Cool, and I even replied to that thread several times. And they say marijuana harms memory.
The existence of secrecy is not proof of a police state.
In fact, the existence of that article is strong evidence against the existence of a police state. So thank you for pointing out the freedom we enjoy in this country!
Well…oops on my part. The IRS warned the church that it could lose its tax-exempt status. (I had misremembered that they had carried through on the threat.) (I also misremembered Pasadena as Fresno. Sigh. I readily confess to having a very poor memory. I do try to have cites for what I say.)
Personally, I generally feel less safe when I see police getting around in armoured vehicles and military body armour, armed with military-style semi-auto rifles. My visceral reaction is not “Oh good, a well equipped constabulary are here to protect the citzenry from ruffians,” but rather “This place appears to be so dangerous that the cops need to get equipped around like a special forces unit.”
And generally when I see firemen with their oxygen tanks, axes and red flashing trucks, I think “there must be a fire here”. Taking away their equipment, however, doesn’t make the fire go away.
The fact is that while crime in general has been on a downward trend, police are facing more dangerous, if less frequent, threats. Terrorism, mass shootings, heavily armed drug gangs, civil disturbances, even the mundane dangerous criminal are all realities of modern society. When these events happen, police need to be equiped to deal with them. And really most of the time, you normally see cops just wearing normal cop gear and driving normal cop cars.
I’m not sure what you mean by “put an end to it.” Warrentless wiretaps are still going on and we’ve recently had an instance of the government seizing the phone records of all the Associated Press reporters. And while Obama has discontinued the practice of waterboarding, there is NOTHING that I know of to prevent a future fascistically inclined president to get some oily, disgusting, weaselly excuse for a lawyer in the Justice Department to write a memo saying it’s perfectly all right and legal to torture in the future.
When I say the groundwork has been laid, I mean it. Bush in his terms set up a state security apparatus to make any fascist as happy as a little girl. A very sick little girl, mind you.
You are taking isolated instances that go back almost 80 years in hisotry, I’m talking about the last dozen years or so. Apples and oranges, baby.
I hate to hear what you think of Sweden, where journalists found guilty of libel are put in jail, or the UK, where there’s no such thing as freedom of the press.
In police states, you don’t have the right to refuse to answer questions the police ask you. In the US you do.
In fact, many democracies that are not police states don’t give people such an option.
Similarly, no police state would allow trial by jury, which the US, unlike most democracies does.
I’d hate to hear what you think of such countries.
Note: I’m not accusing either country of being fascist or police states.
Name one country that is not a police state and what process they have in place to prevent future misconduct by government officials that the United States hasn’t adopted.
Give me a break. The FBI did whatever the hell it wanted for decades under Hoover, and you’re saying that that was in an era of freedom and now we’re enslaved to the Powers that Be. We locked up 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps for no reason at all, but you dismiss that as an “isolated incident?”
Your lack of appreciation for history makes your vitriol into comedy.
In 2008 the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul MN. At the time I worked just off downtown St. Paul and took the bus through downtown several times a week. Some self-styled “anarchists” had threatened to disrupt the convention; so, because a tiny handful of hooligan assholes decided to commit acts of vandalism as street theater, the government responded by virtually putting St. Paul under martial law. The greatest threat to my personal safety at the time was the army of cops ready to break my head if I looked at them cross-eyed.
Agreed. “Yet” being the key word.
The US I lived in for close to two decades altogether --starting in college in the mid 70s & then back in the 90s – has little to do with the US today. And I don’t mean that kindly.
I don’t notice the government in my daily life.
Surely they notice you. Don’t think you have a file? Think again – they do.
So you admit that public outcry stopped waterboarding. I ask again: does that happen in a police state?
Well, that’s my point. You’re pulling out isolated instances to claim that we are heading towards a police state and yet you dismiss instances from the past that don’t happen now. How could I prove to you that things are better and not worse? Do you expect me to list out every instance of government abuse for the last 80 years?
Anyone want to change their minds in light of the recent communications monitoring revelations?
Progressives and libertarians are once again singing “police state” thanks to those.
Nope. Keeping a record of phone logs is intrusive. It is an invasion of privacy. It shouldn’t have happened, and it needs to stop.
It doesn’t rise anywhere close to the level of a “police state.”
How many people have been arrested solely on the basis of their phone calls? Until the number rises into the thousands, it’s a pretty damn lame “police state.” Where are the jackbooted thugs with truncheons?
Weak. Sissy. Pansy-ass police state. (So weak, I can post this without fear of the “knock on the door at night.”)
Reminds me of a Soviet-era joke:
Ivan and his friend Mikhail were drinking in a tavern and Ivan says “I had such a scare last night! I was sound asleep when all of a sudden in the middle of the night someone started hammering at my door, yelling at me to open the door and come out.”
Mikhail looks horrified “was it…?”
“No, no! It wasn’t the secret police! It was just that the building was on fire.”
Similarly, I was pretty unhappy with the 2004 DNC in Boston. They reserved whole lanes of I-93 (THE way in and out of the city for a huge number of people) and provided private access to the subways for the delegates. Not to put too fine a point on it, but all I was reminded of was the private drving lanes the Soviets famously had for their VIPs.
Look, I appreciate the need for security, but those people are not more equal than the rest of us, and if security can’t be assured in a major metro area, then they need to go somewhere where their political jerking off doesn’t disrupt the lives of millions. Imagine that you were part of some legal but unpopular group that was likely to be the target of violence, and wanted to have your convention somewhere. You wouldn’t get that kind of treatment.
End Hijack
It is pretty obvious to me, that all of this information gathering by the NSA has nothing to do with security. It is all about control-the government now knows so much about its citizens, that it can wield power over them any time it wishes. And don’t tell me its about “protecting the borders”-all of this data didn’t prevent two Muslim Chechens in Boston from murdering innocent people. Its really sick-billions spent spying on American citizens, for no security. Wait until we find out that a “rogue” NSA employee has been stealing identities-what then?:mad:
:rolleyes:
I’m hardly supportive of these measures but do you truly believe any sort of crime/terrorism prevention policy to be 100 percent perfect? If anything we should be delighted there have been so few successful terrorist plots since 9-11. I’m also inclined to suspect you wouldn’t have said the same thing when Bush was in the Oval Office.
It is pretty obvious to me that all of this information gathering by the NSA has everything to do with security. It is all about the perception of control. The government knows that the only way to quell the masses is to sell the illusion of security. The fact is that the masses are secure, but suffer under the misapprehension that they are threatened. It is all theater.
No, we can’t just leave those who wish to cause harm to their own devices. We must prevent our worst enemies from realizing their aims. But we must also remain aware that we buy security with personal liberty, and a fuckton of money. The US populace seems to me to be overvaluing security and undervaluing personal liberty and fucktons of money.