“When a population becomes distracted by
trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a
perpetual round of entertainments, when serious
public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk,
when, in short, a people become an audience and
their public business a vaudeville act, then a
nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is
a clear possibility.” — Professor Neil Postman,
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the
Age of Show Business
July 04, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - While mainstream
America continues to fixate on the drama-filled
reality show scripted by the powers-that-be,
directed from the nation’s capital, and played out
in high definition across the country, the American
Police State has moved steadily forward.
Nothing has changed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a convenient,
traumatic, devastating distraction.
The American people, the permanent underclass in
America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted
and divided that they have failed to notice the
building blocks of tyranny being laid down right
under their noses by the architects of the Deep
State.
Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton: they have all been
complicit in carrying out the Deep State’s agenda.
Unless something changes to restore the balance of
power, the next president—the new boss—will be the
same as the old boss.
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter what you call
the old/new boss—the Deep State, the Controllers,
the masterminds, the shadow government, the
corporate elite, the police state, the surveillance
state, the military industrial complex—so long as
you understand that no matter who occupies the White
House, it is a profit-driven, an unelected
bureaucracy that is actually calling the shots.
If our losses are mounting with every passing
day—and they are—it is a calculated siege intended
to ensure our defeat at the hands of a totalitarian
regime.
Free speech, the right to protest, the right to
challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a
presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense,
accountability and transparency in government,
privacy, media, sovereignty, assembly, bodily
integrity, representative government: all of these
and more are casualties in the government’s war on
the American people.
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Set against a backdrop of government
surveillance, militarized federal police, SWAT team
raids, asset forfeiture, overcriminalization, armed
surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and
frisk searches, and the like—all of which have been
sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the
courts—our constitutional freedoms are being
steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded,
whittled down, and generally discarded.
As a result, the American people have been
treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on,
tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to
all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded,
raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at,
locked up, and denied due process.
None of these dangers have dissipated in any way.
They have merely disappeared from our televised
news streams.
It’s time to get educated on what’s really going
on. Thus, in the interest of liberty and truth,
here’s an A-to-Z primer that spells out the grim
realities of life in the American Police State that
no one seems to be talking about anymore.
A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE.
A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy,
secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects,
militarization, surveillance, widespread police
presence, and a citizenry with little recourse
against police actions.”
B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS.
In the militarized police culture that is America
today, where you can be kicked, punched, tasered,
shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched,
brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and
even killed by a police officer, and that officer is
rarely held accountable for violating your rights,
the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much.
C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE.
This governmental scheme to deprive Americans of
their liberties—namely, the right to property—is
being carried out under the guise of civil asset
forfeiture, a government practice wherein
government agents (usually the police and now TSA
agents) seize private property they “suspect” may be
connected to criminal activity. Then, whether or
not any crime is actually proven to have taken
place, the government keeps the citizen’s property
and it’s virtually impossible to get it back.
D is for DRONES. It was
estimated that at least 30,000 drones would be
airborne in American airspace by 2020, part of an
$80 billion industry. Although some drones will
be used for benevolent purposes, many will also be
equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices,
among other weapons—all aimed at “we the people.”
E is for EMERGENCY STATE. From
9/11 to COVID-19, we have been the subjected to an
“emergency state” that justifies all manner of
government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called
name of national security. The government’s ongoing
attempts to declare so-called national emergencies
in order to circumvent the Constitution’s system of
checks and balances constitutes yet another
expansion of presidential power that exposes the
nation to further constitutional peril.
F is for FASCISM. A study
conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University
concluded that the
U.S. government does not represent the majority of
American citizens. Instead, the study found that
the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or
the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the
researchers concluded that policies enacted by this
governmental elite nearly always favor special
interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we
are being
ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy,
and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of
government where private corporate interests rule,
money calls the shots, and the people are seen as
mere economic units or databits.
G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS and GLOBAL
POLICE. The federal government has
distributed more than $18 billion worth of
battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles
and equipment such as drones, tanks, and grenade
launchers to domestic police departments across the
country. As a result, most small-town police forces
now have enough firepower to render any citizen
resistance futile. Now take those small-town police
forces, train them to look and act like the
military, and then enlist them to be part of the
United Nations’
Strong Cities Network program, and you not only
have a standing army that operates beyond the reach
of the Constitution but one that is part of a global
police force.
H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS.
The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize
its agencies and employees is reaching epic
proportions, with federal agencies as varied as the
Department of Homeland Security and the Social
Security Administration stockpiling millions of
lethal hollow-point bullets, which violate
international law. Ironically, while the government
continues to push for stricter gun laws for the
general populace, the U.S. military’s arsenal of
weapons makes the average American’s handgun look
like a Tinker Toy.
I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS,
in which internet-connected “things” monitor your
home, your health and your habits in order to keep
your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and
your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here, however, is control. This
“connected” industry propels us closer to a
future where police agencies apprehend virtually
anyone if the government “thinks” they may commit a
crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a
person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used
to track their movements, target them for
advertising, and keep them under perpetual
surveillance.
J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT.
Having outsourced their inmate population to private
prisons run by private corporations, this
profit-driven form of mass punishment has given
rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that
relies on the complicity of state governments to
keep their privately run prisons full by jailing
large numbers of Americans for petty crimes.
K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an
8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court
ruled that police officers can break into homes,
without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home
as long as they think they may have a reason to do
so. Despite the fact that the police in question
ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the
wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet
that stands between the citizenry and a police
state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid,
leaving Americans with little real protection in the
face of all manner of abuses by law enforcement
officials.
L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS,
which enable law enforcement and private agencies to
track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their
occupants, all across the country. This data
collected on tens of thousands of innocent people is
also being
shared between police agencies, as well as with
government fusion centers and private companies.
This puts Big Brother in the driver’s seat.
M is for MAIN CORE. Since the
1980s, the U.S. government has acquired and
maintained, without warrant or court order, a
database of names and information on Americans
considered to be threats to the nation. As Salon
reports, this database,
reportedly dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by
the Army and FEMA in times of national emergency or
under martial law to locate and round up Americans
seen as threats to national security. There are at
least 8 million Americans in the Main Core database.
N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing
to the militarization of the nation’s police forces,
SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for
routine police matters. In fact, more than
80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out
every year. That translates to more than 200
SWAT team raids every day in which police crash
through doors, damage private property, terrorize
adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault
or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and
all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a
crime, usually possession of some small amount of
drugs.
O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION and
OVERREGULATION. Thanks to an overabundance
of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules
and regulations, it’s estimated that the average
American actually commits three felonies a day
without knowing it. As a result of this
overcriminalization, we’re seeing an uptick in
Americans being arrested and jailed for such absurd
“violations” as letting their kids play at a park
unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff
on their own property, growing vegetables in their
yard, and holding Bible studies in their living
room.
P is for PATHOCRACY and PRECRIME.
When our own government treats us as things to be
manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled
by police and other government agents, mistreated,
and then jailed in
profit-driven private prisons if we dare step
out of line, we are no longer operating under a
constitutional republic. Instead, what we are
experiencing is a
pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a
psychopathic government, which “operates against the
interests of its own people except for favoring
certain groups.” Couple that with the government’s
burgeoning precrime programs, which will use
fusion centers, data collection agencies,
behavioral scientists, corporations, social media,
and community organizers and by relying on
cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial
recognition, predictive
policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics
in order to identify and deter so-called potential
“extremists,” dissidents or rabble-rousers. Bear in
mind that anyone seen as opposing the
government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere
in between—is now viewed as an extremist.
Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY.
Qualified immunity allows police officers to
walk away without paying a dime for their
wrongdoing. Conveniently, those deciding whether a
cop should be immune from having to personally pay
for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same
system, all cronies with a vested interest in
protecting the police and their infamous code of
silence: city and county attorneys, police
commissioners, city councils and judges.
R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and
BLOOD DRAWS. The courts have increasingly
erred on the side of giving government
officials—especially the police—vast
discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood
draws and even anal and vaginal probes for a broad
range of violations, no matter how minor the
offense. In the past, strip searches were resorted
to only in exceptional circumstances where police
were confident that a serious crime was in progress.
In recent years, however, strip searches have become
routine operating procedures in which everyone is
rendered a suspect and, as such, is subjected to
treatment once reserved for only the most serious of
criminals.
S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE.
On any given day, the average American going about
his daily business will be monitored, surveilled,
spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways,
by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A
byproduct of the electronic concentration camp in
which we live, whether you’re walking through a
store, driving your car, checking email, or talking
to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure
that
some government agency, whether the NSA or some
other entity, is listening in and tracking your
behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on
the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases,
web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities
taking place in the cyber sphere.
T is for TASERS. Nonlethal
weapons such as tasers, stun guns, rubber pellets
and the like have been used by police as weapons of
compliance more often and with less restraint—even
against women and children—and in some instances,
even causing death. These
“nonlethal” weapons also enable police to aggress
with the push of a button, making the potential
for overblown confrontations over minor incidents
that much more likely. A Taser Shockwave, for
instance, can electrocute a crowd of people at the
touch of a button
U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE.
No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in
which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask
questions later, often attributed to a fear for
their safety. Yet the
fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is
reportedly far lower than many other professions,
including construction, logging, fishing, truck
driving, and even trash collection.
V is for VIRUSES AND FORCED VACCINATIONS.
What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a
novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the
world) has become yet another means by which world
governments (including the U.S.) can expand their
powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress
their constituents. With millions of dollars in
stimulus funds being directed towards policing
agencies across the country, the
federal government plans to fight this COVID-19
virus with riot gear, gas masks, ballistic helmets,
drones, and hi-tech surveillance technology. The
road we are traveling is paved with lockdowns, SWAT
team raids, mass surveillance and forced
vaccinations. Now there’s talk of
mobilizing the military to deliver forced
vaccinations, mass surveillance in order to
carry out contact tracing, and heavy fines and jail
time for those who dare to venture out without a
mask, congregate in worship without the government’s
blessing, or re-open their businesses without the
government’s say-so.
W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS.
Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves,
scanning devices and government mobile units are
being used not only to “see” through your clothes
but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.
While these
mobile scanners are being sold to the American
public as necessary security and safety measures, we
can ill afford to forget that such systems are rife
with the potential for abuse, not only by government
bureaucrats but by the technicians employed to
operate them.
X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the
many spying programs carried out by the National
Security Agency that targets every person in the
United States who uses a computer or phone. This
top-secret program “allows
analysts to search with no prior authorization
through vast databases containing emails, online
chats and the browsing histories of millions of
individuals.”
Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your
face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness”
against you, you are now be tracked based on what
you buy, where you go, what you do in public, and
how you do what you do. Facial recognition software
promises to create a society in which every
individual who steps out into public is tracked and
recorded as they go about their daily business. The
goal is for government agents to be able to scan a
crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of
the individuals present.
Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in
states all across the country.
Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE. We have
moved into a new paradigm in which young people are
increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as
criminals by school officials and law enforcement
alike,
often for engaging in little more than childish
behavior or for saying the “wrong” word. In some
jurisdictions, students have also been penalized
under school zero tolerance policies for such inane
"crimes" as carrying cough drops, wearing black
lipstick, bringing nail clippers to school, using
Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that
resemble switchblades. The lesson being taught to
our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is
this: in the American police state, you’re either a
prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered
about, limited in what you can do and say, your life
not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician,
police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer,
etc.).
As I make clear in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People,
the reality we must come to terms with is that in
the post-9/11 America we live in today, the
government does whatever it wants, freedom be
damned.
We have moved beyond the era of representative
government and entered a new age.
You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or
fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.
Whatever label you want to put on it, the end
result is the same: tyranny.
Constitutional attorney and author John W.
Whitehead is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People
is available at
www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be
contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
