Tom Hayden, "When Bonesmen Fight"
May 22, 2004 - 8:39am -- jim
"When Bonesmen Fight"
Tom Hayden,
Yale Politic
I hope some journalist has the guts to ask John Kerry
(Skull and Bones, 1965) and George Bush (Skull and
Bones, 1967) whether they have any qualms about
belonging to a secret, oath-bound network since their
college days. Did they discuss Skull and Bones in code
when President Bush called Senator Kerry to
congratulate him on his primary victories? Will they
agree not to leave the room if the reporter blurts out
"322", coded references to Demosthene's birthday and
Skull and Bones' founding.
Am I scratching the blackboard yet, dear reader? Or are
you smugly dismissing these questions as paranoid and
unsophisticated?I don't consider myself a conspiracy nut, but is it
really all right that four decades after the
egalitarian Sixties, and some 225 years since the
Declaration of Independence, the American voters'
choices in 2004 are two Bonesmen?
The lesson is that aristocracy still survives
democracy.
I was a member of a secret society during the same era
as Bush and Kerry, at the University of Michigan, and
can testify that these are profoundly lasting
experiences. As a junior, I was tapped for the Druids,
which involved a two-day ritual that included being
stripped to my underpants, pelted with eggs, smeared
with red dye and tied to a campus tree. These
humiliations signified my rebirth from lowly student
journalist to Big Man on Campus.
Soon, however, I became alienated. None of the bonding
could make me feel I actually belonged. Perhaps I was
an outsider by nature, an Irish Catholic descendant of
immigrants, first in my family to attend university.
The clubbiness had one purpose, as a source told
Alexandra Robbins for her book on Skull and Bones. It
was "to make the other people who didn't get in feel
bad." But even as an insider, I felt bad, undeserving,
resentful.
When I was tapped in my senior year for the most
prestigious secret society, Michigauma, I decided
instead to hide out in a girlfriend's apartment,
becoming the first refusenik in Michigauma history. But
I still felt like something was wrong with me, that I
didn't have the right stuff, that I was blowing my
future.
In summer 1960, I experienced the same self-doubt at
the national convention of the U.S. National Student
Association, which then was controlled by an older
clique of student leaders who seemed, as they say, to
the manor born. On the one hand, ambition inclined me
to challenge the clique by running for national affairs
vice president, a path I would eventually follow twenty
years later. On the other hand, the radical civil
rights and student movements, like the fledgling
Students for a Democratic Society, were pulling at my
heart. Should I work within the establishment or create
something new and risky?
One night I came across a yellow pad left on a desk by
the NSA leadership. At the top of a chart was written
"Control Group". On the left was my name and that of
Alan Haber, a founder of SDS. On the right was a box
marked "YAF" — Young Americans for Freedom, the
conservative group founded at Yale by William F.
Buckley (Bones 1950).
Seven years later, it was revealed that the CIA
secretly controlled and funded NSA, and that former
editors of the Michigan Daily were among the spooks
they recruited. I went south as a Freedom Rider and
drafted the SDS Port Huron Statement.
In those years, George Bush was a Yale cheerleader and
devoted Deke. John Kerry became a Navy lieutenant
shooting up the Mekong Delta. Bush never seemed to
question authority, while Kerry's loyalties were shaken
by war. But they both belonged to the vast, safe,
surreptitious Affirmative Action Program for old boys.
It seems like a lifetime since those days, but we still
suffer from many gaps based on privilege. The political
system is a moneyed oligarchy underneath its democratic
trappings. The vast majority of voters are like fans in
the bleachers: We participate from the cheap seats,
supposed to enjoy our place, and vote for whichever
Bonesman we prefer. Our taxes even subsidize their
corporate box seats.
Sometimes Bonesman fight over status. For instance,
about 75 years ago, Dwight Davis, U.S. secretary of
war, created the Davis Cup, and George H. Walker,
grandfather of George W., volleyed back by establishing
the Walker Cup. The differences today between Bush and
Kerry are about as serious as they get, short of a
duel. Karl Marx (London School of Economics) would
describe the split a contradiction in the ruling class.
Bush is the unilateral builder of empire, while Kerry
stands for the multilateral alliances long preferred by
most Bonesmen. Though both the Cowboy and the Brahmin
may be quarreling members of the same old club, their
differences are existential for the rest of us.
Ralph Nader doesn't see this. Instead, he argues that
the two parties are a duopoly within the same
plutocracy. Maybe Nader is nursing resentment over not
being tapped himself, but his is a dangerous blindness.
The differences between Bush and Kerry over Supreme
Court appointments, religious fundamentalism, civil
rights, the environment, John Ashcroft and the future
of Iraq are fundamental, dividing the two parties at
the constituency level. Bush genuflects to the
Christian Right while Kerry sings Kumbaya. The Bush
people are scary and destabilizing, which is why the
CIA types seem to prefer Kerry (covertly, of course).
For the record, this November I am voting with the CIA.
They represent the lesser evil in the choices before
us.
But like Ralph Nader, I want democracy to mean more
than a choice between two candidates chosen by dueling
Bonesmen and their major donors.
I still stand for participatory democracy, the original
1962 vision of the SDS, which grew from our
generation's experience in organizing among the
excluded, from the Deep South to the Peace Corps.
Students in those days were drafted for war, but
considered too immature to vote. Southern blacks and
Mexican immigrants could be sharecroppers in the
fields, but not equal citizens in the ballot box. For
us, democracy meant who had the most votes, not who
controlled the most money. It meant the free flow of
information, not suffocation under corporate
advertising and media.
We have always wanted more than the right to choose
between two candidates already vetted by the
establishment. We wanted a more direct voice in the
decisions that affected our lives. We wanted a
democracy of participation, not a democracy regulated
by secret societies. We wanted all the closets emptied.
We are a more open and democratic country as a result
of the Sixties and earlier generations of radicals. We
owe the Abolitionists, not merely Abraham Lincoln, for
the end of slavery, the suffragettes for the right to
vote, the populists for regulation of Wall Street, the
industrial strikers for collective bargaining, the
environmentalists for cleaner air and water. In this
election, the anti-war and global justice movements
have helped shape the agenda over Iraq and trade. And
the gay-lesbian community is turning marriage into
civil disobedience.
Yet, it remains the peculiar character of America's
elite to absorb reform from below while remaining atop
the pyramids of power. When a majority of Americans
still feel inferior to Ivy League candidates, or
identify vicariously with their dramas, we do not live
in a democracy psychologically. That must eventually
change. Closeted dynasties should have no moral
legitimacy in a democracy — which is why they have
become increasingly secret.
Two years ago, students at the University of Michigan
broke into, occupied and exposed the secret space of
Michigauma, finding stolen Indian artifacts among the
items hidden there. Michigauma moved off campus. When I
heard the news, I wished I'd done that long ago instead
of making such a private and ambiguous protest. It took
a new generation to smash the old idols. Maybe Leonard
Cohen is right, democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
[Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights,
peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He
served 18 years in the California legislature, where he
chaired labor, higher education and natural resources
committees. He is the author of ten books, including
"Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at
Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting
fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.]
"When Bonesmen Fight"
Tom Hayden,
Yale Politic
I hope some journalist has the guts to ask John Kerry
(Skull and Bones, 1965) and George Bush (Skull and
Bones, 1967) whether they have any qualms about
belonging to a secret, oath-bound network since their
college days. Did they discuss Skull and Bones in code
when President Bush called Senator Kerry to
congratulate him on his primary victories? Will they
agree not to leave the room if the reporter blurts out
"322", coded references to Demosthene's birthday and
Skull and Bones' founding.
Am I scratching the blackboard yet, dear reader? Or are
you smugly dismissing these questions as paranoid and
unsophisticated?I don't consider myself a conspiracy nut, but is it
really all right that four decades after the
egalitarian Sixties, and some 225 years since the
Declaration of Independence, the American voters'
choices in 2004 are two Bonesmen?
The lesson is that aristocracy still survives
democracy.
I was a member of a secret society during the same era
as Bush and Kerry, at the University of Michigan, and
can testify that these are profoundly lasting
experiences. As a junior, I was tapped for the Druids,
which involved a two-day ritual that included being
stripped to my underpants, pelted with eggs, smeared
with red dye and tied to a campus tree. These
humiliations signified my rebirth from lowly student
journalist to Big Man on Campus.
Soon, however, I became alienated. None of the bonding
could make me feel I actually belonged. Perhaps I was
an outsider by nature, an Irish Catholic descendant of
immigrants, first in my family to attend university.
The clubbiness had one purpose, as a source told
Alexandra Robbins for her book on Skull and Bones. It
was "to make the other people who didn't get in feel
bad." But even as an insider, I felt bad, undeserving,
resentful.
When I was tapped in my senior year for the most
prestigious secret society, Michigauma, I decided
instead to hide out in a girlfriend's apartment,
becoming the first refusenik in Michigauma history. But
I still felt like something was wrong with me, that I
didn't have the right stuff, that I was blowing my
future.
In summer 1960, I experienced the same self-doubt at
the national convention of the U.S. National Student
Association, which then was controlled by an older
clique of student leaders who seemed, as they say, to
the manor born. On the one hand, ambition inclined me
to challenge the clique by running for national affairs
vice president, a path I would eventually follow twenty
years later. On the other hand, the radical civil
rights and student movements, like the fledgling
Students for a Democratic Society, were pulling at my
heart. Should I work within the establishment or create
something new and risky?
One night I came across a yellow pad left on a desk by
the NSA leadership. At the top of a chart was written
"Control Group". On the left was my name and that of
Alan Haber, a founder of SDS. On the right was a box
marked "YAF" — Young Americans for Freedom, the
conservative group founded at Yale by William F.
Buckley (Bones 1950).
Seven years later, it was revealed that the CIA
secretly controlled and funded NSA, and that former
editors of the Michigan Daily were among the spooks
they recruited. I went south as a Freedom Rider and
drafted the SDS Port Huron Statement.
In those years, George Bush was a Yale cheerleader and
devoted Deke. John Kerry became a Navy lieutenant
shooting up the Mekong Delta. Bush never seemed to
question authority, while Kerry's loyalties were shaken
by war. But they both belonged to the vast, safe,
surreptitious Affirmative Action Program for old boys.
It seems like a lifetime since those days, but we still
suffer from many gaps based on privilege. The political
system is a moneyed oligarchy underneath its democratic
trappings. The vast majority of voters are like fans in
the bleachers: We participate from the cheap seats,
supposed to enjoy our place, and vote for whichever
Bonesman we prefer. Our taxes even subsidize their
corporate box seats.
Sometimes Bonesman fight over status. For instance,
about 75 years ago, Dwight Davis, U.S. secretary of
war, created the Davis Cup, and George H. Walker,
grandfather of George W., volleyed back by establishing
the Walker Cup. The differences today between Bush and
Kerry are about as serious as they get, short of a
duel. Karl Marx (London School of Economics) would
describe the split a contradiction in the ruling class.
Bush is the unilateral builder of empire, while Kerry
stands for the multilateral alliances long preferred by
most Bonesmen. Though both the Cowboy and the Brahmin
may be quarreling members of the same old club, their
differences are existential for the rest of us.
Ralph Nader doesn't see this. Instead, he argues that
the two parties are a duopoly within the same
plutocracy. Maybe Nader is nursing resentment over not
being tapped himself, but his is a dangerous blindness.
The differences between Bush and Kerry over Supreme
Court appointments, religious fundamentalism, civil
rights, the environment, John Ashcroft and the future
of Iraq are fundamental, dividing the two parties at
the constituency level. Bush genuflects to the
Christian Right while Kerry sings Kumbaya. The Bush
people are scary and destabilizing, which is why the
CIA types seem to prefer Kerry (covertly, of course).
For the record, this November I am voting with the CIA.
They represent the lesser evil in the choices before
us.
But like Ralph Nader, I want democracy to mean more
than a choice between two candidates chosen by dueling
Bonesmen and their major donors.
I still stand for participatory democracy, the original
1962 vision of the SDS, which grew from our
generation's experience in organizing among the
excluded, from the Deep South to the Peace Corps.
Students in those days were drafted for war, but
considered too immature to vote. Southern blacks and
Mexican immigrants could be sharecroppers in the
fields, but not equal citizens in the ballot box. For
us, democracy meant who had the most votes, not who
controlled the most money. It meant the free flow of
information, not suffocation under corporate
advertising and media.
We have always wanted more than the right to choose
between two candidates already vetted by the
establishment. We wanted a more direct voice in the
decisions that affected our lives. We wanted a
democracy of participation, not a democracy regulated
by secret societies. We wanted all the closets emptied.
We are a more open and democratic country as a result
of the Sixties and earlier generations of radicals. We
owe the Abolitionists, not merely Abraham Lincoln, for
the end of slavery, the suffragettes for the right to
vote, the populists for regulation of Wall Street, the
industrial strikers for collective bargaining, the
environmentalists for cleaner air and water. In this
election, the anti-war and global justice movements
have helped shape the agenda over Iraq and trade. And
the gay-lesbian community is turning marriage into
civil disobedience.
Yet, it remains the peculiar character of America's
elite to absorb reform from below while remaining atop
the pyramids of power. When a majority of Americans
still feel inferior to Ivy League candidates, or
identify vicariously with their dramas, we do not live
in a democracy psychologically. That must eventually
change. Closeted dynasties should have no moral
legitimacy in a democracy — which is why they have
become increasingly secret.
Two years ago, students at the University of Michigan
broke into, occupied and exposed the secret space of
Michigauma, finding stolen Indian artifacts among the
items hidden there. Michigauma moved off campus. When I
heard the news, I wished I'd done that long ago instead
of making such a private and ambiguous protest. It took
a new generation to smash the old idols. Maybe Leonard
Cohen is right, democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
[Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights,
peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He
served 18 years in the California legislature, where he
chaired labor, higher education and natural resources
committees. He is the author of ten books, including
"Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at
Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting
fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.]