Security at the RNC: George Orwell Meets a 'Call of Duty' Cityscape

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/security-at-the-rnc-george-orwell-meets-a-call-of-duty-cityscape/261644/



Deep inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the impenetrable fortress where this year's Republican National Convention is being held, my colleagues and various GOP delegates assure me that the venue security I experienced is typical for events of this kind -- that it's been this way ever since 9/11. "This must be your first convention," they say. It is. As a newbie, it feels like an Orwellian police state, albeit one where the men in military fatigues carrying assault weapons are exceptionally polite. Convention veterans are inured to the layers of security checkpoints, the metal detectors, the bomb sniffing dogs, the concrete barricades, the chain link fences, and the virtual absence of protesters. I'll likely feel that way too after a few more days flashing my official credential, emblazoned with a holographic elephant raising its trunk in triumph. It's the new normal.

For now, however, I still find it striking that a community organizer turned president and a Republican Party constantly talking up limited government have collaborated to police and host a civic event literally held beneath multiple hovering police helicopters. Delegates and journalists are welcome, but citizen protesters are so far removed in their permanent camp that they might as well be in another city, save brief forays that bring them momentarily to the far periphery of the secure zone. They have the right to peaceably assemble... over there.

In past years I've always watched the political conventions on television. The atmosphere on the convention floor invariably appears to be festive, with delegates resplendent in red, white, and blue, a series of speeches by familiar figures extolling American values, and broadcast media invested in the notion that their job is to humanize the nominee. Sunday night, I watched from my hotel room as CNN broadcast its deep dive on Mitt Romney. The piece had all the trappings of even-handedness. Neither compliments nor criticisms were broadcast without some balancing statement. The unstated bias was toward narrative biography, as if looking deep into the candidate's past would reveal the true character of the man behind the HD image machine.

What feels different, experiencing the RNC here at the actual venue, is the inescapable, visceral awareness of the sprawling establishment that surrounds the nominee and his running-mate.

[Curtland1015]

1. Reno 911 meets Abbey Road.

[madrchsod]

2. yup.....

[pinboy3niner]

3. DUzy!

[leveymg]

4. That's the nice, friendly face they want to put on it. Not the tanks and march of the centurions.

[Lionessa]

5. IMO, this line of remarks is only valid if you think the DNC Convention

will really look any different. I'm betting it won't look any different. This isn't a Repub or Dem thing, this is just a reflection of our totally f'd up scaredy-cat society.

[2pooped2pop]

6. Of course the Dem convention will look similar

Occupy will be there. ANd where Occupy goes, police state follows.

And of course it is a presidential convention.

[RC]

7. First we go out and slap other countries around, then we wonder why they get upset.

Then we get to watch as we select "our leaders" in televised, Flag waving, festive activities, in secure buildings, behind barricades and armed guards, carefully excluding any dissidents from the carefully crafted party line, that was worked out from behind closed and locked doors, that but for token input, ignore the very people and their welfare, our pre-chosen leaders that have been put forward to lead us, in rigged elections, for the benefit, not of the people, but for the benefit of the people making the decisions of who we get to vote for in the first place.