Points of Rebellion

A 16-year-old boy in Tokyo is symbolic of the dissent that is sweeping Japan. Japan has become identified with U. S. militarism, and some say Japan is now thoroughly subdued by the U. S. military approach to world problems. Japan is a huge U. S. Air Force base. It is also the only means by which the Seventh Fleet replenishes its supplies and is able to continue its operations in Far Eastern waters.

What worries the 16-year-old from Tokyo? The U.S. fear of Peking is the only major reason for our conversion of Japan into a military base. Yet neither the youth of Japan nor the older generation fears China. "We are blood brothers and have lived side by side for centuries."

Why, then, does Japan tolerate U. S. military bases in her country? The answer is an overwhelming fear of Russia.

That fear of the Japanese is as senseless as our own fear of Peking. Each senseless fear feeds the other. Whatever the Japanese youth may think of Russia, he sees the American military presence in Japan as inexorably involving Japan in a conflict with Peking. Our presence there has already had dire consequences, from the Japanese international viewpoint. They were pressured by us into recognizing Taipeh, a step that many Japanese--young and old--deem morally wrong. For the real China is mainland China, with her 800,000,000 people. Peking, not Taipeh, is the mirror of the 21st Century, with all of its troublesome problems. The Japanese--especially the young--want to get on with those problems, so that they will not fester and worsen.

The youthful dissenter in the U. S. probably does not see the Asian situation as clearly as the Japanese dissenter, unless he gets to Vietnam or nearby. Yet more and more of the youth of America are instinctively horrified at the way Johnson avoided all constitutional procedures and slyly maneuvered us into an Asian war. There was no national debate over a declaration of war. The lies and half-truths they were told and the phony excuses advanced gradually made most Americans dubious of the integrity of our leadership.

Moreover, the lack of any apparent threat to American interests, whether Vietnam was fascist, Communist or governed in the ancient Chinese mandarin tradition (as it was for years), compounded the American doubts concerning our Vietnam venture. And the youth rebelled violently when Johnson used his long arm to try to get colleges to discipline the dissenters, and when he turned the Selective Service System into a vindictive weapon for use against the protesters.

Various aspects of militarism have produced kindred protests among the youth both here and in Japan. There is, I believe, a common suspicion among youth around the world that the design for living, fashioned for them by their politically bankrupt elders, destines them either to the nuclear incinerator or to a life filled with a constant fear of it.

The Japanese say that the most dreadful time in history was the period when only one nation (the U. S.) had the atomic bomb. Then that bomb was used, and Hiroshima is not forgotten. To the Japanese, a sense of security came when Russia acquired the same bomb. They reason that that created a deterrent to the use of nuclear force by any of the great powers.

But we know that preparedness and the armament race inevitably lead to war. Thus it ever has been and ever will be. Armaments are no more of a deterrent to war than the death sentence is to murder. We know from our own experience that among felonies, the incidence of murder is no higher in Michigan and Minnesota (where the death penalty was abolished years ago) than in California and New York. Moreover, when Delaware restored the death penalty eight years ago, there was an increase, not a decrease, in the rate of homicides.

If the war that comes is a nuclear conflict, the end of planetary life is probable. If it is a war with conventional weapons, bankruptcy is inevitable. Modern technological war is much too expensive to fight. Vietnam has bled our country at the rate of two and a half billion dollars a month.

We still have the Pentagon, with a fantastic budget that enables it to dream of putting down the much-needed revolutions that will arrive in Peru, in the Philippines and in other benighted countries. Where is the force that will restrain the Pentagon? Would a President dare face it down?

The strength of a center of power such as the Pentagon is measured in part by the billions of dollars it commands. Its budget is greater than the total Federal budget in 1957. Beyond that is the self-perpetuating character of the Pentagon. Its officer elite is, of course, subject to some controls, but those controls are mostly formal.

It has a magnetism and an energy of its own. It exercises, moreover, a powerful impact on the public mind. Its public representatives are numerous and a phone call or a personal visit propels the spokesman into action. It has on the Hill one public-relations man for every two or three Congressmen and Senators. The mass media--essentially the voice of the establishment--reflect mostly the mood of the Pentagon and the causes the military-industrial complex espouses. So we, the people, are relentlessly pushed in the direction that the Pentagon desires.

The push in that direction is increased by powerful foreign interests. The China lobby, financed by the millions of dollars extorted and extracted from America by the Kuomintang, uses vast sums to brainwash us about Asia. The Shah of Iran hires Madison Avenue houses to give a democratic luster to his military, repressive dictatorship. And so it goes.

I have, perhaps, put into sophisticated words the worries and concerns of modern youth. Their wisdom is often instinctive, or they may acquire a revealing insight from a gross statement made by their elders. But part of their overwhelming fear is the prospect of the military regime that has ruled us since Truman and the ominous threat that the picture holds. Is it our destiny to kill Russians? To kill Chinese? Why can't we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together?

We seem to be going in the other direction. This year, we will spend $891,500,000 for developing the ABM, which is almost as much as we will allocate to community-action and model-cities programs combined; we will spend 1.7 billion dollars on new Navy ships, which is close to what we will spend on education for the poor; we will spend 8 billion dollars on new-weapons research, which is more than the current cost of the Medicare program; and so on and so on.

Race is another source of dissent. Negroes want parity as respects human dignity--parity as respects equal justice and parity in economic opportunities.

Police practices are anti-Negro. Unemployment is anti-Negro. Housing is anti-Negro. Education is anti-Negro.

Almost 50 percent of the Negroes live in a state of poverty. Over half of the 6,500,000 Americans of Mexican descent in the Southwest also live in poverty. Our food program is another cause of dissent. Millions upon millions of dollars go to corporate and other farmers to restrict production and to guarantee profits for the producers. Only meager amounts are made available to the poor.

Thus, in one year, Texas producers (who constitute .02 percent of the Texas population) received $250,000,000 in subsidies, while the Texas poor (who constitute 28.8 percent of the Texas population) received $7,500,000 in food assistance.

Of the 30,000,000 poor at the national level, fewer than 6,000,000 participate in either the food-stamp program or the surplus-commodities program.

Bias in the laws against the poor is another source of dissent. Vagrancy laws are one example. Many cities make being poor a crime. A man who wanders, looking for a job, is suspect, and he and his kind are arrested by the thousands each year. The police use vagrancy as an excuse for arresting people on suspicion--a wholly unconstitutional procedure in our country.

Bias against the poor is present in the usury laws and in the practices of consumer credit. There are some credit transactions where the monthly payment is so restricted and the accumulation of interest so rapid that one who makes time payments for ten years will owe more at the end than at the beginning. For the poor, the interest rates often rise to 1000 percent a year.

We got rid of our debtors' prisons in the last century. But today's garnishment proceedings are as destructive and as vicious as the debtors' dungeons. Employers have commonly discharged workers whose wages are garnisheed, and the total runs over 250,000 a year. In many states, the percentage of wages garnisheed has been so high that a family is often reduced to a starvation level.

Congress in 1968 passed a law requiring full disclosure of all consumer-credit charges. It also banned the discharge of employees whose wages are garnisheed and it reduced the percentage of the weekly wage that may be garnisheed.

But the charges for consumer credit are governed almost entirely by state law; and in 1969, practically all the states (at least 48) were asked to adopt a so-called model code, fashioned by the finance-company lobby, that increases permissible charges and makes the hold of the lender even tighter on the poor. Needless to say, the finance-company lobby did not recommend the introduction of neighborhood credit unions, whose interest is low.

Landlord-tenant laws are also filled with bias against the poor. They have been written by the landlords' lobby, making the tenant's duty to pay rent absolute and the landlord's duty to make repairs practically nonexistent.

Disemployment due to technological advances is becoming endemic. Private industry will not be able to take care of the employment needs of our mounting population. Yet no public sector of consequence is provided. Only the welfare system is offered and in the eyes of the poor, it pays the poor to be poor.

Another main source of disaffection among our youth stems from the reckless way in which the establishment has despoiled the earth. The matter was put recently by a 16-year-old boy, who asked his father, "Why did you let me be born?" His father, taken aback, asked the reason for the silly question. The question turned out to be relevant.

At the present rate of the use of oxygen in the air, it may not be long before there is not enough for people to breathe. The percentage of carbon dioxide in some areas is already dangerously high. Sunshine and green leaves may not be able to make up the growing deficiency of oxygen that exists only in a thin belt around the earth.

Everyone knows--including the youthful dissenters--that Lake Erie is now only a tub filled with stinking sewage and wastes. Many of our rivers are open sewers. Our estuaries--essential breeding grounds for marine life--are fast being either destroyed by construction projects or poisoned by pollution. The virgin stands of timber are virtually gone. Only remnants of the once-immortal redwoods remain. Pesticides have killed millions of birds, putting some of them in line for extinction. Hundreds of trout streams have been destroyed by highway engineers and their faulty plans. The wilderness disappears each year under the ravages of bulldozers, highway builders and men in search of metals that will make them rich. Our coast lines are being ruined by men who look for oil yet have not mastered the technology enough to know how to protect the public interest in the process.

The youthful dissenters are not experts in these matters. But when they see (concluded on page 257)Points of Rebellion(continued from page 164) all the wonders of nature being ruined, they ask, "What natural law gives the establishment the right to ruin the rivers, the lakes, the oceans, the beaches and even the air?" And if one tells them that the important thing is making money and increasing the G. N. P., they turn away in disgust.

Their protest is not only against what the establishment is doing to the earth but against the callous attitude of those who claim the God-given right to wreak that damage on the nation without rectifying the wrong.

There have always been grievances and youth has been the agitator. Why, then, is today different? Why does dissent loom so ominously?

At the consumer-credit level and at the level of housing, the deceptive practices of the establishment have multiplied. Beyond that is the factor of communication, which, in the field of consumer credit, implicates more and more people who, no matter how poor, with all their beings want the merchandise on display.

Beyond all that is another, more basic reason. Political action today is most difficult, for the major parties are controlled by the establishment and the result is a form of political bankruptcy.

A letter to me from an American GI in Vietnam written in early 1969 states that bald truth: "Somewhere in our history--though not intentionally--we slowly moved from a government of the people to a government of a chosen few--that either by birth, family tradition or social standing, a minority possessing all the wealth and power now in turn control the destiny of mankind."

This GI ends by saying, "You see, Mr. Douglas, the greatest cause of alienation is that my generation has no one to turn to." And he adds, "With all the hatred and violence that exist throughout the world, it is time that someone, regardless of personal risk, must stand up and represent the feelings, the hopes, the dreams and desires of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died, are dying and will die in search of truth."

This young man, as a result of his experiences in the crucible of Vietnam and in the riots at home, has decided to enter politics and run for office as spokesman for the poor and underprivileged of our nation.

Political action that will recast the balance will take years. Meanwhile, an overwhelming sense of futility possesses the younger generation. How can any pressing, needed reforms or changes or reversals be achieved? There is, in the end, a feeling that the individual is caught in a pot of glue and is utterly helpless.

The truth is that a vast bureaucracy now runs the country, irrespective of the party in power. The decision to spray sagebrush or mesquite trees in order to increase the production of grass and make a cattle baron richer is that of a faceless person in some Federal agency. Those who prefer horned owls or coyotes do not even have a chance to be heard.

How does one fight an entrenched farm lobby or an entrenched highway lobby? How does one get even a thin slice of the farm benefits, which go to the rich, into the lunch boxes of the poor?

How does one give HEW and its state counterparts a humane approach and rob the bureaucrats of a desire to discriminate against an illegitimate child or to conduct midnight raids without the warrants needed before even a poor man's home may be entered by the police?

Most of the questions are out of reach of any remedy for the average person. The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring, the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated.

It is that sense of futility that permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a sense of futility and it persists, there is violence; and that is where we are today.