The conflagration in Ferguson, Missouri that has engulfed the nation in inflammatory rhetoric and condemnation brings to attention many details and perspectives that many are unaware of or refuse to consider. The police have received harsh criticism for not only the death of Michael Brown, but for how they reacted afterwards, especially dealing with protesters (interestingly enough the looting that took place during the riots received nowhere near the condemnation it should have).
Many authors, historians, sociologists, political scientists and community activists have decried the police state, but I do not think anyone has put it into words as well as J.M. Coetzee. Writing about the Vietnam War in his excellent novel Duskland, one of Coetzee's characters describes a couple of lines of thinking that certainly apply to the police approach to the Ferguson protesters. He writes, "We brought with us weapons, the gun and its metaphors, the only copulas we knew of between ourselves and our objects. From this tragic ignorance we sought deliverance. Our nightmare was that since whatever we reached for slipped like smoke through our fingers, we did not exist; that since whatever we embraced wilted, we were all that existed."
Referring to the U.S. military's approach to demoralizing the Vientamese, Coetzee's character,almost proudly, claims, "We must work on the assumption that the military believe in their own explanations when they assign a solely military value to terror operations." This is what we are seeing in Ferguson. Somehow a military mindset has set-in in police approaches to protests. I cannot say if this is an inheritance from the Kent State University shootings years ago or a reality that was borne out of the wreckage of the Twin Towers and the Pengaton in 2001. It does not bode well for us.
Source: Policy.Mic
Many authors, historians, sociologists, political scientists and community activists have decried the police state, but I do not think anyone has put it into words as well as J.M. Coetzee. Writing about the Vietnam War in his excellent novel Duskland, one of Coetzee's characters describes a couple of lines of thinking that certainly apply to the police approach to the Ferguson protesters. He writes, "We brought with us weapons, the gun and its metaphors, the only copulas we knew of between ourselves and our objects. From this tragic ignorance we sought deliverance. Our nightmare was that since whatever we reached for slipped like smoke through our fingers, we did not exist; that since whatever we embraced wilted, we were all that existed."
Referring to the U.S. military's approach to demoralizing the Vientamese, Coetzee's character,almost proudly, claims, "We must work on the assumption that the military believe in their own explanations when they assign a solely military value to terror operations." This is what we are seeing in Ferguson. Somehow a military mindset has set-in in police approaches to protests. I cannot say if this is an inheritance from the Kent State University shootings years ago or a reality that was borne out of the wreckage of the Twin Towers and the Pengaton in 2001. It does not bode well for us.
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