homeland security

The news roared through the city like Superman out to crush a Playstation baddie. Cell phones flipped open everywhere, shouting their confusion, outrage, and apologies for being late to the world. Palms, Blackberries, and notebooks pounded the Internet, while their batteries lasted, with frustration and demands for explanations.

Rush hour traffic in the Metropolis had been a one-way ticket to Hell for as long as anyone could remember. But on this Monday morning, the jams surpassed the maddest imaginings of the darkest pessimist. Lines of stopped vehicles stretched deep into the suburbs. Freeway ramps 100 miles from the city center were strewn with broken glass from the cars that had sped onto them, expecting the usual clear sailing, only to ram into the backs of the queues that had formed. Many a half-asleep creature of commuter habit was jolted awake, not by the morning's Starbucks, but by the frantic squeal of brakes and the fury of raised voices, yelling at each other and, above all, at the lack of motion.

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HOMELAND SECURITY, phr. Fortress Amerika. A stockade to keep out the physicians while the patient grows blind, deaf, and dangerously obese.

Many societies throughout history have built elaborate and expensive walls in an effort to preserve their nation or culture: the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall built by Rome in Britain, France’s Maginot Line, Nazi Germany’s West Wall, and the Soviet empire’s Berlin Wall. None of the polities responsible for erecting these walls has survived, and, for the most part, neither have the walls. Portions of the Great Wall of China are preserved as monuments; fragments of the Berlin Wall are sold as souvenirs and adorn private and public art galleries; in segments of the Maginot Line, farmers grow mushrooms.

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