"If you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you."--Sunil Dutta, an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years
Life in the American police state is an endless series of don'ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don't talk back to police officers, don't even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don't run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don't carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don't expect privacy in public, don't let your kids walk to the playground alone, don't engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don't try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don't play music for tips in a metro station, don't feed whales, and on and on.
For those who resist, who dare to act independently, think for themselves, march to the beat of a different drummer, the consequences are invariably a one-way trip to the local jail or death.
What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the "city on the hill," a beacon of freedom for all the world.
Far from being a shining example of democracy at work, we have become a lesson for the world in how quickly freedom turns to tyranny, how slippery the slope by which a once-freedom-loving people can be branded, shackled and fooled into believing that their prisons walls are, in fact, for their own protection.
Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, we failed to protest when the war hawks turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of war--the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.--to be distributed for free to local police agencies and used to secure the homeland against "we the people."
Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves in the midst of a war zone?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
5
4
