The animals who walk the streets

Reading Timothy Garton Ash’s “The thin veneer of civilization” (Opinion, Sept. 8), I found myself wondering what veneer he was talking about.

Armed police officers patrol our streets every day precisely because we are not civilized, and our lack of civility permeates all levels of society. Capitalism’s original bosses behaved (and many still do) more like wolves than civilized people, and our government’s three branches exist solely to check one another’s naked hunger for power. We are animals, and that fact stares us blankly in the face every day.

THOMAS MATES

Santa Barbara