The Police in the Temple: Order, Justice and the UN- A Dialectical View

VII

The police are ransacking the temple, searching for criminals and those it calls terrorists. The mind of the police - the security police in this case - is a machine, programmed to believe that history ended and we won it; that what remains is a clash of civilizations and we intend to come up first. As it proceeds - helmets, boots, blackjacks and all - towards the altar, the people draw silently away into the small chapels, surrounding the navis, each to attend communion before a different god. After the police have gone, the altar hall is empty but for the few that were left to guard it, and their admirers. The frescoes, the bronze statuettes, the stained glass, the marble speak from different ages, through different symbols, and towards a now empty centre. Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini. The peace of the police is not the calm of the temple but the silence of the tomb.

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