"Don't go outside. Don't open your door for anyone except police."
The photos of the abandoned city, of empty streets and squares in broad daylight, places I've known as long as I've known anything, were not 'eerie', not creepy not strange, just banal. Ugly landscapes of asphalt and concrete. Purely for police movement. The cameras silent accomplices.
On Mayday last year, if you veered away from the evening march, the streets of the financial district were totally barricaded. No one was there, except, on every corner, a group of four five six sometimes ten cops. This, we observed at the time, is the perfect police state: a city with no one in it except police.
Do you see them celebrating, do you see them cheering for his capture, do you see them celebrating each kill in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, do you see them, their fear the only truth they know, do you see them dancing and drinking? Hiding in their homes petrified praying thankful at least someone anyone knows what to do do you see them? Do you see the tanks drive past your leafy home do you thank them and salute?
When did we become such craven, slavish cowards, such cringing, bloodthirsty creeps?
Is it even worth the effort of burning it all to the ground?
