Shape of Things to Come Prophecy And the American Voice

Prologue NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, D.C., PENNSYLVANIA These are the voices I found when, a few days after terrorists attacked American cities, I was asked to write about what happened. It seemed presumptuous to say anything, and in any case I had nothing to say. I listened instead. "Where is the building? Did it fall down? Where is it?" Joe Disordo, on the collapse of Two World Trade Center, describing his escape from One World Trade Center,New YorkTimes, 16 September 2001 *** Looking down they could see the last convulsions: the lights of the cars were darting through the streets, like animals trapped in a maze, frantically seeking an exit, the bridges were jammed with cars, the approaches to the bridges were veins of massed headlights, glittering bottlenecks stopping all motion, and the desperate screaming of sirens reached faintly to the height of the plane . . . The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stationsand that the lights of New York had gone out. Ayn Rand,Atlas Shrugged, 1957 Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them. I say "I" even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagonwe bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized and claimed it . . . Some details cannot be told. Some friends and comrades have been in prison for decades; others, including Bernadine, spent months and months locked up for refusing to talk or give handwriting samples to federal grand juries. Consequences are real for people, and that's part of this story, too. But the government was dead wrong, and we were right. In our conflict we don't talk; we don't tell. We never confess. When activists were paraded before grand juries, asked to name names, to humiliate themselves and to participate in destroying the movement, most refused and went to jail rather than say a word. Outside they told the press, I didn't do it, but I dug it. I recall John Brown's strategy over a century agohe shot all the members of the grand jury investigating his activities in Kansas. Bill Ayers,Fugitive Days, September 2001 "You don't know where she is?" I asked again. He shrugged again, and I said, "OK." I let the automatic dangle from my hand as I waited for the sound of a jet making its final approach over the motel. "Last chance," I said before the noise got too loud for him to hear. He shrugged again. "You know I'm not going to kill you, don't you?" I said. He shook his head, but his eyes smiled. He might be a piece of shit but Jackson had some balls on him. Either that or he was more frightened of his business associates than he was of me. That was a real mistake on his part. When the landing jet swept over the motel, I leaned down and pumped two rounds into his right foot. "You didn't have to shoot him twice," Trahearne said.Marcus, Greil is the author of 'Shape of Things to Come Prophecy And the American Voice' with ISBN 9780374104382 and ISBN 0374104387.