Editorial
Leave Rioters and Protesters Alone
The greatest trick the devil ever played, according to Charles Baudelaire, was convincing the world that he did not exist. Here, it does not matter which devil we speak of – trickster, Loki, Satan, Beelzebub, the Goat.
What matters more is the entity’s capacity for chicanery, chaos and an uncanny ability to always be two steps ahead of you.
Which is why we are always taken aback whenever governments react to protesters. Turkey has been harassing people out on the streets in the same manner as China tries to quell civil disobedience. Uganda uses tear gas and pink water to disperse marauding groups of demonstrators while Greece faced its own public management issues during the global financial crisis.
A few days from now, do not be surprised to hear that Brazil has reacted with unnecessary force to those protesting the president’s public management abilities.
But to come to the heart of the matter, when was the last time you saw a major crisis with protesters in the U.S.? Of course, we could speak about the chaos that engulfed the World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle in 1999.
However, that was a long time ago, and save for the police brutality and trigger happy incidences, one could even make a case for the toothlessness of American law enforcement.
And yet how wrong would they be? When one passes by the White House – like we do on a regular basis – they may not necessarily see it or feel it, but the devil is really in the details, so to speak.
The amount of law enforcement surrounding the American President’s house and office is simply overwhelming. We may not have seen incidences of public disorder or skirmishes with the law anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – but we know its there. The number of secret service agents amongst the tourists, among the pedestrians on the street and the snipers in the office buildings everywhere cannot be under estimated.
And yet, right in front of the White House – right across the street – is a man in a tent protesting something about nuclear technology. He sits there in his tent unperturbed. Of course, if many more people came to occupy this area, it would look more like an Occupy Wall Street event. Conversely, how are we to know whether this ‘protester’ is actually an undercover agent?
The point to all this is two-pronged: You do not bring a spoon to a knife fight, and neither do you need to see the devil to be scared of burning in purgatory. The U.S. government has managed to do what many of the world’s most brutal dictators and overly zealous law enforcement personnel have failed miserably at. It has been incredibly successful at lulling Americans into a sense of false security where they feel like they can take up arms against the federal government whenever they can, feel like they have rights and can say or whatever it is under the First Amendment of their Constitution.
However, when was the last time anyone actually went head-to-head with U.S. law enforcement and won? One cannot count the incidents of 9/11 or terrorist attacks. This new form of warfare is being addressed at such lethal levels that a case could be brought against Obama and his predecessor.
Ultimately, in trying to keep their people down, many other governments lose the fight for public order or regime maintenance. In seeking to maintain law and order, law enforcement agencies tend to overplay their hand. The U.S., on the other hand, under promises and in this way, over delivers. No one will mess with the police in New York or Los Angeles. There are too many undercover police in New Orleans and Florida – and then the marshals on the U.S. Mexico border are simply too many to be ignored.
In the end, people are afraid of this American devil – a deeper fear than that one Russians felt under Josef Stalin or even Vladimir Putin’s rusty bureaucracy. Perhaps these other countries should take notes.
Editorial Board | The Habari Network