Replies

..it’s long, it’s down in the Comments, but every word is worth reading IMO:

8. Jim Anderson:

I believe that the only person Ayers is ‘jerking around’ is Obama. My reasoning:
From ‘69 to ‘73 I was in college. I knew, at a quite personal level, some very radical people. One went – like Jane Fonda – to Hanoi during the war, and spoke over the radio to our troops, urging rebellion against American officers. Another is still in prison for bombings, including those of courthouses and police stations. I later wrote a thesis on some of these folks and interviewed them a few years after their time in the ‘movement.’

Let me tell you something I learned about such fellows – and then let me show you some quotes from Bill Ayers web site – posted after Obama’s election – that have been ignored by the mainstream press.

Then, perhaps, we’ll have a clearer view of what Ayers’s recent statements about authoring ‘Dreams’ really mean.

The toughest thing for these guys was to grow up and mature intellectually. They were ideologues and malignant narcissists. Compromise was a word they could not spell. You either were totally with the ‘program,’ or you needed some ‘educating.’ If you couldn’t be educated, you needed to be crushed.

Unfortunately, during these formative years, they got mentally locked into a state of arrested development. Their adult identities and their pride and sense of achievement, were based on these narcissistic acts of their college years. Inconsistency bothered them. They could not look back and say, ‘I was wrong.’

This was especially so because to admit they were wrong about anything, was to admit to their own intellectual and moral limitations and to the narcissistic evil inherent in themselves and their violent and evil actions. They could not bear to entertain thoughts that they, themselves had been evil.

Ayers has written of the terrible ‘knowledge’ that burdened him as have others of his ilk. That ‘knowledge,’ was a narcissistic belief that they were the only ones to view clearly the ‘evils’ in the society around them. They were the ‘enlightened ones.’ This is what made them so dangerous. They – like Marx – believed that a higher knowledge had revealed itself to them.
This ‘higher knowledge’ revealed to them that the system was so corrupt that any concepts of honesty, honor, integrity, etc., espoused by good men were, in fact not truly concepts of honesty and honor at all. Rather, these concepts – which bar normal and good men from acts of duplicity and criminal violence – were actually evil fruits from the poisonous tree of capitalism that were masquerading as good character traits.
Thus, guys like Ayers found it unnecessary to be constricted by such character traits. They could act with what others considered dishonor and duplicity because they were possessed of a higher, purer, big picture knowledge. That knowledge, combined with their narcissism, made them gods who could toy with the lives of the unenlightened.
They decided that the ‘higher knowledge’ revealed to them that any version of ‘goodness’ that came out of a corrupt society was a product of that corrupt society and, therefore, corrupt in itself. That’s why honest debate with these fellows was impossible. It’s also why they adopted the idea of pursuing revolution by ‘any means necessary.’ And they meant it.
They saw and see the American culture as so inherently evil, it could not redeem itself. Therefore, fair play was not and is not on the table. The system must be wrecked.

Understanding these viewpoints as held by the unreformed radicals of that era are essential to understanding what motivates a guy like Ayers in these recent weeks.

I believe that Ayers is now disgusted with Obama. On Ayers’s own website’s homepage, he has not posted any musings since the time between the election and inauguration. Before that, his postings were prolific.

Guys like Ayers do not – as I said – entertain compromise. They are not the type to put lipstick on a comrade’s pig. If the comrade strays – their loyalty to him is gone. To paraphrase Trump: ‘Hey, it’s not personal. It’s just politics.’
But for the Ayers ilk, there is absolutely no difference between the personal and the political.
Friendships come and go, but the ‘movement’ is forever.’

I believe the reason that Ayers has not posted musings since January is because he sat back to see if his puppet/buddy was going to be ‘pure.’ Again, I don’t believe Ayers has it in him to gloss over his former friend’s [Obama’s] political compromises. So, I think he just decided to say nothing and watch.

Now – take a look at Bill Ayers’s last blog site posting entitled: “New Year’s Resolution…2009…miracle and wonder.”
Note his references to how politics will be free of ‘ego’ in the age of Obama Note how he bids good-bye to ‘self-referencing’ politics, etc. And note that he sees the end of war in sight. Then think how that jibes with Obama’s performance for the last nine months. [Talk about disappointment?]

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“New Year’s Resolution…2009…miracle and wonder”
December 31, 2008
“Goodbye to politics as arid, dry, self-referencing and self-satisfied. Goodbye to star wars and inner wars. Goodbye to deference, didacticism, ego, and complacency in a heartless world. Goodbye to prisons and border guards and walls—whether in Palestine or in Texas—and goodbye to quarantines, deletions, and closures of all kinds. Goodbye to all that.
I resolve to create new spaces overflowing with life, crackling with the surprising and contradictory harmonies of love, stunning in their embodied hope for a better world; to step into the unknown, to jump off the edge, to dance the dialectic; to welcome the new and the now, to learn how to live again and how to love anew; to nurture relentless curiosity, simple acts of kindness, the vast complexity of humanity, the wild unruly convergence, the poetics of resistance, and the wonder of it all.
I resolve to embrace a new world in the making, planetary peace and inner peace, and I resolve, each day in every way, to vote for love—all kinds of love for all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances and situations.”

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Now that I’ve quoted from the December 31st post, take a look at what I’ve excerpted from the Ayers analysis, posted four days before December 31st. It contains his musings about who ’should’ become Secretary of Education. Note how he refers to Arne Duncan, the fellow who ultimately got the job. And though he doesn’t reference directly Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, he attacks virtually everything for which it stands. After you read that, consider that just around two weeks ago the NEA went ballistic when they learned that Obama was not only planning on continuing with projects based on the ‘No Child Left Behind’ approach and philosophies, but was actually going to seek to implement more testing and ‘merit pay’ and other items the NEA despises.
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Excerpt from Ayers’s Post re: the appointment of the Secretary of Education, December 27 2008:

“Of course I would have loved to have seen Linda Darling-Hammond become Secretary of Education in an Obama administration. She’s smart, honest, compassionate and courageous, and perhaps most striking, she actually knows schools and classrooms, curriculum and teaching, kids and child development. These have never counted for much as qualifications for the post, of course, and yet they offer a neat contrast with the four failed urban school superintendents–Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Paul Valas, and Arne Duncan–who were for weeks rumored to be her chief competition.
These four, like George W. Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige of the fraudulent Texas-miracle, have little to show in terms of school improvement beyond a deeply dishonest public relations narrative. Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization—this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call “reform.”
December 27, 2008

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When Ayers states “Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization—this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call “reform,” he unknowingly was describing the exact reforms that Obama has recently announced!

He also says that Arne Duncan, who eventually got the Secretary of Education job, accomplished little as Superintendent in Chicago beyond “a deeply dishonest public relations narrative.”
Are you starting to get the picture?
Ayers was willing to knock Arne Duncan and in pretty tough terms. Then he posted the New Year’s resolution stuff about the end of war, and – poof – Bill Ayers fell silent.

I think – as I said – he’s been the ‘watcher,’ keeping his own counsel.
Ayers has had time to observe that Obama is a socialist, but, unforgivably, an unprincipled one who deals with lobbyists, etc. Not only that, Obama has big-time Wall Street buddies.

Worst of all, however, from Ayers’ perspective: Obama announced his education plans –[ right before Ayers made his statements about his authorship of ‘Dreams’ to National Journal and to the conservative blogger, Anne Leary] – to institute Bush style education reforms including increased goal-oriented student testing and promotion of educators based on merit as determined from that student testing– all of which Ayers has extensively opposed. And you better watch out for what happens when an unreconstructed radical ‘opposes’ something.
When he refers to the ‘fraudulent’ Texas miracle, he is referring to the educational reforms Bush made as governor which resulted in, ironically, greatly improved literacy, especially among the Hispanic community.

So, within days of the Obama administration’s announcement to pursue very conservative programs to improve education that expand on the Bush reforms – what happens?

He fires a huge shot within an inch of Obama’s bow. Out he comes with the statement “I wrote Dreams From My Father.”

Guys like Ayers have no sense of personal loyalty whatsoever when their political goals are threatened. They would rather destroy a politically imperfect friend while totally supporting a political ‘comrade’’ who just happens to have sex with kittens and later eats them – but who never varies from the ‘party’ line. As long as the political ‘goal’ is pursued with single-mindedness, all is forgiven. But nothing is forgivable if you stray from the political goal.

I think Ayers is very bright – and certainly bright enough to know that his message would be interpreted in all sorts of confusing ways. The conservatives would think he was duping them or punking them. The Left would be sure he was screwing with the conservatives. The pundits would think it was a demonstration of post-middle aged ‘yippie’ theatre to attract attention and have a joke.

But I think they all have it wrong.

The statements in which he said he wrote the book were – I believe – his way of delivering a ‘message-shot’ across the bow to only one person: Barack Obama. Ayers doesn’t give a damn about the royalties. He doesn’t give a damn about the credit.

He does give a damn that his communist lackey isn’t a complete commie lackey. And for that he cannot forgive him.

Ayers doesn’t have to say another thing. He can just keep giving these same ‘book quotes’ and sound Delphic.
He doesn’t have to organize petitions against Obama’s education program. He doesn’t have to persuade the public that Obama is wrong. And anyway, those are tactics idealized by our Republic’s founding principles.

Nope – he doesn’t have to do any of that ‘democratic’ stuff. Why?
Because Ayers once again possesses a ‘Bomb.’ He has, in his basement, the makings of a literary Bomb that will throw the system and the ability of the president to govern into chaos.

The man to whom he was sending a message – Obama – knows what Ayers statements of authorship mean. It means that Obama has strayed from orthodoxy. He has strayed on Guantanamo, on renditions, and on ending war. He has, within the last four weeks, particularly strayed from the orthodoxy of modern education preached, taught and professed by Ayers and the teachers’ unions. The warning is there. If he doesn’t see Afghanistan and Iraq end., along with the many other Bush programs Obama has adopted, including the expansion of Bush’s ‘abhorred’ educational reforms – then the next book by Ayers – with supporting documentation – will be “How I Tried to Destroy America In My Twenties in the Sixties – And How – In My Sixties, I finally Brought Down an American President.”
Remember – guys like Ayers do not compromise. They’d rather destroy their ‘own guy’ and see the reins turned over to a conservative republican than support what they consider to be a ‘hypocrite.’

It’s a bizarre and parallel universe in which Billy and Bernie, et al, live. I’m sure it’s hard to believe that I’m right. But I tell you – I met some very scary people in those radical days. Some are still pretty scary but too old to do any damage. But – if you cross them – whatever damage they can do, they will do.

Sincerely,
Jim Anderson