America, the Police State

When fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain. That is its subtle appeal. It will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply…. Occasionally, those who still believe in freedom will resist by daring to exercise their rights to speak out and protest. Of course, the militarized police will be there to crack a few skulls as a warning…

John Whitehead. Battlefield America: The war on the american people, (selectbooks, inc, 2015), pp. 34-35.

The United States, once a model of democratic-republicanism, has been a virtual police state since the crescendo of the so-called War on Drugs. Certainly for some groups (African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, et al.) it has been an effective police state for much longer. But since the War on Drugs, the police state has accelerated and now anyone can be a victim within its reach. Reasonable people can disagree on its exact causes and timeline, but only the most nationalistic or naive of people can dispute that we’re deep in it now.

In 1985, a Supreme Court that had abdicated its independence and succumbed to become drug warriors for the state, gave police the authority to perform cavity searches for drugs with no requirement for a warrant (United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 538).

In 1992 a ranch owner named David Scott was murdered by a group of drug warriors from the  Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Border Patrol, California National Guard and National Park Service, who wanted his land as a base of future drug war operations. They had fabricated data that suggested Scott was a marijuana grower as a pretense for seizing his ranch and executed him and took his property as planned.

In 1996 the federal government initiated the 1033 Program, which allowed the US military to give billions of dollars of war equipment to local police departments. This war equipment includes combat vehicles (tanks), rifles, military helmets, and misleadingly named “non-” or less-lethal weapons, some of which have featured in police raids and police violence against protesters, including protests for racial justice. Why would local police departments need war equipment for local policing other than the people themselves are now considered enemy combatants.

I anticipate the criticism will be that “it is absurd to think the US is a police state because…,” but the evidence is overwhelming and I will supply ample evidence and much discourse in proof of this thesis. Almost any complaint we made of the tyrant George III in declaring independence is once again oppressing us, but this time by our own police state. If you wish to defend the police state or otherwise comment, feel free to do so. If your comment is stupid or lacks evidence to support it, I’ll likely just ignore it.

Here’s a short video demonstrating the police state in action. The woman who was assaulted by the police state “wasn’t charged” (if this was a functioning republic, the question would be whether the officer would be charged, not the woman respectfully petitioning a public organization for redress of grievances).