The Ghost in the Machine

Mood: on fire
The evangelist from the Richmond Outreach Center in Monroe Park today was "on fire for Jesus." But to me, he looked like a ghost from the sixties. With his black leather jacket, white t-shirt, and pomp, he reminded me of Nick, the only other member of Students for a Democratic Society at my college. Nick was on fire to save America from a Moloch that was devouring its children and the children of other countries. He was a recognizable archetype in SDS, a working class hero from a working class neighborhood in Chicago - "don't mourn, organize."

When I say the only other member, you have to know that 1) it was a small school, and 2) to be a member of SDS by 1968 was to have a target painted on your back. Even worse, we discovered that the SDS we thought we had joined no longer existed. Nevertheless, we hung on for two more years until the organization reached late-stage dementia and disintegrated. Like the ROC, the SDS of the early sixties and even into the middle was a non-denominational group: anarchists, libertarians, progressives, Maoists, Communists, Trotskyites, Democrats, democrats, liberals, pacifists, and labor, peace, anti-war, anti-draft, and civil rights organizers, etc., all united under the vision of a more humane and just country.

Under external and internal pressures, it became a Marxist chowderhead marching and debating society. Words can't express the rage and disdain I feel for the leadership, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, et al, for inflicting their hydrophobia on the rest of us. These dung-flinging primates deserve a circle of Hell all their own where they will be suspended up to their necks in their own ordure for a thousand years. In the end, although they were men and women without a country, they were more American than they ever realized. They managed to take something good and turn it into crap.