“I was asked to do a lot of things by the Weather Underground leadership over the years and, toward the end, asked to do many things I didn’t even believe at the time were right, but I did them anyway. I let my friends talk me into doing them. Those acts mainly amounted to lying to people, rather than potentially injuring them. When I finally quit it was not just because I realized that the vision was unconnected to reality. Even then, as ever, I was acting more from emotion than ideology. Mostly I was angry at having been manipulated, and humiliated for allowing myself to be manipulated, and mortified at then manipulating others in turn. But no one ever asked me to carry out a bombing. Grown-up me wants to think that even if they had, as late in the process, say, as the moment when dressed in the bland costume of an office worker I had been handed the attaché case containing the ticking device, I would have hesitated, considered the implications, and declined to go through with it. But I was still a child during those years, who needed to tag along after the big boys, take their dare, win their approval. Yes, almost certainly, I would have done it.”
Quote by Jonathan Lerner
Work
Swords in the Hands of Children: Reflections of an American Revolutionary
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: The Naked Civil Servant
Source: The Journal of a Disappointed Man
Source: The Complete Works of a Lost Girl
Source: The Complete Works of a Lost Girl
Source: The Dressmaker's Gift
Source: Everyone You Hate is Going to Die: And Other Comforting Thoughts on Family, Friends, Sex, Love, and More Things That Ruin Your Life
Source: Assassin's Quest
Source: Doctor Sleep