Armed "bouncers," drawn from the ranks of the Chicago police, patrolled the shadows restlessly.
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You might think the word "bouncers" was in quotes because it was being used euphemistically, as if the police weren't really "bouncers" but more probably "murder enthusiasts." But you'd be slightly wrong (only slightly because police are and always have been "murder enthusiasts"). The reason it's in quotes is because it only lately, in the late 19th century, gained the connotation of being a person who chucks people out of establishments. Apparently it was made popular by Horatio Alger whom we all know as the bootstraps guy.
Pynchon pulls no punches when writing about the brutality and bloodlustiness of police. Time and time again in Gravity's Rainbow, he portrays them as violent thugs more interested in smashing skulls than law and order. And he wasn't alone! Police have had a terrible reputation in America for decades. It's just that there are a certain type of people (we'll call them "racists") who support the police no matter what because they love seeing minorities and poor people beaten and murdered. It makes them feel like their Blu-ray players are safe and secure within their triple-locked and alarmed house inside their fenced neighborhood. Your Blu-ray player can never be too safe, you know!
We all knew in the 60s and 70s that police were brutal scolds who were just hanging around trying to disrupt every good time. But in the 80s, something began to change. We were told, over and over again, that drugs were bad and there was a war on drugs and the only people who could save us from drugs were cops and the DARE program. But this one sentence by Pynchon is way more accurate than all the pro-cop television and cops are your friends Presidential Fitness programs of the 80s (don't try to untangle that statement; it's mostly just me still bristling at the Presidential Fitness program which has nothing to do with policing. For some reason, us fat kids were almost as horrible Conservative specters as crack addicts, welfare mothers, and Willie Horton): Chicago police, armed and ready for trouble, patrol restlessly. They're restless to use their arms!
The lie has always been that people become police out of a sense of duty to protect their community. They become police so they can legally beat and murder people whom they think should be beaten and murdered. Law and order never actually comes into the equation.
Oh yeah! One important aspect of this I initially overlooked was how the police are patrolling the darker, less white area of the Fair. Of course they are. Because it's about intimidation of the powerless. If they patrolled the area full of middle class whites, they couldn't beat whomever they wanted to beat. Middle class white people love police brutality when the right people are targeted but they hate the police even looking at themselves suspiciously. How dare they!
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