'How did we get here?' Finally, here's the answer

Lots of people resist the notion that the horrible things that have gone wrong in the United States could possibly have been the outcome of a planned rebellion.

I don’t purport to be able to delineate how such a plot could have been accomplished, but the evidence is irrefutable that the radical left of the 1960s outlined a strategy for bankrupting the United States “empire” and that is just what happened. If it happened by accident, then the guardians of our country were guilty of gross malfeasance in turning a blind eye to the step-by-step draining of our treasury.

More likely though, it happened on purpose, just the way it was proposed to happen. You can see the blueprint in the 1969 manifesto called “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows,” written by leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society such as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Here it is in a nutshell:

“The goal is the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism. Winning state power in the U.S. will occur as a result of the military forces of the U.S. overextending themselves around the world and being defeated piecemeal; struggle within the U.S. will be a vital part of this process, but when the revolution triumphs in the U.S. it will have been made by the people of the whole world.”

So the 1960s radicals who are most associated with working to end the war in Vietnam really did not oppose the war — they just opposed the United States in the war. In other words, they were not pacifists; they were traitors.

This strategy of forcing the United States to “overextend” itself militarily around the world was part of a worldwide communist game plan that the 1960s radicals adopted as their own. They credit Chinese communist Lin Piao and Cuban guerrilla Che Guevara with the initial insights that led them to embrace the Vietnam War as an inevitable step in the collapse of the United States.

Here, they quote Lin Piao:

“U.S. imperialism is stronger, but also more vulnerable than any imperialism of the past. It sets itself against the people of the whole world, including the people of the United States. Its human, military, material and financial resources are far from sufficient for the realization of its ambition of domination over the whole world. U.S. imperialism has further weakened itself by occupying so many places in the world, overreaching itself, stretching its fingers out wide and dispersing its strength, with its rear so far away and its supply lines so long.”

Forget about the anti-imperialist rhetoric. You can agree with me that the United States is the exact opposite of an imperial power and still see the accuracy of Lin Piao’s argument from a practical point of view. There is no doubt that the United States since World War II had used its military forces globally in a way that was unthinkable in previous eras. You and I probably see the U.S. military as a force for good — not empire building — in Europe, Korea, the Mideast, Japan and elsewhere, but there is no doubt that our treasure has been depleted, our resources diminished, and our strength dispersed as a result.

Thus, Bill Ayers and his fellow revolutionaries in SDS and the Weather Underground seized on the idea of what Che called “creating two, three, many Vietnams” in order to “mobilize the struggle so sharply in so many places that the imperialists cannot possibly deal with it all. Since it is essential to their interests, they will try to deal with it all, and will be defeated  and destroyed in the process.”

Can anyone say Lebanon, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria? Not to mention the old favorites in Korea, Germany and Japan. Nor can we forget the unnamed war on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Yep, the “Weatherman” manifesto had it right. It WAS “essential” to U.S. interests to fight against communism and oppression in various parts of the world, and we DID try to “deal with it all,” even though realistically we probably should have known all along that we could NOT possibly succeed. Here you have the classic strategy of the ancient Chinese general, Sun-Tzu, of using an enemy’s superior force against itself. Or for those who like a more direct analogy, it is the equivalent of jiu-jitsu, the Japanese martial art that turns an enemy’s superior strength into a weakness.

We don’t have to agree with the communist rhetoric of Ayers and his colleagues in order to see that they were fundamentally correct about the impact of the United States overextending itself militarily abroad. The cost of being the world’s policeman had to be accounted for somewhere at home, even if without explicit acknowledgment. Thus, U.S. involvement in military campaigns overseas was good for communist revolutionary goals because it would create unrest at home. The “Weatherman” manifesto foresaw that “the condition of all workers is worsened through rising taxes, inflation and the fall of real wages” as war payments deplete the ability to pay for domestic entitlements. It is this economic impact on the people at home that makes SDS a proponent of war abroad.

“The more the ruling class is hurt in Vietnam, the harder people will be pushed to rebel and to fight for reforms.” All you have to do is elide the word Vietnam and substitute Iraq and Afghanistan and you will see the fruition of this strategy in contemporary America — overextended, bankrupt and embracing socialist reforms like Obamacare.

The unified field theory of rebellion as envisioned by the Weather Underground saw support for the “liberation movements” in Vietnam, Africa and elsewhere as one way to ensure social chaos in the United States with the ultimate aim of upheaval and rebellion. In other words, war abroad was good because it ensured revolution at home.

As explained in the “Weatherman” manifesto, “The huge defense expenditures — required for the defense of the empire and at the same time a way of making increased profits for the defense industries — have gone hand in hand with the urban crisis around welfare, the hospitals, the schools, housing, air and water pollution. The state cannot provide the services it has been forced to assume responsibility for, and needs to increase taxes and to pay its growing debts while it cuts services and uses the pigs to suppress protest. The private sector of the economy can’t provide jobs, particularly unskilled jobs. The expansion of the defense and education industries by the State since World War II is in part an attempt to pick up the slack, though the inability to provide decent wages and working conditions for ‘public’ jobs is more and more a problem.”

That last paragraph is the perfect summation of where we are as a country, and since this series of articles began with the question, “How did we get here?” I think we have to answer that we got here because we got out-thunk by a handful of smart-aleck college students who went underground as fugitives and then went even deeper underground when they resurfaced 10 years later.

In essence, the revolutionaries who foresaw the collapse of the “empire” in 1969 patiently drilled down into the establishment that they so despised and then waited. Waited. Waited. Little by little their dream has been fulfilled. The state can no longer provide the services it has promised. The private sector can’t provide jobs. The public sector, which picked up the slack, has overextended itself with jobs that can’t be afforded, unemployment benefits that never end, health care that can’t be paid for, and debts growing at an unsustainable pace.

“How did we get here?” You now know the answer.