The dissident could barely move a muscle that day. The spirits of police and military psychics hovered over and around him, pressing down, channeling depression, sucking out his spirit, recycling it through a conveyor belt and squeegee, draining out any free will or spiritual energy, and returning in a conformed made to order ethos, ready to be manipulated at will.
He was on lockdown. Of course, they had to make appearances. Go shopping, wear clothes, post the occasional emoji on social media. We are a democracy after all. There is freedom to go shopping and pump oil into your car, step on the gas and drive freely. Freedom and democracy is the slogan, making the world safe for democracy. Pressing forwards always on the eastern front.
He wasn’t on house arrest per se. He had money to go to the beach, or the movies, or drink a Starbucks coffee. He just didn’t have the energy. The torture that morning was intense. He was in a dream state, speaking to trade unionists and activists on hidden covert channels when the anti-red goon squad slipped into his bed lying on bags of protective crystals, and started squeezing the muscles of his heart. The pain was intense, he writhed and seethed in pain. He was used to this workover, the occasional torture, usually in the form of energy pulses to his internal organs, the clicking of his knees and appendages, or concussions and scrambling of his brain, with a pressure on his temple. The month before he was given double vision, and it took a month and a half to recover. I guess they are using a different tactic now, he thought, calmly.
“Please don’t torture me officer. Please stop torturing me” He cried out, out loud, screaming in pain. What must the neighbors think? The Columbians, new immigrants, just moved upstairs. Older immigrants get killed; it seemed. America always is looking for scared vulnerable compliant workers. But maybe that was just his personal prejudice and racism talking. They were nice people. He met them once, a pregnant girlfriend and a man who just started working at the Boiling Crab, a small Chinese chain store. He hoped he didn’t disturb them crying out in tortured anguish.
“Get up” the voice commanded. “Get up you fucking jew piece of shit.” He had no energy to get out of bed. The chest pain started once more. “Get the fuck up you fucking jew.”
He sat up, seemingly stoned, barely able to stay upright, at the side of the bed. It was already noon; the morning had gone by.
There was a march to Chevron that morning in the south bay, with protesters demanding an end to the oil economy that had led to global warming and record heat waves all summer. In east LA the local Democratic Socialists were meeting, reeling from back-to-back congressional losses of black radical congresspersons in New York and St. Louis. In Los Angeles, a well-respected career politician, a county board member and city councilperson, was behind bars. He had directed funding to a university where his son went to school. He had built a new hospital and wanted to house homeless people and treat them with dignity and respect.
To the prosecutors and cops, none of that mattered. Troublemakers must be dealt with. They had to silence dissent, before momentum could grow. Every ember, every smoldering desire to be free must be stomped out completely. Otherwise, with declining real wages, wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, and endless war; otherwise, there would be anarchy. Civilization was at stake.
All the dissident could do was stare at the television. It was off, a black empty screen, but that didn’t really matter. He couldn’t do much; he couldn’t lift a finger. Earlier in life, when he was younger, he had hope. We could build off the groundswell of mass outrage and opposition to the war in Iraq, he and his peers had thought. But Bush won in 2004. Two years later millions took to the streets opposed to the criminalization of immigrants and threat of mass deportations. It took fifteen years, but a red rusty thousand-mile wall was built on the U.S. Mexico border, and mass privately run detention centers with slave labor conditions sat gleaning in the desert sun hours from the center of the immigrant majority metropolis. We won healthcare reform, that was something, he mused, staring at the blank black screen. But the system was geared to physical emergencies and end of life care, not the quality of life, not the social determinants of health, or lifestyle, or stopping the psychic cops, the trauma and physical scars that beat and abused the bodies minds and spirits of people.
Four years ago, 20 million people took to the streets for justice, autonomy, and a chance to breathe fresh air. For some reason he was targeted. Maybe it was his work in the trade union movement, or a few blog posts, or someone ratted him out as a potential leader of the opposition. Maybe it was his dream. Dreams of conversations with groups of people, autonomous organizations, networks conspiring and discussing over covert channels in the dead of night and early in the morning.
Then the cops invaded. They invaded his dreams. Manipulated his thoughts. Spoon fed him energy to contort his body and muscles. Moved him around in bed at night. Screamed at him night and day. Channeled emotions and rage, despair, joy, and pain into his heart. Tore at his soul to imprison it locked in a keep.
The politicians lied. Now the progressive governor of the golden state traveled to Los Angeles, to roll up his sleeves and toss homeless persons’ belongings carefully constructed on the side of the freeway. The third world favelas and apartheid like shantytowns without running water or sanitation services must be disappeared. The evicted tenants living in these makeshift dwellings jailed, or transported into the sweltering desert to fend for themselves or die of thirst.
The judges said it must be done. The landlords and real estate interests demanded it. And with politicians jailed, and dissidents tormented covertly in the dead of night, the stale haze of another sweltering summer day did not stir.
One comment