Sunday, November 20, 2011

Excerpt #18

You came home and saw a piece of video of a police officer in riot gear pepper spraying student protesters as they sat passively on the ground on the campus of one of the University of California schools. Yesterday, you saw a photo of an 85 year old woman in Portland, Oregon who’d also been pepper sprayed. The day before that there was a still photo of a white police officer spraying a little black girl’s face – very specifically - as she tried to leave the area holding her mother’s hand. Peaceful protest isn’t going to stay that way long, with police tactics like that. It was interesting to note that in the video from U.C. Davis, students chanted their outrage at the police after the seated protesters were unnecessarily sprayed, but there was no violence. All the students though had recording devices – phones, cameras, video cameras, tablets. These will probably prove to be a great deal more effective than thrown rocks and bottles, but you think that if the police continue this trend of unwarranted force, a violent reaction is sure to come. You admire these kids for standing up in the face of this and having the discipline not to lash out. The president is going to have to weigh in on this pretty soon. Things are getting weird.

Meanwhile, Stephen Hawking says it’s time for us humans to expand into space, time to leave the ravaged Earth behind.

Why write fiction? This is all so much stranger. We’re all right here on the edge of winter, but you're thinking we've just recently gone over the edge into something of far greater consequence.

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