Fuck the Police State

[broncofan]

Well, like Germany during the Nazi Era, the USA , has a questionable foreign policy of protecting the best interests of the country. Sounds ludicrous? It's not. The USA , regardless if we agree or not (on this board) has been conducting a foreign policy that is not necessarily in the best interest of those affected. From the ill-advised invasions, assassinations, interventions and propaganda distributed in other countries, the USA is not far from Nazi Era Germany in terms of being regarded as an evil, meddling self serving country.
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These "parallels" are about as specific as saying two people look alike because they both have faces. Here are some differences. Very soon after Hitler became Chancellor, domestic political enemies were murdered without process. All of the Jews in the country were by law, both de jure and de facto, prevented from marrying Germans, engaging in intercourse with them, or employing them in their homes. Five years after he became chancellor, there was kristallnacht, where synagogues were burned to the ground, about one hundred German citizens were murdered by SS disguised in plainclothes, and thousands sent to camps. Further, the victims of Kristallnacht were fined to pay for the property damage perpetrated by the SS.

Where is the murder of political opponents in the U.S? The systematic suppression of dissent by laws punishing strictly political speech? What groups are by law precluded from working or interacting with others or even displaying our national flag?

[trish]

Addendum
We are the government. They are NOT two separate entities.

[my my my!]

These "parallels" are about as specific as saying two people look alike because they both have faces. Here are some differences. Very soon after Hitler became Chancellor, domestic political enemies were murdered without process. All of the Jews in the country were by law, both de jure and de facto, prevented from marrying Germans, engaging in intercourse with them, or employing them in their homes. Five years after he became chancellor, there was kristallnacht, where synagogues were burned to the ground, about one hundred German citizens were murdered by SS disguised in plainclothes, and thousands sent to camps. Further, the victims of Kristallnacht were fined to pay for the property damage perpetrated by the SS.

Where is the murder of political opponents in the U.S? The systematic suppression of dissent by laws punishing strictly political speech? What groups are by law precluded from working or interacting with others or even displaying our national flag?

I never said they were replicas.

If you want to bring up EVERYTHING the nazi's did, and find the USA equivalent. you're not going to find it.

I said they were very similar, and enough for a valid comparison and to be mentioned together.

The USA does have beginning signs of a police state. Is it going to happen the EXACT same ways it Happened in Germany? NO

You guys are suggesting Nazi Era Germany is THEE POLICE STATE that all future POLICE STATES must be measured against.

[my my my!]

In the case of Germany, it’s easy to point to the single power that usurped political control: the NAZI Party and their fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. There is no central power behind the so-called “police state” which you claim is the U.S. has becoming. By definition, in a police state there is a central power that maintains its political control principally through the utilization of the domestic police. Who’s doing this? Whose political power depends upon the police?

Nazi Germany is not Thee Police state to compare against. A Police state can be a gradual thing and even elected into power, with the people unwittingly accepting it. The United States is definitely heading that way. Police States have developed under different circumstances than in Nazi Germany. There is no central power in the USA. But the abuses, and underlying symptoms of a future police state are there. Who's ordering these cops to abuse their power, and disregard the law? A police state exists, because the people let it become, and subconsciously approve of it. Hitler was elected. Due to his speeches and ideology, actually appealing to Germans. People here in the USA , approve of brutal police tactics, racial profiling, discrimination , as long as it is for the "common good" .

By definition, in a police state there is a central power that maintains its political control principally through the utilization of the domestic police.

NO,
A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.

This is not necessarily have to be through the Police....

Unlike NAZI Germany, our foreign incursions (for good or ill) were carried out with loud support from the electorate. Despite the opposition of many Democrats, the Iran invasion was immensely popular with the electorate. Bush was re-elected. He didn’t use a domestic police force to stay in power for a second term.

Exactly, as long as a majority wins , even if it is 51 to 49 out of 100 does not make it right. Who cares about the other 49 right? Hitler's popularity went up every year , up until the onset of world war 2. Bush lied to the United States , and His second term was based on a lie, the quagmire in Iraq. The public overwhelmingly showed support for him , by voting for him. Just like that German public loved Hitler even as he took over the Sudetenland.

There no despot amassing police and guards at our southern border unless the electorate counts as a gang of despots.

I don't think you've seen the big giant fence, and numerous border patrol installations on the border. That's pretty police state-ish. Under the guise , of "preventing illegal immigration".. Yea, that' a pretty friendly way.

That internal policies sometimes meet with resistance is no surprise in any country, whether it be a democratic-republic, a communist state or a fascist. That domestic policies meet resistance can hardly be called a parallel between the U.S. and NAZI Germany. That you list it as such tells me you’re argument is not very discriminating. Ditto foreign policies.

No, I said there's similarities. If you want to go tit for tat. I will. What part of 'similar' don't you get? You have two governments, who pretty much do what they want, with the apparent support of the people, yet their victims and opppsition don't like it and react. This reaction is met with "Oh , we need a department for home defense" from both Germany and the USA

The Patriot Act, which I publicly protested, was defended vociferously and almost unanimously by Republicans when it was signed by Bush. But the power of the Republican party is not even close to becoming the monolithic iron fist that was the NAZI party. Moreover, I was not arrested for my protest. However much you dislike it, the Patriot Act is not the tool of a single party to maintain political control.

The patriot is just a major example, it's not the single tool. The overall tool, is subjugation and brainwashing through manipulation.. "We must allow our police to do whatever they want, or the criminals don't get caught" . But again, you keep insisting that the REps or Dems , one or the other , has to be like the Nazi party for ME to make the comparison. I still think you're not seeing the full picture of why the comparison is not "ludicrous" as you put it.

Yes there is a lot of prejudice in this country directed against Muslims. Yet it has not found a friendly reception within any branch of our government. President Bush was emphatic that we should refrain from blaming Muslims for 9-11, there have been no laws disenfranchising Muslims and religious freedom has been upheld by our courts. Attempts by enforcement agencies to profile Muslims have met opposition by the general populace and all branches of government. Not what would be expected in a police state.

Again, I never said it was ALREADY a police state...

There is alot of , I would not say prejudice, But an unfounded "touch with a pole" mistrust of Muslims. People don't go around saying "I think all muslims are terrorists and up to no good" but there certainly is an undercurrent of it. It does start somewhere. The hatred of the Jews was first mentioned in the Beer Halls of Munich, only to become a serious issue about 15 years later when the Nuremberg laws were issued.
Met opposition. They still do it.

You say our policies over the last 30-40 years are NO DIFFERENT from those of the NAZI era Germany. That’s simply ludicrous on the face of it!

No. I said, that our policies WERE NOT MET with glee by those that were affected by them. did the USA , issue an order to exterminate all arabs in the USA? Of course not. Did the USA Invade sovereign countries against their wishes. yes. Was that met with open arms in said country? Not by everyone. Did said country's angry people plot terrorist actions against American Interests? Yes. Did the USA becoming an Ally with Israel, cause certain people to hate us? Yes. did those people act on it? Yes. There you have it. If you read my post properly, you would've noticed that I said a country whose actions are questionable internationally and internally, are met with resistance, both internally and abroad. It reaches such a dangerous level, that said country, needs to develop a "protection department" to deal with these threats, caused by their very own foreign policy.

So where does this the-U.S.-is-a-police-state meme and the your-vote-doesn’t-count meme come from? It plays right into the ideology of the small-government and no-government conservatives, libertarians and gun nuts. You may or may not subscribe to these sophomoric political philosophies, but if you think the U.S. is a police state or that people shouldn’t bother voting ‘cause your vote doesn’t count, then your have been exposed to their viral memes and contracted the disease. Seek professional care.

It's not a meme. Simpletons such as yourself choose to think people are overreacting and you conveniently give it the vomit inducing label of "meme".

I didn't say "i think the U.S. is a police state". I said the similarities are there, and In my opinion it could very well become one, as the signs are already there. But, By your definition , it has to almost literally be like Nazi Germany in every way to be considered a "police state". Slowly becoming and "Is" are two very different things.

If anyone need professional care, it is you.

I've read you drivel on other threads, and you seem to think that if anyone disagrees with you , they are so blatantly wrong, they need to "seek professional care". And there's a circle jerk in this section of about 4 or 5 people that agree with you on every thing.

You are a condescending ignoramus at best. What you do excel at, is taking things out of context very consistently.

[TempestTS]

I have the greatest of admiration and respect for you as a woman and as a musician and in other ways Tempest, but i think you have a rather warped view of things and clearly do not really understand the nature of a "police state."

Can I suggest that you try reading about the situation in Eastern Europe and especially East Germany before the collapse of communism where the Stasi spied on everyone (A good primer is the book "The Stasi Files" or the movie "The Lives of Others") consider the situation in North Korea now or in Rumania before the overthrow of Ceaucescu or under Stalin in Russia or Mao in China. Consider the treatment meted out to dissenters in modern iran or to those who fail to observe the religious rules in Saudi Arabia. These are real authoritarian police states. These are places where to even talk about the dictator could get you imprisoned, tortured or killed.

Yes the fate of the native Americans is a deep and terrible stain on the history of the USAbut that does not make the modern US a police state. It is one of the freest nations in the modern world - despite the dubious activities of the CIA and NSA. There is much that is wrong with the US. Many things that all Americans need to work to correct. But if you look at the past 50 years and the progress of ethnic minorities, the civl rights recoms, gay rights etc etc... and in the past decade the election of the first African American President then surely you can see that there is much that is good and positive about the US (even when it has slipped into aggression against foreign nations under your previous president George W Bush). Perhaps after your next election it might even have its first female president. All signs of progress. No nation is perfect. No system is perfect. But the US is closer than most to being a civilised and acceptable place.

In modern america where are the pogroms, where are the extermination camps, the gulags, the forced re-education of mililons, the mass vanishings of sectors of the population ?

I make no qualms against robust debate - people are free to disagree with me and as I have pointed out I hope I am wrong - I just dont believe I am.

As I have said, would it be any better if I said the prelude to the police state? I grow tired of comparisons to the examples of Nazi germany at its height or the utter extremes of what a police state can be.

Extreme police states get that way from a slow and subtle rise in power and control that offer a gradual but continual erosion of personal freedoms - Such as the data bank the NSA currently has on American citizens costing black budget millions if not billions just to maintain all the electronic records - but of course it "NEVER" looks at honest citizens just the really bad ones - you can always tell the bad ones true villains always wear black hats and have the curly mustaches...

George Orwell's 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual - how close are we to it now??? camera's everywhere - cellphones being monitored, internet posts collected into massive data centers digital profiling and DARPA doing multi million dollar studies on manipulation of crowd dynamics through social media... all being done to American's - most of the free world thinks we have gone stone cold crazy but most our nation is content to stick our heads in the sand and believe that the government is just protecting us from the really bad guys and its all for our own good... exactly the way almost every police state that has ever existed rose to power...

[TempestTS]

Addendum
We are the government. They are NOT two separate entities.

Keep thinking that... Im sure it will get a huge laugh out of most politicians...

I really, really want to believe in the dream... but Ive caught far too many glimpses of what happens when I open my eyes that I simply cant.

[trish]

...
I said they were very similar, and enough for a valid comparison and to be mentioned together.
...
You guys are suggesting Nazi Era Germany is THEE POLICE STATE that all future POLICE STATES must be measured against.

You said there was NO DIFFERENCE.

I'm suggesting that to be a police state there must be a central authority that controls the police and whose authority is maintained through the police.

You seem to be suggesting if the electorate grants law enforcement to obtain court orders to wiretap a phone, search a house, or confiscate Cliven Bundy's cattle then it's a police state. If law enforcement, not on orders from any other governmental agency, sometimes oversteps its authority, then its a police state. The difference is that, in the U.S., when enforcement makes an error in judgment the aggrieved as recourse through the law to set things right.

If you want to call us militaristic in our foreign policy, I might agree. If you want to say we have too many prisons and too many people in them, I agree. If you want to say that various enforcement agencies have made some very bad judgment calls, have profiled, beaten people and shot innocent people, I'd say yes. But none of that makes us a police state. It makes us a state with too many prisons and too many ill-trained police. That's to be expected when we live in a country where every politician promises to put even more police on the street corners. Why do they promise that? Because is gets them elected. And that's the main reason why we're not a police state: the only politicians that can take office are the ones that can garner the vote.

[TempestTS]

I didn't say "i think the U.S. is a police state". I said the similarities are there, and In my opinion it could very well become one, as the signs are already there. But, By your definition , it has to almost literally be like Nazi Germany in every way to be considered a "police state". Slowly becoming and "Is" are two very different things.

My My My <---- seems to have the gist of it...

[trish]

A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population.

Good. Then it's settled: we do not have a police state.

[TempestTS]

In all sincerity I am very sorry what happened to your family. The United States committed grave atrocities against the Native American people. It is a dark stain on American history and human history. That doesn't mean the U.S. is currently a police state and has restricted all political freedom or quashed dissent in the way you indicate.

I know of at least nine members of my family who died in extermination camps. They lived in occupied Europe during WWII, but not within Germany. But if you take a look at the Nuremberg Laws you can get a flavor for how quickly things went downhill in Nazi Germany. This was as early as 1935.
Nuremberg Laws - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

It's not as if one day the Germans were executing a no knock warrant looking for contraband and the next day Jews were forbidden from marrying those of German stock. Or that people's conversations were being monitored and then the next day they were sent to concentration camps. This was the ethos from the night of the long knives forward.

In North Korea, people are sent to prison camps for saying anything considered hostile to the regime. People are executed summarily, without any right of appeal, and often for crimes that no civilized society would consider capital (vandalism, burglary). Some argue that our system of capital punishment is barbaric, and I think it should be abolished, but a system that only allows execution for murder and has multiple layers of appeal is not on a slippery slope to midnight executions of political opponents.

In NK, people are forbidden from having contact with the outside world, forbidden from leaving the country, restricted in their movements around the country, forced to have abortions, persecuted for their religious beliefs (and I don't mean forced to sponsor health care that includes coverage for contraception), and systematically starved to death. If you are interested in how this came about in North Korea, take a look at Kim Il-Sung's reign over NK and his practical deification within that country. Though I am not an expert on their history, it does not appear to have been gradual. I simply fail to see how policies legitimately tailored to fighting crime and subjected to judicial review can transform into a cult of personality where a leader considered a deity and thought to control the weather starves and imprisons a terrified populace.

The point is we arnt there yet - but things are continuing to slip - judicial review is being eroded - there is a growing number of cases where judges have lashed out at the actions of the FBI, NSA and Police only to be completely ignored. I gave you an example about the no fly rule which was virtually impossible to actually appeal - a judge ruled it unconstitutional in its current form the TSA and NSA has taken that under consideration but the policy stays in place... WTF seriously WTF?

History lesson - yeah to attain that kind of power over a country it can be very a slow process - power is seized slowly - going too fast results in civil war but take a little freedom away at a time and it gets hard to notice...

Our data continues to be gathered up in massive sweeps of any form of digital communications despite public outcry and even a rare bipartisan condemning by congress - they simply re worded the definition of their practices... hell even data overseas isnt safe as long as the company does business in the US it can be demanded by the US because we say the digital is different than paper... really? in today's world ?

Police cant search your phone - well unless its turned on and logged in but by the way if you get on a flight you might be asked to do just that...

NDAA has authorized indefinite detention if you have suspected ties to anything overseas or terror related - S U S P E C T E D !!!! not proven just suspected - no trial, no judge, no appeal, nothing...

No this isnt as bad as the scenario's you describe in NK and Nazi Germany but if too many of us stay silent Im worried we wont be able to prevent sliding closer and closer...

Sticking our heads in the sand wont solve anything...

Know where you are - and where you have been - if you want to see where you are going to.