They’ve been warning for months now, but you really cannot be prepared for your city turning into a heavily fortified warzone until you’re sitting in the middle of it. And driving to work, I realized, I’m sitting at Ground Zero for the Republican National Convention here in Tampa/St. Petersburg.
All weekend long, the workers have been buzzing up and down my street and all around my office. When I woke up this morning and drove to work, I got to see the beginning of all their effort….Concrete barriers and chain link fences everywhere. The feel and scene are quite disturbing…..So this is what this failed democracy has come to? The St. Pete Police Department building, located just a few steps from my office is being turned into a bunker, but the row after row, tens of miles of concrete barriers and fencing are what really catches your eye and makes my heart turn cold.
A few months ago I made a video mocking the reports of FEMA concentration camps, as I stood on the other side of these very same barriers that had been constructed for St. Peterssburg’s Indy race. Now, just a few months later it’s clear to see just how those barriers can quickly be re purposed for to keep people in.
It truly is a disturbing commentary on our national politic that so much effort must be made to barricade the ruling class from the peasants and the proletariat…..I wonder how safe they’ll feel as their luxury bus caravans sweep them from one event to another? The physical experience of all this security and fencing and barriers will only serve to reinforce the paranoia and extremism of the neo cons. When dogs meet at the dog park, they’re far better off left to run and mingle free of their leashes. When two leashed dogs meet, the restraint and the tension and the pressure only serve to foster more tension and conflict. The fences and the barriers and the security forces all marching will only serve to amp up those who oppose this perversion of a democracy.
Left in their natural state…the state contemplated by our nation’s free speech respecting forefathers…what really would protesters do? They would certainly yell and scream and beat drums and draw attention to themselves. They would certainly interrupt and disrupt the course of events…but if they were in fact left to let their full voices be heard, would that not be preferable to bottling all this up? I feel the choke, the crushing boot of repression and fascism and I’m not even a protester.
Dropping $50 million dollars on this theater of fascism, it certainly brings to mind those haunting images of the Nuremberg Rallies and Zepplin field.
But this is not just a swipe at the Republicans…the whole system has gone mad….both parties waging a war of propaganda on our airwaves….bleeding into our minds and searing images of division into our collective consciousness.
This is not at all what our founding forefathers had in mind.
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Tampa is indeed a hot mess….