In an interview on Salon with Bill Ayers, Walter Shapiro says:

"One of the reasons, in my view, that Nixon got away with pursuing the war was that, in part, the violence of the Weather Underground -- and some of the other extreme parts of the antiwar movement -- discredited the overall antiwar movement. And that led to a further polarization of American life, which led to the first round of demonology involving yourself."

I'm no defender of the Weather Underground -- I was part of the strongly nonviolent end of the antiwar movement and I thought their tactics were not just wrong, but stupid. But to blame them for Nixon continuing the war, not to mention the polarization that defines the US these days, completely misinterprets what was happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

First of all, anyone who actually believe Nixon planned to end the Vietnam War wasn't paying attention. He might have hinted at it -- since Hubert Humphrey was stuck with the war -- but I don't know anyone who expected him to do anything but continue it. Given the imperial presidency he created -- the model that Bush the junior has followed, to our detriment -- and the dirty tricks he used to get elected and stay in office, it's absurd to assume Nixon would have ended the war so long as he and Kissinger thought it was useful.

Secondly, I think Shapiro is being swayed by the fear factor that Bush drummed up over the last eight years, and assumes people were as scared by the Weather Underground back then as they have been by terrorism in recent years. Frankly, the group was a minor blip on the scene, good for a few headlines, but hardly the bogeyman.

Given that the country was barely taking baby steps away from racism back then, I suspect people were a whole lot more frightened by the Black Panthers and other African American militant groups than they were by the Weatherpeople -- though that fear was also pretty irrational. But racism is, by definition, irrational.

Racism, in fact, had a lot to do with the polarization of the country. The advent of the solid red-state south -- only now showing some cracks -- dates back to that time, and has a lot more to do with the Civil Rights Acts shepherded through Congress by Lyndon Johnson than it does with the antiwar movement.

Let's not forget feminism, either. The radical idea that women are human beings and should have the same rights as men -- especially when combined with the pill and Roe v. Wade -- certainly scared a lot of people firmly wedded to "Stand By Your Man."

Hippie lifestyle in general certainly played its part -- though I've noticed that the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll side of things seems to have crossed political lines more thoroughly than the radical politics ever did.

Here's another major factor in the polarization: the religious right.

I grew up in a small town in Texas, a Bible Belt sort of town. We never had school events on Wednesdays, because that was church night. I understood the power of that culture, but I thought it was dying out. And, in fact, my father, who grew up in a much more rural town in West Texas and was a little kid during the time of the Scopes trial, thought fundamentalism was on its last legs, too.

Boy, were we wrong.

We really misjudged the amount of fear generated by the rapid changes of the second half of the Twentieth Century. And that fear wasn't just generated by hippies, feminists, gay activists, Black activists, or even a tiny group of violent antiwar activists; it also had to do with the change to an urban/suburban life in a country that used to be rural, the rapid growth of computer technology, and the shrinking world.

Change scares people, and they react by walling themselves off.

I suspect our society would have reached this polarization even without the Vietnam War, much less the Weather Underground. The period of change we've been through -- and are still going through -- was challenging, and far too many of our politicians exploited the fear it engendered, instead of guiding us through it.

The rapid changes aren't going to stop anytime soon, but maybe we can bring an end to some of the fear.