Worrisome

Weaponsman posted:

Second, don’t rely on Oathkeepers bluster (another word beginning with “b” also fits). They mean what they say now, but things will be different then. Police will have no problem cracking down on you because (1) most cops will follow any plausibly legitimate authority; (2) human beings are born to rationalize; and (3) you’ll be demonized long before you’re raided. They won’t whack you, they’ll be whacking your indescribably monstrous straw man evil twin.

Every totalitarian state in history made liberal use of the ordinary cops for its political roundups, and no police element has ever mutinied or walked off the job when faced with that task. For example, the Gestapo and SS did not need to round up the Jews in occupied France: the ordinary French beat cops were glad to do it. None of them was ever punished; they transferred their loyalty seamlessly and unquestionably from the 3rd Republic to Vichy to the occupying power to the 4th Republic. Likewise, the Weimar cops became Nazi cops, who in turn became East or West German cops, and now unified Federal German cops. Hitler? Stalin? Who cares, we can retire at 45 with a good pension, and no one will miss a few Jews.

 Those two paragraphs really say it all.

I keep circling back to this.  I want to like and trust the police, but I know what's going to happen if we don't get our stupid asses to being a well informed electorate and unfuck our government.  It won't be the people we can vote for knocking on the door asking if our papers are in order.

History is what I'm listening to when I worry about the police.  We're presently building a police force with some terrible capabilities and being chided that they're great folks; no need to worry.  But time and again, if Government can, Government IS!  Or will if given time.  The police, no matter how likable and friendly they are now: are the government.

Also, this remains true:

The armed agents of the state have the same function in North Korea they do in the USA and vice versa. That is to intimidate those of questionable loyalty to the state. The goal is not to arrest or kill, it is to "keep 'em in line". When the armed agents have to arrest, club, kill, etc, etc, they have in a real sense, failed in their primary mission. The pivot point in the USA is that the definition of questionable loyalty has expanded, from a small minority of the population until it now includes just about everybody not a full time employee of the state. Therefore the armed agents must attempt to intimidate a wider and wider range of people, like those who cut down a tree in their back yard, or join a Tea Party, and so on, and on, and on. This requires an ever greater number of armed agents, who will fail (in the sense outlined above) ever more often. If the state finds it imperative to tax a single cigarette at thirty seven times its actual economic value the armed agents will have to arrest, club, kill, etc, the disloyal who act outside the states economic web (cf. NYC/NYPD). There it is.  -W. Fleetwood

It pisses me off.

This trajectory began before I was born, so I got no vote in preventing it.

When I got old enough to vote, it seemed it was on terminal guidance already.  I still tried and try to tell people that this arc leads to no-good.  But they'd rather play video games and not even bother registering to vote (while complaining about how much their health care costs without seeing that they didn't even show up to try and stop WHY the costs shot up).

From: http://explosm.net/comics/4211/