the spiral

There is a large Radisson Hotel just next to Copenhagen Business School where I work, and it had concrete barriers erected in front of the entrance. That was a first!
We've never had international conferences in Denmark that required those measures before and our police has gone apeshit trying to keep NGOs away from the venue.

Hundreds have been arrested and I am quite annoyed that we have jumped so willingly on the authoritarian bandwagon and become a police state.

When I was at my union rep. seminar last, one of the things we did was to go and hear a debate in parliament. (The Danish house of Representatives)
Before we were allowed in we went through a metal detector and a search.
When I was in public school twenty years ago I also visited parliament for a debate and back then everybody could just walk in off the street and hear a debate, no searches, no nothing.

This development annoys me so much, that I almost refused to enter.
I hate that hard liner paranoia, where everybody is a criminal or has criminal intent until proven innocent. I believe it is actually the primary cause of escalating violence. It is a self fulfilling prophecy that radicalizes people, creates animosity that wasn't there to begin with and in the eyes of the scared and stupid people (which is the majority) legitimizes further measures of control.

Before control was enforced only political nutcases were any real danger, the rest of us would never dream of disrupting the democratic process. Today, along with the nutcases you can count all those who are provoked by authoritarian behavior and those who'd like to "beat the system".

Back in the day when parliament was open, the cold war "raged" and something like 15 to 20% of the Danish population were declared revolutionaries... I say again declared revolutionaries. Communist, socialists and their ilk, yet it was completely unnecessary to enforce any type of control with who came and went in parliament, even during sessions where all the ministers were present.
There has never been an attack on a Danish minister in parliament, not until a couple of years ago when a left wing politician allegedly let a couple of friends in through the new tough security measures and subsequently threw a bucked of orange paint at our prime minister, never before.

It is like this:
Picture two people, one is a little old lady, she is blind and walks with a cane. The other is 250lbs bully, with a mean face and club in one hand.
Technically and taken out of a social context, the easiest person to beat up is the little old lady, no contest.
But anybody with a hint of self respect and any link whatsoever to a social peer group, anybody for whom appearances plays a role, in fact anybody who is not criminally insane and a completely unemotional psychopath, would only ever consider beating up the bully.
Why? Because beating up the little old lady would get you ostracized from society so fast you wouldn't know what hit you.

I say cultivate your vulnerability despite your fears and be human.