We live in bubbles.
I was naive, I am naive, I will be naive.
I thought the brutality conducted by Hong Kong police was the result of the infiltration of PLA, I couldn’t believe that the local police would do those horrible things to their own innocent citizens. But that idea was challenged after watching the footages from the Minneapolis, New York, and other places in the US.
The police crush the crowd with their huge SUVs, they push the elderly down to the ground, they shoot the reporters, they beat the protesters, they worsen the situation.
Aren’t police supposed to protect the people? Why are they so aroused when they are to attack the citizens they face every day when doing groceries, jogging, walking the dog, etc.? Where is the hatred coming from? Do they simply enjoy the power, the violence? How is their brain wired? What’s their dinner topic with the family? What’s in their mind when they sit on the toilet waiting for the shit to come out?
Vests, guns, helmets, tear gas, pepper spray, shield, radio, handcuff and whatever give them a sense of security. I guess they feel insecure without these fancy armors, equipments and weapons. They are vulnerable. In some sense or nonsense, the police are also the victims. We all are the victims of a stupid self destructing system, there is no escape, there is no simple hack to fix the many systematic bugs.
At least the bubbles have bursted, we are closer to the distressing reality.
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot — I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’