Democracy Read Online Free PDF

confusion. Down the tubes, the bartender said. Bye-bye Da Nang. On the screen above the bar the helicopter lifted again and again off the roof of the American mission and Jack Lovett watched without speaking and after a while he asked the bartender to turn off the sound and plug in the jukebox. No dancing, the bartender said. I’m already off fucking limits. You’re not off limits from dancing, Jack Lovett said. You’re off from fencing Sansui amps to an undercover. The bartender turned down the sound and plugged in the jukebox. Jack Lovett said nothing to Inez, only looked at her for a long time and then stood up and took her hand.
    The Mamas and the Papas sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
    The helicopter lifted again off the roof of the American mission.
    In this bar across the bridge from Schofield Barracks Inez did not say “marvelous” as she danced. She did not say “marvelous day” as she danced. She did not say “you look marvelous,” or “marvelous to be here.” She did not say anything at all as she danced, did not even dance as you or I or the agency that regulated dancing in bars might have defined dancing. She only stood with her back against the jukebox and her arms around Jack Lovett. Her hair was loose and tangled from the drive out to Schofield and the graying streak at her left temple, the streak she usually brushed under, was exposed. Her eyes were closed against the flicker from the television screen.
    “Fucking Arvin finally shooting each other,” the bartender said.
    “Oh shit, Inez,” Jack Lovett said. “Harry Victor’s wife.”

7
    B Y the spring of 1975 Inez Victor had in fact been Harry Victor’s wife for twenty years.
    Through Harry Victor’s two years with the Justice Department, through the appearance in The New York Times Magazine of “Justice for Whom?—A Young Lawyer Wants Out,” by Harry Victor and R.W. Dillon.
    Through the Neighborhood Legal Coalition that Harry Victor and Billy Dillon organized out of the storefront in East Harlem. Through the publication of The View from the Street: Root Causes, Radical Solutions and a Modest Proposal , by Harry Victor, Based on Studies Conducted by Harry Victor with R.W. Dillon.
    Through the marches in Mississippi and in the San Joaquin Valley, through Harry Victor’s successful campaigns for Congress in 1964 and 1966 and 1968, through the sit-ins at Harvard and at the Pentagon and at Dow Chemical plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
    Through Harry Victor’s appointment in 1969 to fill out the last three years of a Senate term left vacant by the death of the incumbent.
    Through Connie Willis and through Frances Landau (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, behave, girls like that come with the life,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about Connie Willis and Frances Landau), through the major fundraising in California (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, put on your tap shoes, it’s big green on the barrelhead,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about California), through the speaking tours and the ad hoc committees and the fact-finding missions to Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh; through the failed bid for a presidential nomination in 1972 and through the mistimed angling for a good embassy (this was one occasion when Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh did not spring to Harry Victor’s lips) that occurred in the wreckage of that campaign.
    Through the mill.
    Through the wars.
    Through the final run to daylight: through the maneuvering of all the above elements into a safe place on the field, into a score, into that amorphous but inspired convergence of rhetoric and celebrity known as the Alliance for Democratic Institutions.
    Inez Victor had been there.
    Because Inez Victor had been there many people believed that they knew her: not “most” people, since the demographics of Harry Victor’s phantom constituency were based on comfort and its concomitant uneasiness, but most people of a type, most