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A review by blevins
Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the First Age of Terror by Bryan Burrough
4.0
Because I have been long interested in 1970s era radicals such as Weather Underground, SLA, BLA and their co-horts, I was very much into this exhaustively researched book by Bryan Burrough. I like the topic so much, I was able to overlook and forgive the book its flaws--too often using hyperbolic descriptions to amp up the tensions, Burrough's own political baggage that seeps out from time to time as he moralizes on the actions of these groups of and his apparent fetish for female revolutionaries with nearly every female Burrough describes is sexy, sensual, attractive or some other attribute.
The 1970s were a wild time for radicals and revolutionaries. Bombs were made and set-off, banks were robbed, shootouts with the police ensued, heiresses were kidnapped and innocent people died. From people who hi-jacked jets to those who formed small organizations who wanted to overthrow the government, there was no shortage of radical actions during this turbulent decade. In our post-9/11 world that we exist in today, when everything is branded an act of terrorism by our media/politicians, it is kind of shocking when reading about how different things used to be. While these groups in their heyday were not accepted by a majority of the nation [not even close!], they were embraced by enough people, especially early in their campaigns, to justify their actions amongst the hardcore leftists that they existed in. Things are so different now. Can you be a revolutionary in America ever again and genuinely attack the government if you believe they are on an incorrect path? Is the idea of revolution something that has been killed by the already mentioned politicians/media who have turned the masses into a nation of sheep? Face it, the general public is perfectly happy to throw away our rights to privacy and freedom in the name of fighting whatever future terrorist attack that may or may not happen. Legitimate concerns of mine when I read about groups like this from the past and think how much America and the world has changed in the past few decades. Do I long for the days of people blowing up stuff? No, but I'm an idealist who still holds onto the belief that resistance to the corporate machine that our government has turned into should be not only a right of us as citizens, it should be a possibility in the mind's of the politicians when they decide to listen to this lobbyist or that lobbyist before deciding what their opinion is. The idea of revolution, or revolutionary action, is not always a step toward terrorism, if it was, then, America itself was founded on terrorism, as was every revolutionary movement that has occurred in the past. Every single one. Those are the kinds of things Days of Rage made me think about as I was reading it.
The 1970s were a wild time for radicals and revolutionaries. Bombs were made and set-off, banks were robbed, shootouts with the police ensued, heiresses were kidnapped and innocent people died. From people who hi-jacked jets to those who formed small organizations who wanted to overthrow the government, there was no shortage of radical actions during this turbulent decade. In our post-9/11 world that we exist in today, when everything is branded an act of terrorism by our media/politicians, it is kind of shocking when reading about how different things used to be. While these groups in their heyday were not accepted by a majority of the nation [not even close!], they were embraced by enough people, especially early in their campaigns, to justify their actions amongst the hardcore leftists that they existed in. Things are so different now. Can you be a revolutionary in America ever again and genuinely attack the government if you believe they are on an incorrect path? Is the idea of revolution something that has been killed by the already mentioned politicians/media who have turned the masses into a nation of sheep? Face it, the general public is perfectly happy to throw away our rights to privacy and freedom in the name of fighting whatever future terrorist attack that may or may not happen. Legitimate concerns of mine when I read about groups like this from the past and think how much America and the world has changed in the past few decades. Do I long for the days of people blowing up stuff? No, but I'm an idealist who still holds onto the belief that resistance to the corporate machine that our government has turned into should be not only a right of us as citizens, it should be a possibility in the mind's of the politicians when they decide to listen to this lobbyist or that lobbyist before deciding what their opinion is. The idea of revolution, or revolutionary action, is not always a step toward terrorism, if it was, then, America itself was founded on terrorism, as was every revolutionary movement that has occurred in the past. Every single one. Those are the kinds of things Days of Rage made me think about as I was reading it.