November 15, 2011, The stuff that police state dreams are made on
All hail the conquering hero, Mike Bloomberg and his now-deployed-as-mercenaries-for-the-banking-sector New York Police Department, for their daring middle-of-the-night-raid to roust and evict Occupy Wall Street from Liberty Plaza Zuccotti Park. I confess that amidst my seasonal-never-ending-cold induced insomnia, I was actually thinking about heading over to my office (yes, it's across the street from OWS, conveniently located at the center of everything between the NY Stock Exchange, NY Fed, and WTC construction site) to look at (and maybe even participate in) the mirth and merriment that a middle of the night Move On.Org e-mail advised me was underway... in this case, fatigue made cowards of us all...
Well then. One in the morning. To minimize press coverage and images "neighborhood disruption." This is how genuinely ashamed of themselves autocratic regimes operate; Assad's Syria would be much more transparent in its overreaching and brutality. Of course, it faces off with protestors hell-bent on regime change, as opposed to the demand-less, meditative OWS, which seemed to be about consciousness... but as I've said before, money won't even tolerate being shamed.
While the still fat and self-delusional "get-off-my-lawn" (and you young people continue your serfdom so that I can play golf on MY social security) crowd applauds the eviction of the dirty hippies, sensible people point out that any overreaction thus far has only led to the movement's building... and building... In this case, possibly many times over, quite possibly to a venue much larger and better located toward the actual Wall Street captains of finance (that would be in Mid-town).
The plutocracy might be careful what it wishes for; it might find "shaming" just a little less draconian than some of its alternatives.