Last night in New York City

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Last night in New York City—its first night under curfew (11:00 p.m.)—was

something like a split-screen presentation of A Clockwork Orange and State 

of Siege. This isn't only what I saw with my own eyes (in Greenwich Village,

near NoHo), but from what I learned from friends in Chelsea and the East

Village, and from snippets of video on Facebook.

On the one hand, the NYPD were out in force, with long lines of police cars, 

rooflights ominously strobing, snaking slowly throughout certain neighborhoods, 

and protective cordons of black-clad (and duly masked) cops around high-profile 

sites like Brooklyn's Barclay Center, while the helicopters droned all over, like

(to invoke another movie) the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now. (I'm 

hearing it right now.)

At the same time, and here and there in those same neighborhoods, young

droogies roved in vandalistic packs, freely breaking windows, stealing stuff,

and threatening passersby. Around 11:15, just moments after the (apparently)

all-for-nothing show of force in eight police cars cruising down Mercer Street. 

I heard people yelling from the windows of the complex where I live—"Put that 

back! Go home!"—and looked down to see a group of youths stowing 

something in the trunk of their parked car. Although this was after curfew,

they took their time in loading up and driving off.

Later that night—well after curfew—a good friend sent around some video

he'd just shot of a far more violent, yet just as leisurely, attack on his 

building on W. 23rd, where about a dozen youths took their time shattering

the windows of a supermarket on the ground floor. "There were cars involved

in the attack. They let out groups that went in. An unmarked police car drove

up for a second, and then left, and the looting continued. I called the cops.

By the time they showed up the looters had scattered."

Today I walked through Washington Square Park, where there were kids

in black resting on the benches here and there, and holding signs that said 

"Fuck the police" and "Black Lives Matter." No doubt they were sincere, but

they did look like extras on a break.  

All this is in line with what I sent out from my son the other night, about the

wrecking crew of 15 people who, after the peaceful protesters had passed

down Second Ave. in the East Village, meticulously rampaged down the street,

breaking windows. My son saw that the nearby precinct house on 5th St.

was alive with cops, who looked like they were to guard headquarters. 

There are all too many people taking sides while watching this go down,

"the left" reflexively applauding the protestors, and/or even justifying the

vandalism, and the right just as reflexively applauding the police, and

Trump's usual chest-thumping promise to "get tough," as if he's actually

in charge. Neither side can see, or wants to see, that this appears to be

Round Two of a (1) controlled demolition of America's economy, and, with

it, the middle class. or what's left of it; and (2) a faux-chaotic set-up for

outright martial law, as what Bertram Gross called "friendly fascism"

gives way to the overt kind that the CIA routinely engineered worldwide

for decades, with "our free press" abetting it by misreporting it, or not

reporting it, and then forgetting it, so as to help Americans not know

about it, just as the New York Times and all the other adjuncts of our

Ministry of Truth are doing now.

MCM

p.s. Tonight's curfew begins at 8:00 p.m. here in "the city that never 

sleeps." It will be 6:00 p.m. in L.A., and (I'm told) 7:00 p.m. in Dallas,

and 8:00 p.m. in Denver, as the lights continue to go out all over 

America. (Boston has been under COVID curfew since April 8, from

9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. If that order stirred any protest from the residents 

of that "blue" city, I haven't heard of it.)