Without any hope of winning on the issues, Republicans are now attacking Barack Obama for his relationship with a former member of the Weather Underground.
There’s a sad aspect to the way the candidate’s association with Bill Ayers has been distorted. Indeed, the way what Ayers himself did has been distorted.
I refuse to let the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys rewrite the history of the 1960s. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, were heroes who made tremendous sacrifices in the name of stopping an illegal, evil war.
Yes, they set bombs. But no one ever seems to mention that they set them in places and at times where no people were involved. All they were attacking was property, and they were attacking in what they saw as the only effective way against an administration that did more damage to the Constitution than any other one except maybe the current one.
Yes, Ayers has said he regrets not doing more. But he wasn’t talking about setting more bombs. He was referring to the fact that he wished he could have done more to end the Vietnam War sooner.
Until Ronald Reagan and Rambo came along, America had reached a pretty good consensus that the Vietnam War should never have been fought. There are plenty of conservative veterans of that war — living in red states — who would agree with that.
The war was evil. It was all about dominoes, about supporting a corrupt regime in South Vietnam and about making money for the military-industrial complex.
We knew that in 1969.
Why don’t we remember it now?
Maybe because we’ve been over-entertained and over-medicated, or maybe because we’ve been dumbed down.
I’ll say it again.
Bill Ayers was a hero.
11 thoughts on “In all honesty, Bill Ayers was a hero”
Bill Ayers is an idealistic bomber just like Timothy McVeigh. He was just lucky enough not to kill somebody in the process.
It can be really depressing to consider the level of actual contol the citizenry can effect. Looking around today, just as during that last great war, shows who really is in charge. BIG money and BIG war machine have all the chips, control the political process, even choose which candidates can be voted for, while BIG media serves them to hoodwick the people into thinking it all has individual meaning. Even the media “stars” who do the front line snow job are mostly just caught up in the blizzard.
Except for the “game” of it all, or perhaps even the comfort the game provides those at the top while they’re here… my question is WHY?
You really can’t take it with you.
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