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by John W. Whitehead
May 07, 2019
from
Rutherford Website
"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
What characterizes
American government
today is not so much dysfunctional politics as
it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the
entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political
theater.
And what political theater it is,
diabolically
Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end,
signifying nothing...
Played out on the
national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media
sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times,
seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who
know better.
Week after week,
the script changes,
...with each new script following on the heels of the last,
never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.
The players come
and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the
audience members are quick to forget past mistakes and move on to
the next spectacle.
All the while, a
different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden
from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored
lights and parading actors.
Such that it is,
the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and
scripted theatrics is what passes for "transparent" government
today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best
interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their
audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to
move the country forward.
Yet behind the
footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place
policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at
contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the
wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or
engage in any kind of discourse until it's too late.
It's the oldest con
game in the books, the magician's sleight of hand that keeps you
focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being
picked clean by ruffians in your midst.
Indeed, while
mainstream America has been fixated on the drama-filled reality show
being televised from the White House,
the American Police State has
moved steadily forward.
Set against a
backdrop of,
...and the like
- all of which have been sanctioned by
Congress, the White House and the courts - our constitutional freedoms
have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled
down, and generally discarded.
Our losses are
mounting with every passing day:
-
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
-
press
-
sovereignty
-
assembly
-
bodily integrity
-
representative government,
...all of these and more have become casualties in the
government's war
on the American people.
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. They have merely
disappeared from our televised news streams.
The new boss has
proven to be the same as the old boss, and the American people, the
permanent underclass in America, has allowed itself 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.
Frankly, it really
doesn't matter what you call the old/new boss:
...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.
In the interest of
liberty and truth, here's an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim
realities of life in the American Police State that no one is
talking about anymore:
"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 cop 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) 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.
-
D is for DRONES
It
is estimated that at least 30,000 drones will 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 ELECTRONIC
CONCENTRATION CAMP
In the electronic concentration camp, as I have
dubbed the surveillance state, all aspects of a person's life are,
-
policed by government agents and all citizens are suspects
-
their
activities monitored and regulated
-
their movements tracked
-
their
communications spied upon
-
their lives, liberties and pursuit of
happiness dependent on the government's say-so
-
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.
-
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" will
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 inane 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 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 us 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 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.
As of 2008, there
were some 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,
...and all in the pursuit of someone
merely 'suspected' of a crime, usually possession of some small amount
of drugs.
-
O is for
OVER-CRIMINALIZATION and OVER-REGULATION
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
over-criminalization, 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
-
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,
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 pre-crime 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
...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 officers to walk away without paying a
dime for their wrongdoing.
Conveniently, those deciding whether a
police officer 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
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 this new age in which we
live, whether you're,
...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.
-
construction
-
logging
-
fishing
-
truck driving
-
even trash collection...
-
federal air marshals
-
surface
transportation security inspectors
-
transportation security
officers
-
behavior detection officers
-
explosive detection canine
teams,
...are taking place whenever and wherever the government deems
appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the
justification of a particular threat.
-
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 (NSA)
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 can now be tracked based on,
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.
In
some jurisdictions, students have also been penalized under school
zero tolerance policies for such inane "crimes" as,
...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.
Whatever label you
want to put on it, the end result is the same:
tyranny...
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