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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Huge props to both Ayers and Shapiro for this inverview. Its most important function is to clarify the absolute dissolution of sanity extant in the Republic in the late 1960s, the sense of desperation and total destruction of soul, the sort of breakdown that made possible not only the Weather Underground but also the notion that our war du jour could be resolved if we could but "bomb them back to the stone age."
Not many sane folks wew walking around back then, and Ayers makes a great case for an insanity defense for the radical left, as well as the radical center, which would, had it been possible, probably have had Ayers killed back then in the interest of ratcheting down the vibrating lunacy of the moment.
For decades I've tried to explain to those young enough (and fortunate enough) to have missed that part of our history, as well as those too mentally constipated or too naive to grasp the sense of coming apart that pervaded everything.
Sarah Palin's notion that Ayers was a "terrorist" cannot be accurate because Palin is too young, too naive and too historically illiterate to begin to have a clue as to what it was like to be living in the Apocalypse. Everyone was right, which means, of course, that most of us were wrong. Those of us fortunate enough to have survived the end of the world have had time to gain some perspective, to learn a little, and to apply that education to the most recent near-collapse into chaos and the subsequent triumph of sanity and faith over rage and destructiveness. At last we didn't lower ourselves to the level of the internal enemy, and because of that we have won the day, at least.
No one won the first time around, and I think Bill Ayers understands this now. I didn't much like him back then and I'm not sure I like him a lot more now, but I certainly do respect him for having accepted responsibility for his part in a dark blip on a black expanse of our history, and to have survived to enjoy the triump of sanity over hate this time around.
I also have greater respect for Walter Shapiro (who I've never disliked anyway), for having diverged with Ayers in 1968, which earns Walter sanity points to spare. To find myself typing those words surprises me, but it's true, and it hold true for anyone who was able to stay even halfway balanced during a time when our world was coming apart.
One hopes this article will help make clear to the public once and for all just how irrelevant to Barack Obama (and to anything going on now) Bill Ayers and the collective lost American mind of the late 1960s is; how irrelevant it all is to anything anymore, except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale about passing along "war stories" to young, impressionable minds. We don't need another Weather Underground. We don't need to live in the past anymore. This interview helps administer Last Rites to a time when nothing made any sense no one knew the score.
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Salon headlines in your mailbox
