Thugs Wear Badges

As of early this morning 422 people have been arrested in Minneapolis in connection with security for the Republican National Convention. I'm sure I'm not the only one concerned and outraged by crap like this. Illegal detentions, police raids on private residences, destruction of property, brutalization of citizens by the police in Minneapolis as well as Denver.

Let's face it folks. We live in a police state, and it's getting worse. During the past eight years of the administration of the vile little pretender in the White House, we Americans, paralyzed with the fear the administration keeps fanning, have just accepted the fact that our constitutional liberties exist only at the whim of local law-enforcement or the Feds. So-called law enforcement -- state, local, national -- can do whatever it damn well pleases. Since 9/11 hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into "terrorist prevention" and SWAT teams in countless U.S. communities. Would somebody tell me why it's necessary for every city in America of any size to have paramilitary units with military equipment ready at a moments notice to be deployed against whatever the government defines as dangerous to the peace? That's what the thugs with badges in Minneapolis claim to be doing. Keeping the peace. What they doing of course be stifling dissent. (I cannot but be reminded of the Nazi Brown Shirts . . . I've been saying for years and years that the line that separates law enforcement people from the people they supposedly protect the rest of us against is very thin indeed.) Read about the latest outrages against free speech here and here and especially, here.

I hate to sound like a graying hippie, but this kind of police-gone-wild stuff would've caused widespread outrage years ago. Police tactics like this would've brought even more people out on the streets. Instead this country has become so docile in the face of continuous defilement of our Constitution that police outrages like this have become normative and will only get worse.

Think about this. The police infiltrate their operatives into groups that plan to protest some aspect (and there are so many choose from) of unconstitutional or criminal behavior by their government, and the police goons start making arrests even before the first sign is waved or the first pair of sandals hits the pavement. And they are not gentle about it. This is what's become of our liberties.