Comments on Weather Underground Shmeather Underground

Thanks, Josh. As usual your insight is extremely valuable at times like these.

Rosebud.

elenchos, getting snowed by sycophants since 2003.

I am going to be soooo glad when the PA primary is over tomorrow night. Can this primary possibly sink any lower?

Never mind. Don't answer that.

True, but John McCain slept with her.

@3

Hate all you want, man. This new information has expanded my understanding in more ways than I could name. More than that, I bet. A lot more.

@5, I heard you slept with her.

She was good in Serial Mom.

Fortunately, Josh Feit is probably the only pro-Symbionese Liberation Army commentator in the universe.

Weather Underground? it's where I get my weather news. www.wunderground.com

Probably Bill Clinton slept with her. She does look pretty hot in that photo -- very femme Nikita.

I'm sorry Josh, but your recent modern political history needs a bit of review.

Patty Hearst was kidnapped by --and apparently joined-- the "Symbionese Liberation Army", based in San Francisco. It appears that nobody knows wtf the SLA actually was. "Symbionese"?, come on.

The Weathermen, later Weather Underground or just Weather, was on off-shoot of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), which was largely an East Coast/Midwest federation of politically active students. (Port Huron Statement, anyone?) Weather went militant, but generally stuck to planting bombs; famously two on 2 consecutive nights in Congress. They were also among the primary instigators of the "Days of Rage" street battles during the Chicago DNC in 1968.

Many of the former Weather members moved on to more effective organizing activist strategies later in life, such as the Prairie Fire Organizing Collective, based in Chicago.

The conflation of serious (if militant) political groups, with bizarro "fake" militant groups troubles me.

Uh, what? Both the Weather Underground and the SLA were violent scumbags. Bombs, yeah, that's serious all right.

Fnarf: So the fact that Weather had specific political positions and the SLA had practically none is overshadowed by their use of violence? They are both "scumbags"? How about the Black Panthers? Does their violence negate their political stance and actions? The French Resistance: does their use of weaponry negate their political determination? How about the Paris Commune in 1871? Or the East Timorese? Afghans vs. Russians in the 80's? Or...

We can discuss the *effectiveness* of their campaigns, but their efforts were informed by their beliefs. The SLA? Not so much, as they were probably a CIA black ops group trying to discredit leftists.

This will come as a shock to unreconstructed 70s lefties, but NONE of these radical groups with guns and bombs have any validity at all.

It's 2008. We're trying to win an election here. The constituency for the Weather Underground is nil. "Specific political positions"? Pull the other one. So did the Unabomber. So did Richard Butler.

@13: Yes actually, their use of violence completely undermined their political aims.