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Over the past six days, the nation has begun to notice an awful series of events in Ferguson, Mo.: The police killing of an unarmed 18-year-old, followed by mass protests in African-American neighborhoods, followed by what looks suspiciously like a military action.
From England, former WW reporter Corey Pein has also been watching. What he sees reminds him of Red Dawn.
You may remember Pein from his reporting on U.S. Defense Department drones in Portland, or his story on the long-neglected eastern neighborhoods of this city.
These days, he's writing from Great Britain for politics and culture magazine The Baffler. In an essay posted today, Pein says the images of tanks rolling past McDonald's franchises recalls the most paranoid fantasies of libertarians and militiamen—commie invasions, a New World Order. But the small-government crowd isn't decrying the use of state force.
"Libertarians are happy to talk about police militarization," Pein writes, "but they'd prefer not to talk about institutional racism, because racism is a problem for which they have no answers, and when the subject comes up, their shoes tend to get messy."
He raises another question: Where's the gun-rights lobby? Pein says the answer is obvious.
WWeek 2015