Letters

To the People I Love c/o The Fifth Estate:

You will note with paradoxical titters that the “Silent Majority” of which Nixon speaks (that is, referring to “a nation of sheep”), is in fact a misnomer caused of social lingual conditioning. The silent majority in this country—I would like to believe—are those millions of young and old people both, who inside themselves, know the radical youth of today are right and correct.

This silent majority are the poor bastards stuck in offices or factories who long ago were hoodwinked into getting up to their asses in debt for houses, cars, etc., and who now are seeing the light, getting turned on; but because they can’t forfeit on their debts ‘cause of kids or a hang-up, un-turned-on mate, sit and suffer. They think they can’t do their thing for the revolution. Thus they are silent.

I don’t believe in “borderline cases.” People are intrinsically honest. They know when injustice is done, they know when they or others are getting fucked-over by the authorities that be; they know that the social mores of this society are based on mush-minded traditions that were originated by the super-capitalist nobles and aristocrats of old Europe. They know they’re human, that things can be much better, that money doesn’t make people better any more than grass makes them worse. Even racists wouldn’t be racist if they were forced to look honestly and without affectation at the problem. Get a person alone, speak to him honestly, and he’ll always concede that right is what the youth—as exemplified by the Chicago 7—are doing today.

The only question that remains is how can this silent majority “do their thing” for the cause?

Let me first say that it’s nice to know there are so many of them (the silent majority). They can (and do) support by learning the issues—getting their thinking clarified by educating themselves, in school, through such media as the Fifth Estate (which is getting better & better), and through other literature that can be openly procured. (I might mention here that it’s sad how ill-informed suburbanites are about common revolutionary issues.)

Also, the issues can be supported by writing—letters of support, to everyone; by supporting with money; by speaking to friends (& parents, siblings, relatives, etc.) who are in the dark about what the truth and the Movement is all about. In effect, support can come from old people no one would suspect are hip, high-school girls no one would suspect are sharp to the issues, and all in between who are getting restless watching and agreeing with what’s happening in this country (& what’s about to happen) and want to (feel they have to) get into it—be a part of something genuinely good—supremely good for all mankind.

Michael George

To the Editors:

What the fuck does Tom Haroldson mean by “Ecology Sucks?” [“Vote No On Survival,” FE #99, February 19-March 4, 1970] Who’s gonna make a revolution when they can’t even see past their gun-sights?

Nixon won’t spend money on pollution to get it over with because the people will have time to contemplate the system again. So why the hell do we need clean air & water and land? I for one can’t see freedom as walking down a free street, with a fuckin’ bulky gasmask.

I dig what you guys are doing, but this shitty stuff pisses me off, this is got the ring of one of Mao’s sayings: “Oppose anything your enemy supports...” The time is past for theoretical sayings and the time to move is now!!

Voting no to survival is screwed, cops can be offed, but the shit in the water & air stays. You guys do O.K.

All Power to All People.

Mick Schlega

Gentlemen,

I was given a copy of “The Fifth Estate” tonight and I thought you had some boss articles within. Unfortunately the “Subscription Blank” was already clipped out.

I am serving in Viet Nam, I am sorry to say, and would appreciate you sending me your paper without the subscription blank. After all being a Marine we have little enough as it is.

J.W. Cline

Fellow heads:

I’m a draftee who is stationed in the “fun capital of the world,” or in other terms—Long Bihn, Vietnam.

It’s really a down being here, and having your paper to cop would help pass the time. I’ve been cutting out articles from your paper and pasting them on my wall. It really gives the “fucking lifers” the ass.

Please keep up the good work. I’ll be waiting for your publication with great anticipation.

A Grosse Pointe Head

F.T.A. ALL THE WAY

To the Editors,

The Fifth Estate is a groove. I read it every issue without fail. I think it is the finest underground paper in the country (not counting the Guardian which isn’t really an underground rag). However, I’ve just got to reply to Sam Cohen’s piece on monogamy [“This Hallowed Institution,” FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]:

He says monogamy is evil and upholds the present class nature of the society. Back in the good-old-days of the caveman, there was free love and everybody was happy.

This is sheer bullshit. Monogamy itself is neutral, neither good or bad. If people choose to have a monogamous relationship, it will work out or fail depending on the people in it. The same is true with a communal-sex situation—sometimes its fine, sometimes it can be a bummer—depends on the people in it.

Also monogamy has nothing to do with the ruling class (see Cuba for example) or with capitalist relationships. A non-exploitive monogamous situation is (or can be) as socialist as a communal-sex one.

As for the cave man, his family structure was certainly not communal. Because of the hazards of hunting, they found themselves with a shortage of men—thus, small harems (one man-several women) were the predominant structure. The drawings on the cave walls show this clearly.

The problem in this rotten society lies with forced sexual relationships. I would agree with Cohen that nobody should be coerced into monogamy and the society should not teach that monogamy is preferable to some other arrangement. But, I repeat, to say that monogamy is inherently bad is just bullshit.

Lastly, while I’m on the subject, the people who push the monogamy-is-evil line the hardest are the Weathermen„ who used to argue their case in about the same way as Cohen. Now the latest Weather-hero is good-old Charlie Manson. I wonder now if I should have even taken the Weather-argument on monogamy seriously: after all, good-old-Charlie, top male-supremacist of the west coast hippies, had a harem of lovely young things. God/Satan-fearing “chicks,” too. Yours for the revolution!

Izzie Wright

To the Editors,

Every now and then, like a sudden and refreshing gush on an otherwise staid sea, emerges that which Thoreau is talking about in his assertion that one person can, in a certain sense, make a revolution.

One such a person is Mike Slaski.

At but 21—in one act—his accomplishment is more than most of us could ever hope to accomplish in a lifetime—the destruction of the nerve center of a corporation which thought no more in trafficking in napalm than people of Thoreau’s time thought in trafficking in slaves.

Just one existential symbolic act...to tell the world that this kind of property has no more right to exist than old slave auction-blocs or recent nazi gas ovens.

What makes Mike all the more intriguing is the ideology behind the act—not the state-oriented Old Left but the libertarian-oriented New Left, not so much Marx as Thoreau, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Proudhon and other anti-state personages. These, to Mike, are what the French philosopher are to the 1789 revolutionaries.

I remember that early chilly morning Mike was called down for induction. With a huge Resistance flag thrown over his shoulder, a buoyant grin, hair dangling in the wind, jeans and boots, into the Army building this 6-foot frame strides! (After which he’s ordered to see the headshrinker.)

And now facing him is a lengthy jail term. But now he is more than Mike. He is history, revolutionary history. He is 1776 come home, Waldon Pond still glistening, Easy Rider politicized.

“How does it become a man,” asks Thoreau, “to behave toward this American government today?” And answers, “he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” Mike likewise provides this answer—in action.

Thus does he and his eight comrades plant a seed, make an egg, an egg which, as goes one of Mike’s poems:

Will burst!

There will be

A holocaust

Of brilliant

Million colors.

And the phoenix

Will rise

To wing

The universe

Again.

Sam Cohen

To the Editors and Bob Wilson:

I would like to ask Bob Wilson (the cat that wrote in the last issue shaming the F.E. for believing that there is a time to pick up the gun) what would he do if he saw his brother running from a pig with a gun point blank at his brother and he had access to a gun? [Letters, FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]

Man I don’t dig on violence but man peaceniks like Bob Wilson are gonna have to realize that there is never going to be perfect peace because there is always going to be some motherfucker who is gonna fuck everything up. But at least there is a majority of us that can have peace after we get rid of this Pig Amerika society.

Tom Elliott

Editors:

Here I am sitting here in the Nam. Would you believe we get free beer and soda for every gook we kill? Talk about being an underpaid killer. 20 cents per gook. The damn lifers get all excited. “Wow! You just stopped another communist!” the pigs shout. I wish I could kill the damn lifer pigs.

Imagine—have a beer, you just took another human’s life. Fuck this army and Vietnam.

Make love not war.

Fuck the Army—End the War.

Peace brothers

Sp 4 Bopper