Can one be a connoisseur of riots? I have been in one or two in my time, and, as the pictures come in of the theocracy clearing the streets of Tehran and, I guess, attempting to put the djinn of dissent back in the bottle, while the shrieking US domestic right cries freedom as though nothing like every happened or could ever happen here, my attention is drawn past the politics to all those riot police on motorcycles. I have never seen anything like it before, and it would seem to add an entire Rollerball aspect to business of civil unrest and urban mob protest. I also figure that any rioters worth their Che t-shirts will rapidly figure a way to unseat and upend a cop on a bike – maybe by the use of long poles – and this new threat, although highly photogenic, will be effectively neutralized.
Tain't much different than mounting the forces of repression on horses; there are advantages & disadvantages. But motorcycles do burn better than (live) horses.
ReplyDeleteYou don't really need a pole...side-step toreador style then throw a solid body-check should do it. The real problem is the other cop a few feet away who's aiming a .9mm automatic at your head...
ReplyDeleteI suppose that if you don't want to die, you run... easy enough concept to imagine.
ReplyDeleteThey've got the guns & the numbers if you count their bullets.
That aspect of it was true even back when Morrison was singing, and we've nothing the numbers now that we had then . Perhaps a more contemporary paraphase would be "They got the muscle but we got the brains."
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