In Harold Ramis' classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV
weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the
same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into
his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I illustrate in my
book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the
same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance,
strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying,
the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although
with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.
What remains to be seen is whether 2016 will bring more of the same or
whether "we the people" will wake up from our somnambulant states.
Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2015 was far from a
banner year.
The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to
repeating if we don't find some way to push back against the menace of
an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized surveillance state.
More surveillance. The surveillance state is
alive and well and kicking privacy to shreds in America. Whether you're
walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to
friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government
agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, will still be 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. We are now
in a state of transition with the police state shifting into high-gear
under the auspices of the surveillance state. In such an environment, we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we're potentially guilty
of some wrongdoing or other. Even our homes provide little protection
against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to
crash through your door if they suspect you're up to no good, now have radars that allow them to "see" through the walls of your home.
More militarized police. In early America, government
agents were not permitted to enter one's home without permission or in a
deceitful manner. And citizens could resist arrest when a police
officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a
warrant. Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is
armed with high-tech military weapons would be nothing short of
suicidal. Moreover, as police forces across the country continue to be
transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts,
complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the
battlefield. Having already transformed local police into extensions of
the military, now the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice
Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation's police
officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body
scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition
programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much
more.
More police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in
large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a
week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police
imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to
the communities in which they serve.
More so-called "terrorist" attacks. Despite the
government's endless propaganda about the threat of terrorism and even
in the wake of the shootings in San Bernardino and Paris, statistics
show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack.
You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than
from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more
likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404
times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. And you
are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.
More attempts by the government to identify, target and punish so-called domestic "extremists." In
much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to
advance the surveillance state, the government's anti-extremism program
will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent
activities as potentially extremist. To this end, police will identify,
monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything
that could be construed as extremist before they can become actual
threats. This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it's been a long
time coming. Moreover, under the guise of fighting violent extremism "in all of its forms and manifestations"
in cities and communities across the world, the Obama administration
has agreed to partner with the United Nations to take part in its Strong Cities Network program and hire a domestic extremism czar.
More SWAT team raids. More than 80% of American communities have their own SWAT teams,
with 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 crash through doors, damage private property, kill
citizens, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault
or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit
of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually some small amount of drugs.
More overcriminalization. The government's tendency
towards militarization and overcriminalization, in which routine,
everyday behaviors become targets of regulation and prohibition, have
resulted in Americans getting arrested for making and selling
unpasteurized goat cheese, cultivating certain types of orchids, feeding
a whale, holding Bible studies in their homes, and picking their kids up from school.
More strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to protect
the citizenry from being subjected to "unreasonable searches and
seizures" by government agents. While the literal purpose of the
amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted
government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our
human dignity. Unfortunately, court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches
have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our
blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately.
Accounts are on the rise of individuals—men and women alike—being
subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in
the course of "routine" traffic stops.
More injustice. Americans can no longer rely on the
courts to mete out justice. The courts were established to intervene and
protect the people against the government and its agents when they
overstep their bounds. Yet the courts increasingly march in lockstep
with the police state, while concerned themselves primarily with
advancing the government's agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal. As a
result, Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no
longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later.
What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers
involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the
hands.
More political spectacles. Americans continue to
naively buy into the idea that politics matter, as if there really were a
difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there's not). As if Barack Obama proved to be any different from George W. Bush (he has not). As if Hillary Clinton's values are any different from Donald Trump's (with both of them, money talks).
As if when we elect a president, we're getting someone who truly
represents "we the people" rather than the corporate state (in fact, in
the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots).
Politics in America is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a
spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion. In other
words, it's a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and
fighting over two parties whose priorities are exactly the same.
More drones. As corporations and government agencies
alike prepare for their part in the coming drone invasion—it is expected
that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering
in a $30 billion per year industry—it won't be long before American
citizens who will be the target of these devices discover first-hand
that drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—come in all shapes and sizes, from
nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything
from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to
middle-sized copter drones that can deliver pizzas to massive
"hunter/killer" Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high.
More prisons. Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations
that manage the prisons in exchange for the states agreeing to maintain
a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years. And how do you keep the
prisons full? By passing laws aimed at increasing the prison population,
including the imposition of life sentences on people who commit minor
or nonviolent crimes such as siphoning gasoline. Little surprise, then,
that the United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners.
More corruption. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you're talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency
with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.
Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against
government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid by the
taxpayer.
More censorship. First Amendment activities are being
pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all
across the country. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from
political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security
and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete
eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the "principal pillar of a free government."
Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying
legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of
other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have
conspired to corrode our core freedoms. As a result, we are no longer a
nation of constitutional purists for whom the Bill of Rights serves as
the ultimate authority. We have litigated and legislated our way into a
new governmental framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry
greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
More fascism. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation's capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful
rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative
republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a
corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors,
have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by
day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before
have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their
government and even less access to their so-called representatives.
More fear. We're being fed a constant diet of fear,
which has resulted in Americans adopting an "us" against "them" mindset
that keeps us divided into factions, unable to reach consensus about
anything and too distracted to notice the police state closing in on us.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put it best: "Take
alarm," he warned, "at the first experiment with liberties." Anyone with
even a casual knowledge about current events knows that the first
experiment on our freedoms happened long ago. Worse, we have not heeded
the warnings of Madison and those like him who understood that if you
give the government an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately, the
government has not only taken a mile, they have taken mile after mile
after mile after mile with seemingly no end in sight for their power
grabs.
If you're in the business of making New Year's resolutions, why not
resolve that 2016 will be the year we break the cycle of tyranny and get
back on the road to freedom? No matter what the politicians say about
the dire state of our nation, you can rest assured that none of the
problems that continue to plague our lives and undermine our freedoms
will be resolved by our so-called elected representatives in any
credible, helpful way in the new year.
All of the signs point to something nasty up ahead.
