I agree with NewMexiKen’s headline for this photo: There Have Always Been Brutal Bastards. However, thugs and goons distract us from those who can afford to ignore all of this and all problems of any kind.

Photo taken at UC Davis.

If you think this is new, you’ve forgotten DUHbya’s Reign of Error, which gave us Free Speech Zones (cages out of sight). You’ve forgotten our own thug, Darren White, saying “let me at them” about citizens speaking out against a war we never should have entered. You’ve forgotten our police gassing those protestors.

Is this acceptable to you?

At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning – NYTimes.com

at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. …

On Thursday afternoon when I returned toward sundown to the steps to see how the students had responded, the air was full of balloons, helium balloons to which tents had been attached, and attached to the tents was kite string. And they hovered over the plaza, large and awkward, almost lyrical, occupying the air.

At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning – NYTimes.com