GRIFF AND THE UNICORN
by DAVE SOKOLOFF
Griff & the Unicorn, Copyright, 1969,
University Daily Kansan.
Obscenity and Southern Africa
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following editorial is taken from THE RICHMOND NEWS LEADER, Richmond, Va. The editorial is offered in the hope that it will broaden our readers' view of America. We are not agreeing with the editorial's logic or with its premises, both of which are shoddy.)
The general sentiment of the general public these days seems to be that the nation has enough printed obscenity around to suffice for quite a while. But apparently there is not enough to satisfy the people at Foreign Affairs, who, in their October issue (volume 48, number 1), offer their readers a piece of writing as vile as anything to come down the road in some time. It is not about sex, though, but about southern Africa. The author of the piece entitled "War in Southern Africa," is Russell Warren Howe, identified as a visiting professor at the University of Dakar (Senegal) on Africa's west coast.
In southern Africa, he begins, "the restless spirit of Nazism, with its accent on genetic myth and legal caste, will perhaps be put to rest in a swamp of blood." He then proceeds to discuss what he calls "liberation" movements in South Africa, South West Africa, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese overseas provinces of Angola and Mozambique. The so-called liberation forces—trained and armed by the Communist, a fact that Howe acknowledges in a show of unexpected fairness—of course intend to liberate those countries from white rule. Such liberation, he says, would be consistent with "the current of history." That current, though he never says so, is dialectical materialism, a fancy name for communism.
Oh, this is a slick whitewash job. He says the Communist-backed freedom - fighters, especially those in Rhodesia, intend to "institutionalize uniformed warfare under Geneva
Convention rules." Think fast, now: When did you last hear of a Communist guerrilla movement ever operating under the Geneva Convention? Ever? Two months ago the North Vietnamese declared officially that they have about as much use for the Geneva Convention as they have for Barry Goldwater. The forces of liberation, Howe continues, have the basic advantage of "motivation;" besides, "the general quality of white troops appears to be poor." Well, if it's motivation you're looking for, try talking sometime to the average white Rhodesian or South African; and if the white troops are so poor, then why have the Communist forces in southern Africa so miserably failed so far?
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Foreign Affairs, so enthralled are they with contemporary political obscenity, clearly cannot make.
As Howe suggests, there may indeed be a blood bath in southern Africa. The cause, however, will not be Nazism, but the obscurity called communism that Howe—and, by extension, the editors of Foreign Affairs—evidently seek to impose on the area. Southern Africa is tranquil, the most tranquil region on the African continent; the whites in that area are doing magnificent things for peoples who, many of them had not discovered the wheel 100 years ago. The 15 million bantus in South Africa, for example, own more automobiles than the 200 million persons in the Soviet Union; there are more educated bantus—educated at white expense in the five white-ruled countries of southern Africa than in all the other African countries combined.
freely-exercised political rights and the political rights of the Communist bloc—distinctions that Howe and the people at
And if political rights are what Howe and his fellow racists at Foreign Affairs are concerned about, most of the bantus in those five countries soon will be able to understand what political rights are. If Howe and the people at Foreign Affairs will leave the whites alone, one day the bantus will be educated sufficiently to exercise such rights intelligently. Then the bantus will be wise enough to distinguish between
Gus DiZerega
Rapping left
In a master political stroke President Nixon conjured up the greatest enemy of peaceful progress in the United States—the "silent majority," the vast numbers of "little men" who pay their taxes, work from 9 to 5, and look out at the rest of the world with confused and embittered eyes. and the "silent majority" is no longer silent.
When American troops gun down women and children in Vietnam it is the "silent majority" which looks impassively on or castigates those who made the event public . . . as did Senator Dominick. Even more obscenely, some "Americans" call it communist propaganda and attack Life for serving the purpose of "International Communism." So-called "Men of God" such as Dr. Walter Couch of Wichita's Plymouth Congregational Church speak of "several very significant extenuating circumstances" (which he never names) surrounding a massacre which surpassed in brutality the Nazi massacre of Lidice, Czechoslovakia.
The "silent majority" are the Americans who applauded the police riot in Chicago after seeing the supposedly anti-police television coverage of the carnage. They are the people who feel incompetent to judge political issues and grovel before those in power so long as their rulers use the whip more viciously on blacks, students, and Vietnamese than on themselves.
The "silent majority" are correct when they say they are not competent to decide matters of high policy. Unfortunately they do feel competent to pick the men who decide on this policy, men like Larry Winn. One only wishes they would be consistent in their recognition of their ignorance and stay away from the polls.
American capitalism has waged war against the people of Vietnam for nine years. It has done the same to the people of the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Cuba, Greece, and elsewhere. It has poisoned and polluted the sea, air, rivers, and lakes of our country in the name of progress.
For it is the American system as it now exists which fosters the inflation which eats away the "silent majority's" savings. It is this system which cruelly taxes the middle Americans not primarily for welfare as they stupidly believe, but for bombs and missiles to preserve American investments and markets abroad. It is the America of Rockefeller and Nixon and Mellon and Johnson which ensures that all the little man will ever be able to do is take orders—never to live for himself and his dreams. The left has yet to shoot people in their beds like the law and order cops of Illinois, or shoot bystanders off of buildings like the law and order police of California, or lock black children in church and tear gas them like the law and order police of Kansas City. The violence of student and black demonstrations is dwarfed by the day to day horrors perpetrated by the current American system at home and abroad. Yet in their zeal for law and order the silent majority reacts like a dog beaten daily by its master—it attacks everything different from it except its master—and then wonders why the beatings never stop.
The "silent majority" speak of "patriotism" and "Americanism" but their philosophy of government is reflected in how they raise their children—when asked "why?" they answer "Because I said so." They expect their children to accept this travesty on the human mind as unquestionably as they accept it from their master, the state.
It is tragic that Nixon awakened the "silent majority." It will not end our struggle but it will make it longer and, in the end, more cruel. But the greatest tragedy of the silent majority is that once they were young, once they had dreams and hopes, once they could love and work for a future for themselves and their country. The greatest tragedy is what the country they revere has done to them.
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