I live a block or two from Wall and Broad Sts. Many times in a given week I enter the garrison of america's temple-on foot of course, as I pass through on my way west or north. Each and every time I do it I get angry and my level of anger increases if I look up at the temple and see this humongous american flag covering the face of the stock exchange. The entire site is something out of Kafka by way of Orwell. Broad St. has been turned into a communist inspired gawker site. The street was finally repaved last year (2010) with what would normally be a prettified 3"x 3" cobblestone surface that would be a delightful part of the historical zone and a pedestrian one at that. There are tables and chairs set out daily so anyone can watch the instruments of destruction as they enter or leave tthe exchange, and eat if you can. There are neighborhood residents who sit with their kids or dogs and chat or drink their coffees amid the overpwoering numbers of tourists with cameras who spend time taking pictures of the temple, the guards, swat teams, fence and tent that screen the sanctified. It's a veritablle circus not so different from the one they created by the hole-the now filling up of the WTC acreage. The difference is that the WTC site is ——— and the moat around the temple is totally, totally meaningful as the truest and most mythological symbol of what has become of us.
My rage stems from the way the financial district has been turned into a voyeuristic, nationalistic and unrecognized ——of- post 9/11 version of the OK Corral and the utter lack of understanding by the hordes that descend on it to capture it in their memories without for one second thinking about what the people associated with that building have done to us, them included. And no one asks why the place is blocked off, guarded by bollards, swat guys weidling ak47's, dogs, guard booths and those things that rise out of the streets to prevent mobile entrants. And why the centerpiece of all this masquerade is dressed in that abhorrent flag. No one asks why they have to build the tallest buidling where the previous ones were such a successful target. No-just take pictures and show your friends-nothing means what it means anymore. What has sprung up here in the years since they've tried to cripple us with fear in order to perpetrate the mental chains they put us in? Banks. Drugstores and banks. And bollards. Anyone with a bomb and a brain knows that the bollards mean nothing-the pot holed streets would set those bombs off just entering the district. But they make the bankers and law firms feel good. I bet they especially make the Federal Reserve guys feel important-looks like a London street minus the chains for no crossing there-surrounding a building that's made of rectangles of rock about 3 feet deep.
It eats at me: the banks, the Goldman Sachs buildings that suck the air and light from us, that goddam flag, the nauseating knowledge that these bloodsuckers are subsidized and when one of their games takes houses and lives from the people they're forcing into indentured servitude and we live among the steak houses that feed their appetites for more taking.
And then the comic relief-the NYSE isn't even American anymore-it's mostly owned by Euronext with a buy in from the Germans waiting to be approved. Is there anybody here who can play this game?
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