Living in a Police State Is OK

I know, because I live in one, and I’m doing fine. I haven’t been arrested for jaywalking, littering, loitering, begging, or sleeping under a bridge. I haven’t been arrested for sleeping in a homeless shelter when there’s an outstanding warrant against me for sleeping on a suburban sidewalk. I haven’t been arrested for being someone who looks to a reasonable person like I belong on public assistance. I haven’t been arrested for eating food someone gave me in a park. I haven’t been arrested for not being white, wearing a wrong-color T-shirt in a wrong-color neighborhood, or looking overly anxious in an airport. I haven’t been arrested for being late for school or without ID in public housing. And those are just some of the things I haven’t been arrested for. The reason I haven’t been arrested is not because I’m white and haven’t committed any of these crimes — let’s face it, I’ve jaywalked, littered, and loitered, which makes me a triple threat — it’s because I’m not poor. If I were, living in my police state would not be OK, as Barbara Ehrenreich points out today in her must-read NY Times op-ed on “the viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent.”
(Crossposted at HuffPo)
Postscript: Talk about a police state … a friend writes from Germany: “Did you know that the German govt is now authorized (by a Parliament fulla worthless flakes) to invade everybody’s pc or laptop with a spy program — called, don’t laugh, ‘Trojan horse’ — and make a record of every key touched, and store the information for six months, etc. Of course, Hitler waived the idea of opening everybody’s mail and used a shortcut: Dangle a few krauts from the nearest tree with a cardboard sign around their necks that says: I am the evilest pig in town / With Jews I have been screwing around. Selah. In other words, we have accomplished the unthinkable — we have sunk below herr Hitler … and M’sieu Napoleon, and Henry VIII … and Nero.”

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