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Hang on a sec, lemme finish swigging my Metamucil, here. Gotta adjust my bifocals, too. Us old'ns have to be careful, y'know...
OK. So. Da Flap about Code Pink. First, a disclaimer: I don't know the organization, don't have more than a superficial familiarity with their actions, have been quite appreciative of their local (here in Santa Fe) grassroots work (that's me in the 15-year-old Duster, honking in support when I pass the sign-displayers outside Whole Foods on Sat. mornings, guys!), and have only a very casual knowledge of their current DC actions that are setting off Da Flap.
So, why sticketh my oar in?
Well. Watching Da Flap develop, watching the rancor grow, the splits widen, the names called get harsher, etc., I suddenly began to experience the weirdest deja vu. You know how that is? And it gets to be like an itch, you haveta scratch it, wondering and ruminating and cogitating about where... when... did I have this feeling before?
Took a coupla days.
Came to me just now, with a huge BINGO!!!!
Step into the Wayback Machine with me, boys and girls, for a trip to that fabulous era, the 1960s and early 1970s. Into the bowels of the Student Union at a large Midwestern University, where a certain organization, which I shall cloak in the pseudonym "Students Against The War" (SAW for short) is meeting.
Something odd is happening. Although there have always been disagreements, arguments, etc., over the tactical details of planned actions, we've never before experienced anything quite like this. A dichotomy, a split is forming. Rancor, indignation, earnest passions let fly not upon the common enemy, but upon each other. Those who want to stick to the tried and true forms of action at odds with those demanding something more "direct." More "forceful." More "confrontive."
The group, members of which have occasionally been arrested during civil disobedience actions for such heinous crimes as Blocking Traffic and Looking Sideways At The Fuzz, begins developing an ideological schizophrenia. At the next protests, two contingents pursue different tactics. The group that goes in for the "confrontation" stuff throws blood (back then we didn't have HIV, this was safe but disgusting) on the doors of the Federal Building. Gets into shouting matches with the Fuzz, giving one-finger salutes and accusing them of being Imperialist Lackeys, etc. More arrests.
After this happens a few times, tactics escalate further, and SAW begins being identified in newscasts as that "radical" organization. The old membership begins to drift away, the original leadership is overridden and/or invited to take a back seat. SAW becomes marginalized as radical nutjobs. Eventually someone (maybe a SAW member, maybe not) is implicated in the tossing of a molotov cocktail. Serious crackdowns ensue. Most of the rest of the membership that is not keen on quite such confrontational actions leaves, the rest goes underground or affiliates with other organizations. SAW is no more.
The whole process took, perhaps, two to three years.
Later, we found out that our good friends at the Federal Bureau of Instigation had had undercover agents planted in the group since very nearly the beginning. They'd worked subtly. They were never the ones directly advocating the escalations in tactics, they tended to work with other, very sincere, members who were impatient about "DOING something MEANINGFUL." Insidiously planting their suggestions and letting stooges do the work. Staying in the background. And so on.
THAT'S where I got this feeling of deja vu.
It's a-ringin' like a bell, friends.
reminiscently,
Bright
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