What’s the big gripe against BLM wokester shitheads in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, D.C. and elsewhere? That the occasional looting, taunting, window-breaking and trashing of small businesses over the last three or four months have persuaded chubby, gray-haired hinterland types to think about voting for Trump.

The exact same complaint was being heard in the late ’60s, which was that the unruly appearance and behavior anti-establishment hippies and yippies were prompting Middle Americans to vote for Nixon and “lawnorder.”

There’s a discussion along these lines in Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7. On one side are the rambunctious, frizzy-haired Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, and on another the pragmatic, moderate-minded activist Tom Hayden. Their attorney William Kuntsler is thinking about putting one of them on the witness stand, and they’re discussing who this might be.

Hayden: Maybe he thinks I won’t get the crowd worked up at all. Maybe he thinks there are jurors who rely on the safety of the police, and are put off when someone calls them pigs. Or maybe he wants a witness who dresses like a grown man.

Rubin: The cops in this city in the summer of ’60 were pigs.

Hayden: I wonder how many of them had kids in Vietnam.

Rubin to Hoffman, pointing at Hayden: “He‘s gonna take the stand, not you? And we’re okay with that? (beat) Abbie?

Hoffman (to Hayden): What did you mean, the last thing I want is to end the war?

Hayden: What?

Hoffman: Centuries ago when the trial started, you said, why did I come to Chicago? And I said, ‘To end the war.’ And then you turned to everyone and you said, ‘The last thing he wants is to end the war.’ What did you mean by that?

Hayden: That you’re making the most of your close-up.

Hoffman: Yeah?

Hayden: No more war, no more Abbie Hoffman.

Hoffman: What’s your problem with me?

Hayden: I wish people would stop asking me that.

Hoffman: Answer it. One time.

Hayden: All right. My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics they’re gonna think of you. They’re gonna think of you and your idiot followers. Passing out daisies to soldiers and trying to levitate the Pentagon. So they’re not gonna think of equality or justice. They’re not gonna think of education or poverty or progress. They’re gonna think of a bunch of lost, stoned, disrespectful, foul-mouthed losers. And so we’ll lose elections.

Hoffman: All because of me?

Hayden: Yeah.

HoffmanL: Winning elections is the first thing on your wish list? Equality, justice, education, poverty and progress — they’re second?

Hayden: If you don’t win elections, it doesn’t matter what’s second. And it is astonishing to me that someone still has to explain that to you.