Thin Lines

Coyote doesn't always see so well, but what he does see seems awfully blurry.

First there is the thin blue line, the fragile police line protecting society from criminality. Makes sense.  Then the line separating concentrated arbitrary power from ganging up on the people.  Call that line the Constitution.  Next, lines defining domestic as opposed to foreign, intelligence gathering as opposed to spying, and prisoners of war as opposed to enemy combatants.  Good, solid, understandable lines.  Except that now when Coyote looks at those lines, he can barely see them.  Maybe he needs bifocals.  Or maybe the lines are disappearing.

It seems the National Guard will be housing over five hundred troops in Denver during the convention.  National Guard troops are usually brought in when there are natural disasters, to provide stability and authority, and to prevent looters from stealing and destroying property. Makes sense.  But in this crazy world of dissolving boundaries, Coyote is very sad to wonder, are there any other reasons why the National Guard will be here?  If protesters get out of control, could the National Guard be used against them?  Could the streets of Denver arbitrarily be declared a disaster zone?  Could domestic protesters be declared terrorists? Enemy combatants?  Who exactly does the Constitution protect from whom?  Again, Coyote is very sad to even be thinking such thoughts, and asking such questions, but in this new world of Guantanamo and FISA, the questions must be asked.

Coyote imagines a can of paint.  When you look inside you see all kinds of colors, totally mixed together.  Pretty like a rainbow, but confusing too.  But then with a magical stick you start to stir the paint, and over time the different colors start to sort themselves out.  Greens, blues, yellows and reds all begin to clump together, and you begin to see boundaries between the colors.  This is what Coyote calls maturity, both for individuals and for groups.  If you are growing in the right direction, you slowly start to sort the mess out, and slowly begin to get a glimpse of how things fit together. 

But our world is going in exactly the opposite direction.  The hard won boundaries that our culture has fought for through its legislative and judicial structures, and its good old fashioned common sense, are disappearing.  The colors are starting to blend together again, and arbitrary power is beginning to reach across boundaries where it ought not go.  We are not maturing as a culture, we are regressing.  Our vision of how important things fit together is getting blurry, and poor old Coyote is left wondering if he is paranoid, or if he is indeed asking wise questions.

How about a thin brown line?  Imagine an army of coyotes patrolling downtown Denver, enforcing boundaries and getting into all kinds of trouble.  Sounds good to me, but who would clean up the streets?

CoyoteJ