Robert Fulford noted the delightful coincidence of Hayden’s Nation essay appearing at the same time as a Village Voice column by the acclaimed playwright David Mamet, entitled “Why I Am No Longer A ‘Brain Dead Liberal.’”
More “big news” was made shortly thereafter by another playwright. Writing in the Sunday Times of London, Tom Stoppard issued a remarkably similar declaration.
The way it looks now, Tom Hayden will resist joining Stoppard and Mamet to his dying day. And when all is said and done, he can never undo the enormous damage he helped perpetrate upon millions of Indo-Chinese people. Longing for a Vietnam that now mirrrors everything he wished to destroy, the anti-war activist now faces his destiny: going down in history as, at best, a pathetic footnote or a cryptic joke, and at worst, an accessory to mass murder and oppression ultimately repudiated even by the oppressors.
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