PARTISAN REVIEW
61
"It makes none
to
me." I laughed, not wanting to take him seri–
ously.
"Listen, it'll polarize this country. Scare the pigs pissless ..."
"It'll produce repression if the government can hang it on us. You
have to
think
of your brothers, its effect on them."
Unperturbed, "Sure. But repression's coming anyway. It's halfway
here already. They'll get us all, one by one. Hell, let's bring the fascism
out in the open. Let's at least make the country honest. They hate
us and the blacks and the young workers, students, so give them the
excuse
to
show their hand . . ." On and on listing the reasons for
murder.
"But he's a
decent
man," I said, defending Lindsay, his decency
being about the only positive thing I could think of going for him,
"Maybe incompetent, but certainly decent."
"Decent? He's the best, the very best the System's produced. Don't
you understand? That's
why
we should assassinate him, because he
is
the best. Killing him, that'll keep the best away . . . if you can justify
killing Lindsay,
if
you can politically justify that, then you can justify
killing anyone." It was like something out of a Russian novel. It was
unreal to me, what he was saying, the enthusiasm and conviction with
which he advanced his argument.
"If
you got to thrill kill, why not shoot Nixon or Hoover or Thur–
mond? Why pick on poor Lindsay? What the hell's he done to deserve
that?" I was getting angry. The boy
believed
what he said.
"Because, Dotson," infinite patience in his voice, "those men are
not dangerous, not in the long run. They play their roles too well.
They're obviously the enemy, fascists . . . but Lindsay, the Lindsays
are front men that give people false hope in the System. They think,
if Big John's on the job, if the System produces him, then maybe we
should give the System time to reform. Well, there ain't any hope and
Big John shields the pigs, makes people think revolution isn't needed.
Assassinating him, wow! Like that would break the goddamn rules,
that would break them for good!"
"You have to make a better case than that." Tired, thinking about
a kid I talked through a night with in Boston who was planning to blow
up City Hall, had the blueprints and the traffic patterns, knew the
security system of the new building. His reasons were the same. Only
he was fifteen.
"It's so clear, can't you see? Lindsay's complicit in the System,
like he's part of it, man, like why should any politician, even if he isn't
a hack, be immune
to
death when Vietnamese aren't, the poor, the
blacks, the draftees aren't? Why should only the System use violence
