Suspending
the Constitution: Police State Uses Crises to Expand
Its Lockdown Powers
By John W.
Whitehead
“That was when they suspended the Constitution.
They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t
even any rioting in the streets. People stayed
home at night, watching television, looking for
some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you
could put your finger on.”― Margaret Atwood,
The Handmaid’s Tale
March 28,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- You can always count on the government to take
advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured.
This
coronavirus pandemic is no exception.
Not only
are the federal and state governments unraveling the
constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown
mandates that are sending the economy into a
tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but
they are also rendering the citizenry fully
dependent on the government for financial handouts,
medical intervention, protection and sustenance.
Unless we
find some way to rein in the government’s power
grabs, the fall-out will be epic.
Everything
I have warned about for years—government overreach,
invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers,
militarized police, weaponized technology used to
track and control the citizenry, and so on—has
coalesced into this present moment.
The
government’s shameless exploitation of past national
emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in
comparison to what is presently unfolding.
It’s
downright Machiavellian.
Deploying
the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire
greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police
state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep
State—has been anticipating this moment for years,
quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers
that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s
notice.
It
should surprise no one, then, that the
Trump Administration has asked Congress to allow it
to suspend parts of the Constitution
whenever it deems it necessary during this
coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies.
It’s
that
“other” emergencies
part that should particularly give you pause, if not
spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a
loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and
sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).
In fact,
the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quietly
trotting out and testing a long laundry list of
terrifying powers that override the Constitution. |