A Police State

This one will not be popular.  The last one I wrote was not popular either so get the hell over yourselves.  I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t care what anyone out there thinks anymore.   The popping up of Trump signs in the community tells me that not many around have an opinion worth giving a crap about anyway if they are stupid enough to vote for Trump. 

But that’s not what I set out to say.

When did the US become a police state?  When did everyone who says something is wrong become cannon fodder for the police to beat and kill?  I’m sick of it. 

Every time I turn on the television, I see police brutality.  No, it’s not the liberal media.  It’s been there all along, I suspect, and with the advent of cell phone cameras, the police do not get away with it as readily as they once did.   Actually, they do get away with it because jury after jury think that disobeying a police officer is a death penalty offence and let the murdering law enforcement officers go free. 
Since 9/11 and the advent of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, we have lived in a police state.

I have never been fond of authority.  If you know me well, you know this is true.  The two times we’ve had to call law enforcement here to our house has cemented that and made me believe that as a group, they are not very bright and for the most part, useless. We had 5 officers who couldn’t find one teenager and decided it was easier to try to pass it off as domestic violence.  I believe to this day that if the boy had killed one of us, the other would be serving a life sentence for it. Larry actually went out in the neighborhood and found out who did it and told the police. 

What I don’t know is the why but I have suspicions.  I know that there is still rampant racism in some police departments.  Locally in our state, there have been accusations of quotas and discrimination toward African American officers.  I’ve even seen in some cases in the deep south, police officers were members of white supremacist groups.  To me, those men are less than garbage. 

But what I see more than that is fear and bad judgment. There are many people in law enforcement who are simply not qualified to carry a gun.  If they’re so afraid that they shoot at anything that moves, they need to find another damn job.  If a person’s first instinct is to shoot, he/she needs another job.  Law enforcement officers are supposed to PROTECT and SERVE the public and the public safety, not shoot civilians because they CAN.

Yes, this country is full of unrest and much of it because of the recent economic stresses and the growing inequality between the wealthy and everyone else.  Our government is filled with men and women who vote along party lines instead of working toward the common good.  They pander to religious and corporate groups who pay them to pander.  It makes people angry.  It makes me angry. 

I agree with protestors though I have to say that I cannot condone their violence, however effective it may be in the end.  Something must change and I fear that the change will be bad and we will move closer to that ‘safe’ society that everyone seems to want.  And by safe, I mean a totalitarian police state like Joseph Stalin’s USSR or Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. 

A solution?  There’s the rub.  What to do?  Fire all the cops?  No.  The new ones wouldn’t be any different.  The problem goes deeper and goes back to the founding documents of this country, to the reinforcement and additions to those documents. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – The Declaration of Independence.

In 1863, Lincoln added to this to include ALL when he freed the slaves though women were still not actually protected until they got the vote in 1920.  It is the duty of America and its government to insure these freedoms for all, not just for the favored ones.  This freedom includes the opportunity to live better than those who came before us, something sadly lacking in our times.

So what can we do?  Vote.  Speak out.  Treat people as you would be treated.  All these changes start with us.  Pray if you want but God isn’t going to wave his hand and fix it.  WE have to do that and we can begin in the ballot box, in our neighborhoods, our towns and cities.  We have to reject those who promote hate and discrimination. 

Will any of this work?  Not until Americans overcome their ignorance and their hubris and realize we have to change to survive as a nation.