"BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: What to do till the FBI comes,

or Before the FBI: What to do till the Revolution comes"by Larry Tate, from 'Take me out to the Paper 3, no.4 (Nov. 14, 1967).....

note: I found this in "Voices From The Underground - Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press" edited by K Wachsberger...

I think it might profit the blogging community to look closely at the underground press from the sixties, because that's our legacy. anyway....

My feelings are as mixed as everyone else's but what I feel most strongly most often is that the Great Tradition [of Responsible Dissent in America] has failed, period. The American system can HANDLE dissent by denouncing it or ignoring it or (most subtly) praising it. We get to say what we want, they get to do what they want. Since all we ever do is talk anyway, we're happy to have our say and feel morally free to crawl home and wait for the apocalypse.
I am trully sorry if I sound offensively melodramatic. I will just, now, try to tell you what I think is happening in America. As the overt violence of the South came home to the ghettoes of the North, the overt violence of Vietnam and the various other places we are Containing something or other is coming home to America. The difference this time is that the great white middle-class will not find itself putting down an alien people, but its own sons and daughters. Young people, dissenters, are going to find out how it feels to have American armed might turned loose on them. And very probably the darkest time in all of American history will be upon us.
THAT sounds melodramatic, surely... The News media out there have been trying to make a big deal out of the fact that we didn't shut down the Induction Center; that we didn't shut down the Pentagon. Protestors Fail, they say again and again. Do they realize what they're saying? If we HADN'T failed, if we HAD taken over the Induction Center or the Pentagon, that would have been the Revolution. It would never have occurred to us to stress that we failed, since we knew there was no chance of our 'succeeding.' But the papers have to rush to reassure their readers that we didn't take the Pentagon by force, after all. Whew! Close shave!