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...by James Mason
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Last month's issue of SIEGE had gone to press at about the same time the news of the prison attack against Charles Manson reached us here. Personally, I hadn't experienced such a shock since I received the word of the assassination of Commander Rockwell. Neither had the implications for the Movement been as great as that day in 1967. It was probably better that things worked out as they did, time-wise, as there was little or nothing more that could have been added in these pages to the news reports which, I'm certain, everyone saw at that time. I dislike trying to comment in an intelligent way on a grave topic about which few facts have come in.
Speculations now aside, Manson's injuries are not severe and will produce nothing of a lasting nature. One friend reported that, "It was all over with inside of four minutes." Those with any combat experience, or experience at being wounded, will be aware that four minutes can be an eternity. But there are at least as many friends of Manson inside as there are enemies and this plus their fast action made the difference. We thank these from the bottom of our heart.
I never recalled any questions or worries during the Sixties about what would happen should someone kill the Commander or even whether anyone might seriously try. He was eminently well qualified to take care of himself and, as he would say, his very audacity helped keep him alive. But with Manson it has been different. We have worried– deeply– about the very real risk of just such an attack. If the world outside is a jungle then the world of prison is an insane asylum. It turns out that it was a "nut" that finally got to Manson after all these years but it certainly didn't have to be. Among dangerous punks of all types– inmates and guards alike it is known and accepted that a hit against Charles Manson would place one at the top of the pecking order. And it's an odd coincidence that both Rockwell and Manson were forty-nine years of age at the time of their most deadly personal attacks.
People are dying and getting killed all the time. It'll happen to each one of us sooner or later. In prison, those with "names" have been targeted traditionally since these institutions first existed. Though maybe prison, with all its risks, is and has been Manson's world, we still view his life as something of extreme value, something to be preserved at all cost. We have been lucky this time. I'm a believer in luck. Maybe nothing like this will happen again, or at least not for a very long time. It was as though, with the elevation of years with no significant attack, the probability of one happening was becoming critical. Now, in more ways than one, the pressure is off, for awhile.
The press, as always, treated Manson as hot property, not as an individual. That he had been seriously attacked was sensational. That he's going to be all-right is not. And it is this view– that of the Jewish press– that the majority of those in the Movement seem content to be left with concerning Manson. Not too surprising really when you match this view and this attitude with the state the Movement finds itself in.
Though I expressed the sincere feeling that I do not identify with these times, I do take pride in the fact that and the realization that I am not, in spite, stricken by contemporary blindness. Jesus of Nazareth in robes and sandals in 1934 would be a sensation. But in the year 30 A.D., he was just another guy, a shit-disturber whom they allowed to be strung up in the manner of the most common criminals. Adolf Hitler with his flashy uniform, his para-military party and his histrionic oratory today seems most out of place. In 1933, he was little different than a dozen other European dictators. They say familiarity breeds contempt while the dreamer in all of us longs for the exotic. Maybe that's why the Christs among us in the present are so often overlooked or scorned. The Movement with its weird way of looking at things can't see in Manson anything more than what the Jewish press puts in its deliberately distorted, sensationalized coverages.
What did it in the end for Jesus, Hitler and Manson is found in what they SAID and in what they DID... and not in whatever way they might have tried to attract the attention of any potential fan club.
If Manson is still with us in the living, you can thank a couple of nameless prison inmates. What do you now do about that which you nearly left until it was too late?
[Vol. XIII, #11– Nov., 1984]
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