Senators and Gasmsks

The first thing you notice about congressmen is that they are people. A little better dressed. a little more egotistical, a little more into their own roles, perhaps. but still very human.

The best time to lobby, unless you have some sort of connection, is late in the afternoon or early evening. The congressmen are still there, in their offices with their ties off and their shirt sleeves rolled up. rapping with whoever happens to drop by.

I talked to one Senator for about an hour and a half in such circumstances. He is a liberal, gradually being radicalized by a young staff and a growing frustration at the limits of his own power. He asked me about Harvard and about the demonstration scheduled for the next day. He talked about how things had changed since he fought in World War H. He told me he thinks the President is psychotic.

Congress is still a pretty good cross section of the country. From the far-left liberals to the Neanderthal conservatives, they represent the best and the worst in the American people. Unfortunately, like the American people, Congress is divided. confused, powerless, and lazy. They would just as soon stick with the status quo.

"So what is to be done?" I asked the Senator. "I just don't know." he replied. The real trouble is that the country has become so muscle, bound, so institutionalized, so fat and lazy, that once a policy is begun, it is virtually impossible to reverse it.

Nixon. who must dream at night of being out of the war. is a weak man who is afraid of appearing so. Even a strong man like Johnson, with keen political instincts. was overwhelmed by the inertia of the office he held. Who could feel motivated to initiate change with only David and Julie to talk to?

What is to be done? The Senate will consider two bills in the next week. Each asks for a withholding of military funds from the war. The stronger measure is the McGovern-Hatfield amendment to the military appropriations bill. It has virtually no chance of passing. The weaker amendment. which gives the President more time to withdraw the troops, is the Church Cooper amendment. Liberals in the Senate hope that when the McGovern-Hatfield bill is defeated the Church Cooper amendment may pass.

Even if one of these two should pass the Senate, however, it still must face the House, which did not exactly distinguish itself last week in its consideration of the military appropriations bill.

So the liberals in Congress have very little real hope. They talk in terms of years from now and of the coming elections. Yet even a great upheaval in the upcoming congressional elections will do little to make changes in the Congress. The seniority system. which gives Southerners such immense power, party loyalty, and fear of Presidential powers has gradually reduced the American congress to little more than a fancy debating society, using rational discourse and due process as excuses for inaction.

The Senator moved in his chair, took a call from his home state, and told me he hopes that revolution is not the only answer. He wasn't sure though.

By that time I was pretty sure that revolution is indeed the only possible answer. In search of that revolution I went to the Yippie rally on the monument grounds that night. Abbie and Jerry spoke and hooked up the microphones to a television set to broadcast President Nixon's press conference.

After the show the people on the speakers stage trashed the television. The whole scene was a little like something from Stephen Crane. The Night Before the Battle. Gathered around the campfire the troops heard speakers proclaim that this would be the last night of the old order, that the sunrise tomorrow would bring a new world. We sang "Turn, Turn, Turn." and went home, and the less cynical among us were moved.

The mass rally was no battle. It was too hot. the speakers were the same (I find that I have memorized the speeches of at least a half dozen radical speakers). and the crowd was too large. The only relief were the Yippies, three thousand of whom had stripped down and jumped in the reflecting pool. There they splashed and shouted "Fuck Nixon" to their hearts' content.

Somehow it seemed appropriate that above all this, above the White House and above the protesters towered the Washington Monument. This huge phallus, strong but impotent. there because it is there, unwilling and unable to move, yet serving no purpose, it seemed to symbolize the rigid impotence of the movement and the government.

The movement has become almost as bureaucratized as the government. After the rally, as the radicals marched up Pennsylvania Avenue in an illegal parade, the marshals shouted, waved their hands, counseled with the police, formed lines, and did all sorts of other things to discourage the radicals. "Let's not have violence." they said, "that's what Nixon wants."

God forbid that we should have violence. God forbid that we should disturb the slumber of rational discourse on Capitol Hill. God forbid that we should act.

The real trouble I guess is people, people who are well fed and enjoy life. Here were the officious mob marshals telling the radicals to behave themselves. Here was Nixon pleading for nonviolence when he meanwhile carries on the war.

This country is so fat and lazy that it can only get off its ass when someone is killed. It took the death of three civil rights workers in Mississippi and countless Panthers to make anyone think about black people. It took the death of three civil-rights workpants in Ohio to make people think about the war. It will probably take more deaths to make anyone do anything about either.