Behind me Metropolitan Police wearing orange vests direct traffic. Each time the light changes an officer with a bullhorn announces to pedestrians „Get out of the road as quickly as you can please. Get out of the road quickly as you can.“ I have not seen anything like this in another city. In Berlin my impression is police stopping traffic, or stopping pedestrians from entering the roadway, but not of regularly hastening pedestrians across the street. We are urged to be sheep, continually reminded we are sheep.
When it was my turn to cross I found it wasn’t only the guy with the bullhorn. The other policemen were also continually good-naturedly herding people. I see this frequently at American airports as well, where guards herd people as if we were cattle, with many people laughingly going along with it. This is not how citizens of a democracy speak with one another. It’s as if people identify as being a mass of consumers, engaged in the task which defines us.
