I felt a new understanding of the phrase “law and order.” I’d always thought its political appeal lay in the law and all that that term meant: a nation of laws not of men; equal justice under law; the rule of law. But I realized in that moment that the phrase’s power lay in the second term, in the promise of order, where people walk on the sidewalks, not in the street; traffic flows smoothly; and music is played softly and discreetly. In Ferguson that order was being boisterously, furiously, fuck-you’ed. And the beneficiaries of that order—from the local reporters to the homeowners in leafy
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