There's a Difference Between the Left and the Right.

    I'm pretty sure that I worked with a member of the Weather Underground years ago. I say this cautiously because it is supposition, not outright fact. A supposition based on clues he provided in our infrequent conversations.

      It was the late 70s and I had taken a job at Salishan Lodge as a bartender in the Lobby Lounge. The owners, the John Grey family, took better care of their employees than they were required to, and one of those employee benefits was a hot meal in the lunchroom in the late afternoon before the night shift went to work and as the day crew was coming off work. Good food in a common room. There was this guy I'll call Scott who tended bar in the banquet department and allowed the day bartender in the lobby lounge to take a break. We had had some conversations and eventually politics came up. Scott was very conservative and was a vocal supporter of Ronald Reagan's presidential run. He was also a chain smoker, I was a reformed smoker and you can imagine my feelings on Reagan. Still we managed to have civil conversations. The era of Republican cruelty and incivilty would not emerge 'til a scant generation later, after Republicans became the majority party in the House of Representatives and elected Newt Gingerich Speaker. North of Salishan, in Lincoln City was the Dorchester Motel where liberal and moderate Republicans would have a yearly conference, now an assisted-living home P. Tom McCall was a frequent presence, as well as Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, who attended each year. There were nice republicans in those days. I would not make that claim about Scott, who I am sure was quite happy with the Gingerich house after 1992. He reminded me in his political stance, of Tom Delay, who was Gingerich's Whip during that later period of Republican dominance and their insistence on our submission. Scott preferred to work the banquet bars because he was not a glib conversationalist, a necessity for a publican, but not a Republican. 

    We were talking one time about the 60s and the Vietnam War years. I made some mention of the Weathermen, in regard to the bombings of draft boards. He corrected me, "Weather Underground, they were the more extreme breakaway group of the Weathermen." I thanked him and corrected myself. This was as I remembered it but I had lumped both groups together out of lazyness. I was curious. Scott had never indicated any differentiation among leftwing groups before, preferring to bundle all leftists into the Democratic party fold, only some of whom were liberal. Indeed, I was still in the process of categorizing myself. I was anti-war, pro-civil rights, and had participated in peace marches during the late 60s and early 70s. The worst activity I had ever participated in was to chant, "hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today". At the time of our meeting I was an admirer of Jimmy Carter and was angry at how fundamentalist Christianity had treated one of their Christian family, especially when compared to their support of Ronald Reagan. But if pushed, I would approach liberalism, and liberal ideas cautiously. An irony since had it not been for a bunch of liberals in the late 18th Century, we would be cheering on Arsenal or Manchester United in World Cup Futbol and playing cricket. I was not at the time an atheist, either. I was quite firmly, if one can be firm about such a thing, agnostic. On this both Scott and I were in agreement.

     This revelation from Scott puzzled me. How did he know this nuance? A nuance that was rarely acknowledged by the right. 

" You seem pretty confident," I said. 

"Let's just say I have some inside knowledge. The Weathermen were the ones who tried to levitate the Pentagon. The Weather Underground would have preferred to blow it up." 

Our conversation had to end at that point, and he never directly answered subsequent questions. He seemed to be nervous about revealing too much and I gave up trying to press him beyond what he had already revealed. 

     Those days were stressful and the culture was changing. The "hard-hat" supporters of Richard Nixon were behind us, but the memory was fresh.  Attacks on peace marches were not unheard of, and things had not only continued in the days leading up to the 1980 election, they were possibly worse. Racial animus had also gotten worse, including attacks on Black Panthers and American Indians by cops and even the FBI. I was not among those defending Bobby Seal or Russell Means, I was silently supportive of their cause while not necessarily in support of their activities. On reflection, there may have been more substance to their claims than I was prepared to admit.

     Those times are remembered by me in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection. I was then, in short, like the Republicans who were silent about that insurrection, in support of their president. But there are differences. Differences that need to be acknowledged. I am no longer the emerging liberal of the late 1970s. My support is with the Weathermen, not their underground sibling. However, since that distinction is acknowledged by few, I will defend both groups as fighting for the same goals. 

     1) At no time were the Weather people supporting racism or fascism. I will acknowledge an uncomfortable closeness between the Weather Underground and the Red Guard of Europe. But their target was war, and the capitalism that encouraged it then, as now. Both American political parties could be included in that grouping. But one party can be singled out for its overbearing legal tactics. 

     2) The left in that time was not interested in "deconstructing the administrative state" as Steve Bannon has explicitely said, only making it fairer for minorities. That administrative state was seen as necessary to administer those more tolerant laws.

     3) The broad left of that day brought us the Environmental Protection Agency, the right fought it, and still does. Climate change had not fully emerged at that time but we understood later that that is a part of environmental protection. 

     4) It can be acknowledged that we were too tolerant  of Confederate statues and their battle flag, but I would argue that we were more interested in unity and were too idealistic to see that there could be no unity with southern hurt feelings. 

     5) We were less interested in unity with people who displayed the Swastika flag. The more extreme members of the left, the Weather Underground, sometimes, rarely but sometimes, could be seen with the Hammer and Sickle of the Soviets or the "Little Red Book" of Mao, but they were rare. 

     6) Both the left of yesterday, and the right of today had often violent confrontations with police and FBI. The legal authorities of that day were as virulent, even fascist as today. The killing of Fred Hampton or imprisonment of Bobby Seal comes to mind. There is no modern-day comparison with J. Edgar Hoover, though Christofer Wray may well be described as too timid. The police of today do not have people attending anti-war meetings undercover. Or at least they aren't as obvious as they were even in the Iraq war years. 

     7) While the Weather Underground was guilty of bombing draft boards, they set off the bombs early in the morning to prevent death and injury. 

     8) At no time did the Weather Underground invade the sanctity of the legislature of the United States, nor did they make any attempt to overthrow a presidential election and there were never any legislators who were complicite in their activities. In this 118th congress, the Speaker who tolerated, and even excused colleagues who supported the Jan. 6 insurrection, has appointed one of them, Jim Jordan, to head The Committee to Investigate the Weaponization of Government, said to be modeled after the famous Church committee that successfully investigated abuses by the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other secret groups that had exceeded their powers. Sen. Church's committee had only two Senators who voted against it. Their strong bi-partisan make-up gave them credibility and sucess. The very title of the Jordan committee, implies that the weaponization is conclusive, thus no longer an investigation.

     9) Finally, the serving president was not a party to far-right activities, as is evident in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

     I do not know what happened to Scott. I bumped into him some years later in the street. We had a brief but pleasant conversation and went our own ways. This was about the time when George H W Bush was president. I wonder what went through his mind on Jan. 6 2021.