10
" As an immigrant his mission had been simple. He was brought here by his parents to make money off what an important Jewish author had once termed "the American berserk." You came, they laughed at your accent on an urban playground, and then you were given your degrees and guided into battle. By which point, you were just a scab sent in to reinforce the established order. In the video, as the white policeman was draining the air from his Black victim's lungs with his knee, another cop, a Hmong immigrant, stood in front of him in a wide-open stance, daring anyone to come to the dying man's aid. He could have been a Russian, a Korean, a Gujarati. All of us, Senderovsky thought, are in service to an order that has long predated us. All of us have come to feast on this land of bondage. And all of us are useful and expendable in turn. "
― Gary Shteyngart , Our Country Friends
12
" The news affected Senderovsky more than it did the others. He watched the video footage of the Midwestern murder-by-cop over and over while he was on the toilet locked in the upstairs bathroom. He memorized the scene. The ugly institutional shoes, the ugly institutional pants, the baton and flashlight and walkie-talkie, the upturned sunglasses worn high over the buzz cut, and beneath all that brute institutional force, a dying man crying out the last word that was likely also his first, those two repeating syllables, Ma and Ma. And then he was a man no more, but a lifeless slab hoisted on an institutional gurney, and there was static and instructions and dispatch codes. All of it perfectly commonplace, like an order for Gruyere cheese placed at the local market for curbside pickup. "
― Gary Shteyngart , Our Country Friends
16
" At the mouth of the state highway, away from the liberal estates, they were putting up blue flags supporting the police. Senderovsky saw them on a walk and shuddered at the way the flags flew, stiff and new, as if unsure of themselves and their capacity to instill fear. In case the point of the flags wasn't subtle enough, muscular dogs ran down one property's minor hill to growl at passersby. (Karen and Nat avoided the house on their walks because the unchained dogs frightened them.) Imagine what it would take for Senderovsky, the owner of the largest (by area) estate on the road, to ring that doorbell (after evading the dogs) and demand (beg?) for the flag to be taken down? What would he say? "Sir, it offends me"? "Sir, I'm scared." The whole point was to offend him. The whole point was to make him scared. "
― Gary Shteyngart , Our Country Friends
