"Those walls and bars are there for a reason," said Crake.
"Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases."
"Them?"
"Nature and God."
I don't even know how to begin to expand upon this.
In short, D.C. is planning on creating "Neighbourhood Safety Zones" or, as I prefer to call them, Atwood's pleeblands. Pleeblands are poor, crime-infested neighbourhoods which will be fenced and guarded at all hours of every day, and for which one will be required to present government-issued identification and a 'legitimate' reason to enter or exit.
I always knew there was a reason I felt a sense of uncanny familiarity with Oryx and Crake, and that reason seems to be evidencing itself every single time I read or watch the news and discover yet another development in our frightening and foul work towards some fucked up idea of 'progess'.
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The real irony? The seat of the U.S. federal government, the District of Columbia, is one of a few places in the United States where the Constitution grants Congress the authority to exercise a general police power. One would think D.C. should reflect the best that members of Congress can do for public education, public safety, clean streets, green power, mass employment, and everything else they might want to showcase for the nation.
Instead, it regularly competes for the per-capita murder record and has a public school system used only by those who can't afford to escape the creeping blight.
Yet ... members of that same Congress are now running for President, and telling the public as they do that they have slick ideas for creating jobs and improving the safety of Americans and the quality of life in the United States. Exactly how does the track record of a member of Congress suggest capacity to improve life in the United States?
D.C., incidentally, recently lost a case in which it tried to disarm its own police officer off-duty at home, where he apparently needs the weapon to keep safe.
blog post on D.C.'s arms control effort
Strange stuff, politics.
Walling off the city into zones that can be besieged and patrolled like a war zone might be effective (for some definition of "effectiveness" -- provided it doesn't encompass much of the definition of "liberty") but it's hardly a solution I'd expect my own neighbors to line up to adopt.
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