Bourgeois

Now that the holiday is over, I’m back to reading Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. It’s really fascinating. I was only barely old enough to be aware of these events, so it’s sort of like being reminded of a dream you’d forgotten. The names are familiar and sometimes I even have vague faces or images associated with them, but often the details are new. You really get the sense of how idealism can go off the rails. Unfortunately, the very people who probably should read it probably won’t. I can get excited about political stuff, but there’s something in my nature that makes me pull back and ask questions before acting on my impulses. I had a friend and when we would talk late at night, it seemed we were in broad agreement on many political things, but when she started throwing bricks I distanced myself from her and her radical friends. Violent action just always stops me in my tracks.

Anyway, I’m continually struck by various sentences. Here’s one:

“Marxism even explained his wife. She wasn’t a striving harpy; she was just bourgeois.”