policy - The Black Vault

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the antiwar movement. Nevertheless, the youth and the intellectuals were
moving farther from the center of American politics. Susan Sontag noted in
another context:
... Revolution in the Western capitalist countries
seems to be an activity expressly designed never to
succeed. For many people, it is a social activity, a
form of action designed for the assertion of individuality
against the body politic. It is a vital
activity of outsiders, rather than of people united by
a passionate bond to their country.27/
From the beginnings of their opposition to the war policies of
the Johnson administration, intellectuals identified those policies as
immoral.
This presumption of American immorality became increasingly the
theme upon which many influential intellectuals hammered.
Mary McCarthy
argued that the role of intellectuals was to make Americans unaerstand the
immorality of what the government was doing.
She linked this indictment of
the Johnson administration with denunciation of the whole American political
system.
Reflecting on the "uselessness of our free institutions to
stop the Vietnam War," she wrote:
A feeling of having no choice is becoming more and more
widespread in American life, and particularly among
successful people, who supposedly are free beings. In
national election years, you are free to choose between
Johnson and Goldwater and Rommey or Reagan... Just as
in American hotel rooms you can decide whether or not
to turn on the air conditioner... but you cannot open
the window.28/
Although momentarily heartened by Johnson's March 31, 1968
announcement that he would not run for another term, intellectuals like the
other participants in the antiwar movement were driven to despair by the
rs defeat of Eugene McCarthy and the assassination of Robert Kennedy. In the
end some
raaical leftists within the broader community of intellectuals
became so disenchanted with the promises ano actions of the Democratic
liberals that they turned to vote for Richard Nixon on the premise that his
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