Member-only story
The Incredulous Weekend
What’s next?
Eleven-dollar-a-hour rent-a-cops at Target?
Going through security at Buffalo Wild Wings?
Getting frisked as you’re walking down the street?
We already have to take our shoes off at the airport, go through scanners originally designed for medical use, go through security at sports venues, our every move recorded by omnipresent cameras, phones and GPS satellites.
And yet somehow, we can’t do the simple things. Because we have a leader* who uses code words, trigger mechanisms, if you will, to borrow Pavlov, to rile up his fans, his base into a frenzy. Just watch the first four minutes of KasieDC from Sunday night’s broadcast.
We can’t do the simple things because for 40 years, we’ve undone the simple things. We implemented a tax law that favors the wealthiest, signed a crime bill that has led to the incarceration of people for non-violent offenses such as smoking a joint. In the process, we have gutted education, outsourced mental health, become morally indifferent to just about everything, yet we watch Dateline, 48 Hours and Live PD, like we used to watch Match Game, The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. Except the latter didn’t involve the blonde du jour getting killed or the police running down a kid walking home from the 7–11.
