Is the US Becoming a Police State?

I don’t associate a police state with the kind of freedom and affluence a majority of Americans still

enjoy. Yet the the mainstream and alternate media are turning up the pressure by focusing

on police abuses which in proportion to the number of interactions are still pretty rare.

This article by John Whitehead is notable for its total lack of analysis of what is behind the trend he is describing. He seems to have no inkling of the Federal Reserve’s agenda to create, in Caroll Quigley’s words, “a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” (Tragedy and Hope, p.324)

Nor is there any suggestion of what can be done about it. It is a lot easier to control people who think they are free than to control people who have been aroused and angered by martial law measures. Yet the purpose of this propaganda seems to be to provoke either resistance or a feeling of helplessness. I invite readers to provide insight into what is happening.

“The malls may be open
for business, the baseball stadiums may be packed, and the news
anchors may be twittering nonsense about the latest celebrity foofa,
but those are just distractions from what is really taking place: the
transformation of America into a war zone.”

Battlefield
America: The War on the American People

By
John W. Whitehead

(Abridged by henrymakow.com)

As
I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the
American People, “we the people” have now come full circle,
from being a British colony to being held
captive by the American police state.

To
our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our
once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no
longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the
police to protect us from wrongdoing.

Indeed,
they have come to embody all that is wrong with America….

There
is no end to the government’s unmitigated gall in riding roughshod
over the rights of the citizenry, whether in matters of excessive
police powers, militarized police, domestic training drills, SWAT
team raids, surveillance, property rights, overcriminalization,
roadside strip searches, profit-driven fines and prison sentences,
etc.

The
president can now direct the military to detain, arrest and secretly
execute American citizens. These are the powers of an imperial
dictator, not an elected official bound by the rule of law. For the
time being, Barack Obama wears the executioner’s robe, but you can
rest assured that this mantle will be worn by whomever occupies the
Oval Office in the future.

A
representative government means nothing when the average citizen has
little to no access to their elected officials, while corporate
lobbyists enjoy a revolving door relationship with everyone from the
President on down.

Indeed,
while members of Congress hardly work for the taxpayer, they work
hard at being wooed by corporations, which spend more to lobby our
elected representatives than we spend on their collective salaries.
For that matter, getting elected is no longer the high point it used
to be. As one congressman noted, for many elected officials,
“Congress is no longer a destination but a journey… [to a] more
lucrative job as a K Street lobbyist… It’s become routine to see
members of Congress drop their seat in Congress like a hot rock when
a particularly lush vacancy opens up.”

As
for the courts, they have long since ceased being courts of justice.
Instead, they have become courts of order, largely marching in
lockstep with the government’s dictates, all the while helping to
increase the largesse of government coffers…

As
for the rest–the schools, the churches, private businesses, service
providers, nonprofits and your fellow citizens–many are also
marching in lockstep with the police state. This is what is commonly
referred to as community policing.

After
all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation
when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you
carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough
cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the
country 24/7? …You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears.

(John Whitehead, left)

It’s
a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry
remains focused on and distrustful of each other, they’re incapable
of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to
home–namely, the government and its militarized police.

In
this way, we’re seeing a rise in the incidence of Americans being
reported for growing vegetables in their front yard, keeping chickens
in their back yard, letting their kids walk to the playground alone,
and voicing anti-government sentiments.

Now
it may be that we have nothing to worry about. Perhaps the government
really does have our best interests at heart. Perhaps covert domestic
military training drills such as Jade Helm really are just benign
exercises to make sure our military is prepared for any contingency.
As the Washington Post describes the operation:

The
mission is vast both geographically and strategically: Elite service
members from all four branches of the U.S. military will launch an
operation this summer in which they will operate covertly among the
U.S. public and travel from state to state in military aircraft.
Texas, Utah and a section of southern California are labeled as
hostile territory, and New Mexico isn’t much friendlier.

Whether
or not the government plans to impose some form of martial law in the
future remains to be seen, but there can be no denying that we’re
being accustomed to life in a military state. The malls may be open
for business, the baseball stadiums may be packed, and the news
anchors may be twittering nonsense about the latest celebrity foofa,
but those are just distractions from what is really taking place: the
transformation of America into a war zone.

Trust
me, if it looks like a battlefield (armored tanks on the streets,
militarized police in metro stations, surveillance cameras
everywhere), sounds like a battlefield (SWAT team raids nightly,
sound cannons to break up large assemblies of citizens), and acts
like a battlefield (police shooting first and asking questions later,
intimidation tactics, and involuntary detentions), it’s a
battlefield.

Indeed,
what happened in Ocala, Florida, is a good metaphor for what’s
happening across the country: Sheriff’s deputies, dressed in
special ops uniforms and riding in an armored tank on a public road,
pulled a 23-year-old man over and issued a warning violation to him
after he gave them the finger. The man, Lucas Jewell, defended his
actions as a free speech expression of his distaste for militarized
police.

Translation:
“We the people” are being hijacked on the highway by government
agents with little knowledge of or regard for the Constitution, who
are hyped up on the power of their badge, outfitted for war, eager
for combat, and taking a joy ride–on taxpayer time and money–in a
military tank that has no business being on American soil.

Rest
assured, unless we slam on the brakes, this runaway tank will soon be
charting a new course through terrain that bears no resemblance to
land of our forefathers, where freedom meant more than just the
freedom to exist and consume what the corporate powers dish out.

If
you haven’t managed to read the writing on the wall yet, the war
has begun.

—

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