy, shouting students charging off the Columbia campus toward Morningside Park. Much to my astonishment, I was with them. What had happened to the gentle boy who planned to spend the rest of his life sitting alone in a room writing books? He was helping to tear down the fence. He tugged and pulled and pushed along with several dozen others and, truth be told, found much satisfaction in this crazy, destructive act.
After the outburst in the park, campus buildings were stormed, occupied and held for a week. I wound up in Mathematics Hall and stayed for the duration of the sit-in. The students of Columbia were on strike. As we calmly held our meetings indoors, the campus was roiling with belligerent shouting matches and slugfests as those for and against the strike went at one another with abandon. By the night of April 30, the Columbia administration had had enough, and the police were called in. A bloody riot ensued. Along with more than 700 other people, I was arrested — pulled by my hair to the police van by one officer as another officer stomped on my hand with his boot. But no regrets. I was proud to have done my bit for the cause. Both crazy and proud.
Richard Fernandez looks at this from one angle, honesty with one's self:
While I personally have nothing against torching buildings and brawling under appropriate circumstances, I can't understand why Paul Auster simply can't say, "I ripped out the fence because I wanted to. I rioted because I decided to." The idea that a 61 year old man might act irrationally because the mere thought of US policy in Iraq deprives him of reason is a pretty disturbing. It suggests there's a whole population of people of seemingly normal people out there just waiting to go berserk at the mere mention of politics they disapprove of.
It's my hope that the next time he goes on a rampage it's because he's decided to.
Me, too. But beyond that, Auster fails in two other ways. First, much of the damage done in the sixties and seventies was not even aimed at actual institutions, such as Columbia University. In Iowa City, rioting students trashed downtown small businesses. What was it about Vietnam that justified an attack on local shopkeepers? The answer is nothing; the objection was to capitalism, and the shopkeepers were obviously bourgeoisie. Sixties apologists like to blame Vietnam now, but back then the radical vandals dreamed of taking down the whole system, man. Auster's memory is either selective, or entirely personal to him.
Second, Auster does not answer the question in the mind of any normal person reading his essay: How is his defense any different than -- dare I say it? -- the protests of the fascist thugs who tried to explain themselves after World War II? No, I'm not talking about retired concentration camp guards, but garden-variety brownshirts who had to work their way back into society's good graces. "Well, I was filled with rage for the humbled German people and broken German nation, and would do it again today." Huh?
Auster's essay is a useful reminder, though, that today's BDS moonbats really are not all that angry, or perhaps they just do a better job of controlling themselves. Forty years ago, their spiritual ancestors were so nuts that they took their rage out on entirely innocent people who were guilty of nothing other than supporting the "system." Now they just write blogs.
6 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Wed Apr 23, 07:54:00 PM:
I've no doubt that they're just as angry and irrational. But they're also pussies. Seriously, could you take today's gun-hating, latte' sipping, pacifistic, vegan dieting, animal-rights protesting leftists' claims of 'revolution' as anything more than a joke?
Most of them are (and many admit to being) *afraid* of weapons.
Che' and Mao would roll in their graves* to see their modern disciples.
(yes, I know that neither one is in a grave, per se', but sayings don't allow much wiggle room sometimes)
By 
, at
Wed Apr 23, 08:00:00 PM:
I remember the 60's and 70's. I remember the hippies supporting anyone who was against the USA. However, I did see some hippies protesting the Chinese government once, right down the street from my house. They were protesting the Chinese Communist Party members for having the audacity to visit.... Disneyland.
Rage on, flower people, rage on!
By Escort81, at
Wed Apr 23, 09:32:00 PM:
Forty years ago, their spiritual ancestors were so nuts that they took their rage out on entirely innocent people who were guilty of nothing other than supporting the "system." Now they just write blogs.
Ah, the progress of modern technology.
By TRundgren, at
Wed Apr 23, 09:59:00 PM:
Oddly enough, if all goes just right (from the US perspective) in Iraq, GW Bush may end up being the most "progressive" and radical president of the last 50 years.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Apr 23, 10:03:00 PM:
So they finally admit they were crazy. Paranoid crazy, angry-crazy, whatever. Of course it was all still someone else's fault, but it's progress of a sort.
By Donna B., at
Wed Apr 23, 10:33:00 PM:
My brother was in Columbia's class of 1968 and an English major. He tells me today that Columbia and the neighborhood really needed that gym. And that the West End was okay a few times when one first got to Columbia, but the Gold Rail was much better. (I'm sure it was only much better because my brother was there.)
He says "My friends and I were largely immune because we had been working downtown for weeks for RFK, who we knew was going to change and save everything for the better. None of us would have ever trashed a fence or an office or Dr. Zbignew's (can't spell Brezenski) manuscript. We were basically on the cops' side except for some of the eviction excesses."
Just another view from someone at the same place at the same time.
