Uniforms and Religion

Watching the Egyptian "security forces", the Puerto Rican "security forces", the U.S.,Syrian Honduran, Yemenese, Colombian, etc, etc.. "security forces" and others around the globe unleash brutal retaliation at those who would challenge their authority, I start thinking about the bizarre hierarchy and the effect militaristic training and uniforms have on working class recruits. Young guys with the blood lust, clubs swinging, dragging women around by their hair...

It's true the US cops don't fire live ammunition into crowds of Occupy protesters (yet) but there is plenty of historical precedent. Yet even the pepper spray and billy clubbing demonstrates the psychological effect of Putting On The Uniform, joining the elite club of legal enforcers and carrying the capacity for raw power and force over your fellow citizens.

In Egypt, this brutality and circumventing of the revolutions democratic goals is facilitated by the deafening silence of the opportunist religionists. They now collaborate with the very regime that oppressed them for so long because they smell some advantage, basically bourgeois electoral dominance in a corrupt system. I am reminded how Christians hitch their boat to war mongering profiteers here in America when it suites them, when it promises to further their prurient social agenda.