Yesterday, driving on the stretch of 92 from Fayetteville to Manlius, I saw a wooden sign advertising for homes or apartments. GATED COMMUNITY, it said. Since this portion of the county houses our landed aristocracy, I entertained questions popping into my head like comics' speech-dialogue balloons: what are the gates for? to block you in? or block you out? to give you security? what is security? security from whom? Trayvon Martin? George Zimmerman? the approaching tanks? the marching menace? are the gates there to protect you from -- wait for it -- THE CITY, and its alleged rampaging crime and welfare and urban terror and guns the NRA says we need to have but They must not possess and everything else the paranoiac fear-mongers outside its borders sell? will the gates be designed to protect you from the Liberal Agenda? or from FoxNews's evangelism of negativity? in short (actually, not so short), will these gates be so designed as to give you peace and quiet, safe from Them and It and That, the peace you have earned and deserve and have a right and entitlement to? those gates?
That's a lot of pompous questions on a Monday afternoon, on a day we call Labor Day but do not labor and instead celebrate as a holiday, thanks to the labor movement (a holiday, unless you are one who must work today: nurses, doctors, police, firefighters, fast-food workers, gas station clerks, mall workers, military, musicians at the fair, fair workers, EMTs, prison guards, caregivers, clergy, and many others).
Speaking of prisons and prisoners, I know a fellow just released from prison. He did his time, paid his debt to society, as the saying goes; a little over two years. What's he going to put on his resume, "Employed at a gated community"?
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3 comments:
Gated community.
Sign of economic apartheid.
It's here, and the powers that be want even more gates we can't see, but are stronger barriers -- no healthcare, voting restrictions, limited educational opportunity...
Well said, Snarkk. Can't wait to meet you Saturday, but wait we must.
Channelling the Five Man Electric Band? Signs, gates, roadblocks, etc. It's all about those that have not wanting to share.
Like someone somewhere said, California is the ONLY state where the rich (sometimes) vote Demoocrat.
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