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It's time once again for our regular Friday edition of weekly from the Atlantic Monthly with Richard pi and here now is Mr Piatt this week from the land of monthly two. Articles not too far apart and thought really although in geography The first is notes from the Journal of a gentle revolutionary by James as Kuhn and James Cone in with a twenty year old Columbia University junior participant in the insurrection there last spring and an admitted sympathizer with the radical aims of his generation and these passages from his journal show him to be more humanist than revolutionary more Democrat than anarchist hint to despairing elders that our world may be in better hands but I think this excerpt is taken from his book The strawberry statement from Random House in March which notes from the Journal of the gentle revolutionary by James as Kuhn. Sunday July fourteenth relating events becomes difficult when there are no events to relate Monday July fifteenth I went downtown to try to get my tape recorder repaired trying not to get a parking ticket while I was at it when I failed in both endeavors. This is a pretty old machine said the man in the service department things six years old if it were a kid it would be in first grade but you're not supposed to board a tape recorder that long ago and if you did you're not supposed to have kept it so the man couldn't fix the microphone but he'd sold me a plug for a dollar and fifties that one dollar and fifty cents I would have been able to go to the movies six times for that when I was a kid July fifteenth nineteen seventy two. The young man walks into a restaurant I'll have a cheeseburger he says how much says accountant that's eight dollars and one dollar and sixty tax makes nine dollars and sixty cents how do you sell them so cheap volume Well here's a five hundred dollar bill and let's see if I have the sixty cents no change rusted again back at the apartment I read a mimeographed paper by Tony paper called the mass strike it began the coincidence of Colombia and Paris should dispel the dominant illusion of the left in this country that our radicalism is derived mainly from the particular is use of the Vietnam War and racism in fact of the IT Naaman racism is used only particular manifestations of deep forces simultaneously energizing mass actions in diverse parts of the advanced capitalist sector unquote Now that may not be terribly surprising but it hit me kind of hard like it dispelled my dominant illusion. We youth's say like all the time because we mistrust reality it takes a certain commitment to say something is inserting like give you a bit more running room I've never been much of a political comprehension man I'm more of an issue man I don't know much about the capitalist sector but I know what I like and I don't like the Naam war or racism papers like the mass strike just don't speak to me right now but I thought that Papert might so I went to see him in the evening we went to a bar and talked over the bourgeois blare of a Jerry Lewis movie on the decadent color T.V. on the wall. Paper is head of the S.D.S. Labor committee sometimes referred to as the thought faction as opposed to the action faction of S.D.S. I thought I might pick up a few thoughts I asked him with some embarrassment over the incredible simplicity of my political consciousness what difference it makes who the trustees are he said it's not important who they are it's what they do what they do is use the university to shape train and funnel manpower for the needs of the American capitalist empire I asked him if he thought we'd made any mistakes in the strike he thought we'd taken a political step backward by organizing on a constituency basis students should play an important role in the revolutionary process yet we have students concentrating on student gripes letting blacks worry about blacks women take care of women laborers labor and so on essentially what he said was that everybody's got to be together in a big thing local organizing around parochial is use is not the way the first proper step is to educate everybody to the fact that what's putting them down is the capitalist system the Labor Committee was currently leafletting garment workers I asked him who he wanted to be the next president of the country I wanted to know if it was possible for me to be a decent radical instill route for clean. He said liberals like McCarthy are concerned with co-opting militants especially black nationalist that's what local control is about the classic fascist method of destroying the movement by isolating little groups to deal with the top that way you give them the traffic light or the textbook they want but never freedom therefore it would be better for the movement if one of the flunkies tricky or the Harper were elected then there wouldn't be any co-opting supped thrown to the people and the revolution could go on developing it seemed to me that he was essential a saying that people should be kept on happy so that they will know they're unhappy they mustn't be fooled by improvement of things I agree that Crean tries to co-opt people with little things but if they are a little happier for it I'm for it let the liberals do their little reforms and if they are really meaningless up the people will decide that and keep pushing I asked Tony if he would do anything to build the revolution and he said that he would then we talked about gun control laws he like all the real radicals was against gun control legislation he pointed out correctly that with the new laws eighty percent of blacks would not be able to get guns also leftists couldn't get them whereas all the flaming Birchers and suburban reactionaries would be armed to the teeth he said the Constitution guaranteed the right to bear arms in order to counterpose an armed populace to be armed a state that's true and he said real gun control isn't possible until you disarm the police I agree but the police aren't about to be disarmed certainly not while other people have guns he said the real point of the legislation is to prevent the blacks from defending themselves against the cops who shoot them everyday. I wonder if that's true Southern senators are against gun control anyway if the blacks get armed the police will just use it as an excuse for more shooting and in shoot outs the state always wins the Obama out blocks in Harlem if they want to I just don't like guns I don't want anybody to have them people who talk about this or that group being better armed than another are talking as if they were playing some sort of game where you move gun pieces around to best advantage they couldn't realize that in real life you don't draw a card that says dead you feel bullets tearing into you and breaking your bones and leaving holes that all your blood runs out of if you live in the gutter dying I don't want that to happen to any person including persons who for good or bad or no reason are cops there must be better ways to fight guns than with guns and if there aren't we ought to think up some if we get guns we're just like them and have no right or reason to fight them and everybody would be better off without us July seventeenth I was reading the Manhattan phone book this morning sometimes I read the phone book when I get tired of listening to the correct time tape going through it sticks in tones routine reading the directory is more interesting but listening to the recording is easier they're both pretty good diversions anyway on page twelve hundred is an ad for New York karate Academy who karate you get to judo boxing a must for city living I'm living in a city I don't know karate it remains to be seen if it's really a must. A girl I knew used to assure her mother that I'd be all right walking through the city at night because I was a crew Jock and I don't know what good that was supposed to do to me maybe I was supposed to hit muggers over the head with an oar or roll away from them something this afternoon I fled the city for home to try to get some work done on the book fifty miles from home I calculated that I had to buy fifty cents worth of gas to make it counting my change I had precisely fifty cents not counting the grey penny counting my change I dropped a quarter on the car floor and never saw it again if they want to get you you're going to get got no use fighting it I told the gas man my story and he gave me fifty cents worth not everyone from Sumeria is bad July eighteenth coming into my home I saw a red and the black and struggling on the walk I thought I might arbitrate the issue by stepping on both of them that would be an object lesson for them in the uselessness of fighting but then it wouldn't do them any good because they'd both be dead my front walk is the constant theater of such meaningless little wars it's a lot like the world you know in the evening I went to the airport to see a short off on his flight to Paris I went to the observation deck and watched in amazement as people waved and shouted goodbye to various screams and flashes in the sky I thought that was a pretty good example of twentieth century depersonalization but I found a much better one when I tried to return to my car in the airport garage I found it in thirty five minutes flat July nineteenth reading over the book I fear I'm giving the impression that I'm hanging pretty loose bemused and don't overly care about anything well how's this. Leave me and my friends alone bastards get somebody else to fight your blank wars you're up against something here because we're young and won't bend and we're against you think twice before you build your next huge blank blank turnpike and try to throw people out of their homes because we won't let you think twice before you pour your stinking bloody money into more weapons because people are hungry and we won't let you go we need good schools and houses for people to live in and it could be done and we're going to make this country do it we've had it up to here with you and you don't have much time left man we don't even know who you are but we're going to find out you're playing with fire and fire burns baby I mean this I mean it well hear me you're going to get human or your stinking bodies are going up against the wall I don't get mad easily but I'm mad now I'm going to stay mad until things change you change them or we change and I don't care but the choice isn't going to be yours much longer sorry about that I'm not apologizing I mean I'm sorry that's the way things are anger and hatred is a place I go to sometimes don't make me live there July twenty third in the evening Laura and her friend and I went to pick it hamper downtown all try to assign hypocrite honky Humphrey was addressing some biggies at the world of another sign pretty well expressed the theme of the rally keep America Humphrey Now I know I know all he'll be was quite a civil rights trailblazer in all his ten years ahead of his time unfortunately his time was one hundred forty eight I have lots of rational political disagreement with the man but basically he makes me sick. The red helmeted loony who was impugning on the realty that time in the library had somehow landed the position of MC at their rabbi introducing Jerry Reuben he said we care more about his cop broken disk than about all the broken bones dead or alive in Robert Kennedy I was amazed the police were appalled the crowd was absolutely silent if someone had cheered I would either of punched him or thrown up on him Ruben non-plussed got up to speak waving near him was a very graphic arts a black in red resistance flag and an American Revolution seventy six flag which reminds me in this city at least you see tons of cars myriad autos more and more every day with American flag decals on the windows the squad cars all have them and every time I see when I think there goes another war freak another support our boys on the way to the grave not and I go down inside I think it's too bad that I should be in a position where I demand that cops remove flags from their cars because the cops on supposed to be political it's a real down when you get bad vibrations from your own flag I don't want orgasmic joy gory either I just wanted to wave up there and I live around down here content to have it above us so what I would suggest and this is the only concrete suggestion in the book is that all the leftists put flags on their cars to two defection allies the flag thus depriving the right of one symbol and also assert our potential for patriotism our desire to have a country to be patriotic about so there's Ruben standing behind these flags and he says there is more freedom for a Cuban in one day than most Americans find in a lifetime and quote. Ruben has been to Cuba and you and I have and so let's not pass that off too lightly he went on to say Americans find happiness in other people's happiness and I think that's true there were about fifty sixty McCarthy people picketing humper on their own and Reuben said for them that cleans role is to put it in the system cool the rebellion in the streets it seems to me that unless rebellion in the streets is an end in itself and if the queen can make the system work then we shouldn't mind coming in off the streets the thing is though that Queen can't make the system work and if it could he probably wouldn't unless the rebellion was pushing him I really don't know open the jails he said let everybody out and then put the pigs in jail I figure there are no doubt many pigs who should be in jail but not all of them I hate to hear anybody talk about all or anybody that way or perhaps of every pig precinct had a different color uniform pink pastel blue white then people wouldn't lump them all together in the same pen I'm no cop lover but saying pigs are all this or pigs or all that reminds me of sentiments like the only good Indian is a dead Indian a phrase which produced far too many good Indians America the great power is over he said looking very tiny against the skyscrapers the five hundred dollar a plate dinners are of he said as he stood outside one come out with your hands up up against the wall said the crowd up against the wall said the crowd up against the wall said the crowd. The next speaker was one of your standard strikers from Colombia saw fifteen Columbia kids I knew he said there's going to be a revolution and it's going to be armed ask the Panthers if that ain't true dig it babies he said ain't quite frequently and spoke with what I presume he thought was a working man's accent victory is not around the corner it's going to be twenty thirty forty fifty years it's going to be our lives that's what it's gotta be the ballot or the bullet we know which way we've got to go there is no democracy in America not for black people or white people either but can you institute a free society with guns means and ends to means shape ends then the black teacher pointer spoke we're going to do unto others as they've been doing unto us we're going to even things out a little start taking care of business in the proper way then the official permitted rally ended and the leader said we should all go home now but that there are various ways to go home which is code for now we're going to march in the streets but we're not going to say so because we don't want to get busted for inciting to riot Laura and I marched but her friend went home because she said the whole thing made her sick all the hatred which is a very honest thing to say as if you want to make it with the activist hatred is supposed to be all right with you hatred is not alright with me but I've seen things such that a little ranting against pigs and Biggie's doesn't upset me too much as a matter of principle I don't think we should return hatred for hatred people have been doing that too long I think we should Chalo the pigs in the candidates in the biggies with gifts we should love them for hating us we should thank them for caring we marched all over the place screwing up traffic summon me all the time wondering how this was going to end any wars or feed anybody someone suggested it's a Jewish race riot which you can add to the list of the many unfunny things I've laughed at. Then the time came as it always does when the cops decide they've had enough and bust people and beats on I was amazed at how scared I was of cops at Columbia I had no fear now I had to be brave because all kinds of fright chemicals were coursing around inside me Laura and I stood on the corner and watched very calmly as the cops grabbed people and twisted their arms behind them and slug them in the stomach and hit them on the head and also took the flags in two of them and walked on the verse some reason people all around us was getting it but we made as if we were strolling or something you can fade into the woodwork that way then we went home nothing like a little danger to cement a relationship Wednesday July twenty fourth and I was outside this morning and it was pouring water all over the place and I couldn't help remarking my absolute inability to make it stop I ducked into a restaurant and as I was ordering a cheeseburger a young woman beside me turned and started talking to me she must have known you're not supposed to do that but she didn't seem to care she asked me what month I was born September she wanted to know what day I said the twenty third that's Libra I said if that was what she was thinking about you're a cusp she said of what T. a cusp do you know what that is it means you were born on the day the sign changes what does that make me. You're both She asked me if I went to school I told a Columbia and she asked me how I felt about the demonstrations I told her I was in them she asked me if I saw one side or two sides I said I saw two sides in fact I said that's why I can't be too close with the radicals Sometimes I just don't feel sure of myself as they seem to then she asked me if I thought progress was fast or slow I said scientific progress is fast because it builds on itself the curve goes like this I said tracing a hyperbole in the air acceleration of history social progress is slow it's practically nonexistent we're about where we were ten thousand years ago but you have to try to make it go fast so that it will go slow if at all do you think evolution is going on next I said Sure evolution is always going on Civilization hasn't stopped evolution but she meant evolution of mines Oh I said years because today incomparably greater than ever before numbers of people don't have to worry about food or clothing or shelter so they're free to think also a vastly greater number of kids are in college now what's important is not so much what they learn but just that they're all together in a community to develop their ideas instead of being all spread around so I do expect changes she agreed but wanted to know what I thought the year two thousand and thirty would be like I said I'd be dead then you don't give yourself much time she said about seventy five years old that's from statistics No From what I feel like I wouldn't want to live too long as a vegetable but wouldn't I be curious to see what happens I said that's irrelevant because no matter how long you live you're not going to live through the year after that and you can't really see anything because the vast preponderance of time will transpire after you've died well what did I think it would be like it would be very different from now. Just by two thousand people will be working a six hour week also they will shop by dialing computer and not have to move around and where plastic shoes with the last generation to share in the human heritage we have to work and move we're closer to the people of one hundred eighty than to those of two thousand and thirty the last of the Mohicans she said No I thought that was a good way of putting it we are the bridge generation I continued with the product of all the past will determine all the future depressing or what No it's exciting it's a challenge it's up to us to keep huge or people human assuming that's desirable is it I don't know I mean in Brave New World the people we're all always happy they would dehumanised low but the fact remains they were happy it was repugnant to the observers but they couldn't step outside the system to see they were just happy that seems all right do people have a step back from the systems and look no I don't think so not most of them if they did they wouldn't do what they do are you enjoying your life and I enjoy my life. Nobody ever asked me that before I'm not sure what it means yeah I'd say so I wasn't last fall I was completely uninterested in anything I went around smashing things all the time. What made you change I changed all my courses the new courses weren't important it was the changing them I could start all over Also it stopped being winter eventually in the days got longer and now things are kind of exciting my stock seems to have risen I said knowing she'd be pleased by the use of some type of astrological metaphor but sometimes I wish I didn't have to write the book I told her about the book because I don't know anything I know she said and I believe she did know I look up in my head then there's this great emptiness a void there's nothing there I don't know anything. And I was reading Erich Fromm and I thought it was good but it made me despair of ever knowing anything because he knows so much you know everything I swear from he said tells how he describes how but he doesn't why I asked her how she happened to start talking to me that you always talk to every sitting beside No she saw something in my eyes certain look oh. You've been chewed up and spit out she said a couple of times I know that I said I've been through some of the big chomping machines so that's why she said that's why I asked that. She explained I went home and looked in the mirror at my eyes. Notes from the Journal of a gentle revolutionary by James as soon as some of you may know these are available reprint these notes if you'll simply drop of friendly word of cheer to me at. Our closing article is a viewpoint mix and China time to talk by James E. Thompson Jr Mr Thompson who wrote How could Vietnam happen in the April Atlantic with an East Asian specialist at the Department of State in the White House from one nine hundred sixty one through sixty six now teaches history at Harvard Nixon and China time to talk about James the Thompson Jr The recent years accustomed us to political irony is the idea of a Washington peaking detente under the presidency of Richard M. Nixon strains the imagination could anything be more bizarre than a Nixon Mao summit yet to considerably less bizarre indeed almost plausible would be a meeting between Nixon enjoy one lie two of the most skilled practitioners of political survival in the post-war world more than merely plausible would be the new administration's seizure of an opportunity for maneuver in progress in Sino American relations Mr Nixon's bitterest critics denounces bent toward opportunism but it may take just such a tried and true talent to break that twenty years of deadlock between Washington and the king what is the opportunity at hand. In the narrowest most immediate context the chance to talk with the Chinese it was on February twentieth and to do so on the basis of one of the least political invitations that has come our way since one nine hundred fifty five an invitation to reach agreement on principles of peaceful coexistence wider than longer range context the chance to move toward the normalization of Sino American relations and the bringing of communist China into the international order such a may sound grandiose and visionary but they are central to the opportunity the Warsaw meeting in February can offer a fresh start for both sides it comes a year after the last such conversation in January one thousand nine hundred sixty eight during the intervening months both China and America have been preoccupied with other peoples at home both have been shocked on somewhat differing grounds to be sure by Servia behavior in Eastern Europe both of watched with differing degrees of anxiety and reluctance as the Vietnam War edges from the battlefield to the conference table both now emerge from two very different leadership crises the cultural revolution in our dramatic election year somewhat stabilized and ready to deal anew with foreign policy issues of course the cultural and ideological chasm that separates speaking from Washington remains deep yet each side might be ready for a gingerly new look at the other or at least for testing of the climate that is the significance of Warsaw Unfortunately Mr Nixon and advisors seem to understand as do the talented China experts within the State Department and they have accepted the Chinese offer with grace and speed. But the Warsaw meeting must be viewed in the context of the wider opportunity the new administration's chance to come to grips at last with this and Tragedy of the China problem for a decade now and especially since one nine hundred sixty one China specialists inside and outside the U.S. government have argued for a new strategy to replace the old doctrine of containment and isolation this new China strategy calls for continued to Terence a possible aggression by the Peking government but also for systematic efforts at the De isolation of that government at its people such efforts it has been endlessly argued both inside and outside our government should take the form of unilateral US and Mischa to vhs to open contacts and communications with China freeing of travel restrictions in both directions an end to the embargo in non-strategic trade acceptance of P. King's membership in the United Nations and other international bodies proposals for disarmament discussions suggestions for scientific and cultural exchanges and even the offer of defacto recognition the Pappas of such a strategy to present the Chinese with the clear option of an alternative relationship with the United States of normalization a peaceful coexistence if you will in the place of Mao's vision of eternal. The prospects for the success of such strategy in the short run probably close to zero each initiative would be rejected and denounced by Peking but even in the short run not absolutely ZERO some of our good for China has seemed too fluid its inner workings to obscure for a clear indefinite judgement Nonetheless the new China strategy has always been offered in terms not of short run gains but a long run consequences its effect on the thinking of future Chinese decision makers who may choose to not divide already checked the Maoist view of international relations with such consequences in mind the price of unilateral American initiatives of unilateral American flexibility coupled with continued deterrence has seemed very little to pay and the possible benefits of seem very great now in the past eighty years Washington's proponents of a new approach to Peking achieved less than striking success they won a few skirmishes travel regulations were belatedly in grudgingly modified the official rhetoric was improved and Mr Johnson called for reconciliation with picking one Mr Humphrey wanted to build bridges and the possibility of a trade relaxation was broached but the only U.N. strategy was close to year after year. Peking was used as the shaky pretext for a thin anti-ballistic missile system and Washington escalated the Vietnam War perilously close to China's borders the reasons for inaction are not hard to guess preoccupation with Vietnam was undoubtedly central So after one thousand nine hundred sixty two was preoccupation with Soviet American relations Russia required attention as a primary nuclear antagonist in addition in a world divided between good and bad communists and white in yellow ones are instinctive sympathies lay with the good and the white Furthermore most Democrats Presidents Kennedy and Johnson included were acutely gun shy on China policy in the late forty's and fifty's Republicans had had a political field day with the issue of the loss of China moreover no Democratic president would move on the long term China strategy proposed by the specialist unless urged to do so by a secretary of state and of course Mr Rusk participate in China's laws persistent advocate of close containment and isolation a man apparently obsessed with Asian communism on the march was not one to make such a pitch indeed most of his tenure as secretary successfully prevented the recommendations of the specialist from moving forward to the president changes on travel and rhetoric occurred only when he was outflanked yet to reflect on these reasons for previous in action is to sense the new administration's opportunity. Vietnam for instance has moved to the conference table and we are firmly assured that the new president wants a non escalatory solution the process of Soviet American detente has been badly shaken by the invasion of Czechoslovakia Furthermore Garnaut eighty years of Democratic presidents and gone as well as Secretary Rusk.