I am so tired of hearing about security. Twenty years ago when I was first running for public office in Florida, that was the issue recommended to me by the city manager. I was too naive then to realize that his interest lay in getting rid of a pesky citizen who kept questioning his recommendations to the City Commission.
I lost the race and continued to bother the bureaucrats, as an elected official, who's role is restricted to acting in concert with a majority of his/her colleagues, is incapable of doing. Having discovered the advantage held by the lone citizen, I only ran for office when it was certain I would lose but could make a point by participating in the political discussion.
Security is a condition experienced by people who are either locked in their houses or in some sort of public facility. Government officials prefer a "secured" situation because that makes it easy to know where people are at.
On the other hand, insecurity or a concern for one's safety is most often a consequence of government officials having scared the citizenry nearly to death. It doesn't take much. I can clearly recall a bright Sunday morning when out stroll through an historic African American neighborhood was interrupted by a police van whose occupants were quick to advise that we "shouldn't be walking through this dangerous neighborhood." The idea that, if they knew of actual specific dangerous people, they should have already arrested them, instead of trying to scare us away, seemed entirely foreign to their thinking.
Things seem not to have changed much. Witness the account in the previous post where white police officers post themselves at a polling place to provide "security" to poll volunteers who had absolutely no inkling that there was any threat to their safety around--and had more than six hours of experience to back them up.
Of course, security and safety are not quite the same thing. Things and people that are "secured" are not thereby assured that they won't be attacked. Indeed, as most residents of "secure" facilities (mental hospitals, crisis facilities and jails) will readily attest, the indicence of aggression against them is generally rather high. If people can't get out, more often than not, their condition is similar to that of the sitting duck.
All of which leads one to suspect that calls for security in Iraq have nothing to do with preventing aggression against the indigenous population. Rather, what it means is that there, as here, the ideal is for people to stay at home and wait for instructions and do what they are told. In other words, security is the obverse of liberty. Why people should prefer the former to the latter is beyond me.
Posted by Hannah at November 4, 2004 02:47 PM