So, the New York Senate has passed a bill criminalizing disrespect for police officers, an offense punishable by up to four years in prison. Police officers who disrespect, bully, taser, shoot or club to death helpless ordinary persons – the mundanes – will, of course, be exempt from any state punishment. Herr Bloomberg may already be assembling SWAT teams to prowl the streets in provocateuring efforts to cajole teenagers into giving them the finger. We may soon hear of a new offense – offered years ago by Kurt Vonnegut – “suspicion of intent to conspire to have anti-police thoughts.” We may all have occasion to parrot the words of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke: in the face of expanded police brutalities, we shall all be expected to respond “yowsa, boss; yowsa boss.” Those who fail to do so may a four-year incarceration awaiting them!
Fifty-some years ago, I read a wonderful dystopian novel: David Karp’s One. It took 1984, Brave New World, and similar anti-state classics to the next level where the political establishment seems now headed. No longer content with just ordering obedient conduct, the state system in Karp’s novel insisted that everyone truly believe in the system. One had to renounce individualism and embrace a collective identity, or be destroyed!
1:00 pm on June 7, 2013
