Posted on 01/05/2015 5:13:37 AM PST by Dick Bachert
For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.
We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.
As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.
We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.
We’ve been given the runaround on government wrongdoing, starting with President Obama’s claim that the National Security Agency has never abused its power to spy on Americans’ phone calls and emails. All the while, the NSA has been racing to build a supercomputer that could break through “every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.”
We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging.
We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.
We’ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment.
We’ve been railroaded into believing that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, when truth be told, as the corporate state knows all too well, the only color that matters in politics is green.
We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.
We’ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed and arrested, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors.
We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country. We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us.
We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform. We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.
We’ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights.
We’ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.
We’ve been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.
Now there are those who still insist that they are beyond the reach of the police state because they have done nothing wrong and have nothing to fear. Yet the lesson of 2014 is simply this: in a police state, you’re either a cop or you’re one of the little people. Right now, we are the little people, the servants, the serfs, the grunts who must obey without question or suffer the consequences.
If there is to be any hope in 2015 for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”
Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.
In other words, get moving. Time is growing short, and the police state is closing in. Power to the people!
I think that accurately captures exactly the state of affairs here and which was portrayed in your essay.
Strict adherence to the constitution should be a central plank of any conservative's political platform. We do not have to be anti-cop and we shouldn't be at this point but we should be ever pro-constitution and ever-mindful of developing threats, both foreign and domestic, to the constitution and we should be prepared to oppose those threats. That's just my 2 cents anyways.
And this is what people here do not get... How quickly too many have forgotten what Martin Niemoller said 70 years ago:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
I wonder how far it goes before the people in Washington (state) and Connecticut understand that they are on the same side as the African American community in this nation that have felt targeted for decades. Indeed, how much farther it needs to go before we all understand that we are on the same side...
Dress them like the military
Train them like the military
Equip them like the military
Don’t be surprised when they start acting like the military.
You do understand that the constitution as written has permitted the government to get to where it is today with no end in sight, right?
Awesome post. Thanks for speaking truth that far too many Whigs do not want to hear.
I think the people have allowed that to happen actually, ignorant people. It’s up to people like us to undo the damage caused by their ignorance. It’s an uphill battle.
One does not preclude the other.
Elect a pro-2nd Amendment, Constitutional sheriff in your county, and you won’t have trouble with rogue cops. I have a Constitutional sheriff in my county. To date, he’s run two bad police chiefs out of office and used his investigative powers to throw a half-dozen local criminal bureaucrats into state prison. If you want a peaceful life in your neighborhood, you need legal, armed muscle to protect you. A Constitutional sheriff fills the bill.
The ONLY times I or any family member has EVER NEEDED a cop was to file an accident or incident report involving an auto collision. I cannot think of one other instance.
While I do realize that they’re out there generally keeping the evil doers at bay, I have extended these bits of advice to my family members:
RULE 1: While there are exceptions, there is very few situations that cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.
RULE 2:
If you EVER find yourself in a tavern or bar where cops regularly hang out, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
* They are probably drunk (most probably because they’ve just spent a shift dealing with unpleasant people and situations);
* They are armed;
* They are ALWAYS RIGHT!
The writer has lost his mental equilibrium. His first mistake is saying “WE” when he means “some people.”
The police do what the city administration tells them to do. The administration is responsible for the abuses of peoples’ rights.
And the beef isn't with most cops. It's with some cops, the small minority who are stupid or inept or shouldn't be cops to begin with. Why shouldn't we be trying to weed those ones out?
THANK YOU!
I too am tired of it. I wonder who wrote this whine-fest? Some gibs-me-dat in Ferguson? There are very few distinctions between the "I Can't Breathe" Crowd in NYC and the "All Cops are Scum" crowd here at FR.
And THAT is precisely the point I make to those cops I know personally. The good guys KNOW who the bad guys are and most understand that it is in their best interest and for their safety that the bad ones be mustered out ASAP!
It is the bad ones who abuse citizens who create the atmosphere leading to hatred for all cops!
I HOPE the current situation leads to widespread use of body cams. Where they have been deployed, citizen complaints have dropped dramatically. BUT, barring a mechanical failure, any officer who turns in a camera NOT covering his entire shift is OFF THE FORCE IMMEDIATELY! The entire shift of every cop is uploaded to a flash memory device and kept in archive for review if a controversy arises. If none develops in a reasonable time, the memory space can be overwritten. That would allow the units to be moved from shift to shift, cutting the need for every cop to have a unit!
I’d urge all reading this to campaign in your area to get these into the field ASAP!
And THAT is precisely the point I make to those cops I know personally. The good guys KNOW who the bad guys are and most understand that it is in their best interest and for their safety that the bad ones be mustered out ASAP!
It is the bad ones who abuse citizens who create the atmosphere leading to hatred for all cops!
The “All cops are scum crowd” huh? Here.
Ok. Name one.
The more military equipment Washington gives local police, the more control Washington has over them. Militarizing the local police Federalizes them.
Did anyone in Washington ever explain why the DOD gave local police bayonets?
They can’t afford letter openers?
You like to post quotes?
How about this OLD one? “Support your Local Police, and keep them independent”
Newsmax
WaPo: NY Police Feel ‘Betrayed’ by City Hall, White House
Monday, January 5, 2015 09:33 AM
By: Melanie Batley
A growing number of police officers feel “betrayed” by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Eric Holder who called for reforms to policing practices in the wake of the shooting deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, according to The Washington Post.
The rift between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York Police Department appeared to have deepened Sunday after hundreds of officers attending the funeral of murdered policeman Wenjian Liu turned their backs in a sign of anger and defiance when the mayor rose to speak, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“We might be reaching a tipping point with the mindset of officers, who are beginning to wonder if the risks they take to keep communities safe are even worth it anymore,” Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said, according to the Post.
“In New York and other places, we’re seeing a natural recoil from law enforcement officers who don’t feel like certain people who need to have their backs have their backs.”
The latest protest by the police comes after other incidents late last month. Officers turned their backs on the mayor at the funeral of the other police officer who was killed alongside Liu, Rafael Ramos, and they did the same at an NYPD graduation ceremony.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bill-de-Blasio-Eric-Holder-Patrick-Lynch/2015/01/05/id/616409/
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