How to Watch a Police Beating

How to Watch a Police Beating

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First off, there should be two sets of laws—
act like an ox and try not to be nonwhite or named Becky.
A hippie, with its gauche idealism still intact,
is annoying and self-destroying so administrations
can contain it better. It’s also an enormous help that
your skin is recorded like data on the surface of your body,
it broadcasts a signal—that you’re tripping your face off
at the prom for instance.

My eyes feel more Episcopalian than ever,
those furry little hellions that forcefully broke up a
peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists.
Parking violations can carry bigger fines
than beating up women
and you act like these people can tape you
but you can’t tape yourself.

Perhaps if the police bombed a foreign country with lattes
my friends would begin to act like themselves again.
It seems to me that this is not
an assemblage of rights activists at all, said the lion,
but a love of replacing state violence with
video game violence, great movie gore and plans
to repopulate the entire province with horny people again,
to participate without these detached coagulations of
disoriented rage branching off Falstaff just for the heck of it.

To act as banker, you have to live on interest or uncover
laughter at a huge obese religious electoral reform corsage.
I guess you’re supposed to go through and deny
each of the five senses individually.

We cannot back down

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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