{"id":6257,"date":"2011-07-13T03:10:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T10:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=6257"},"modified":"2011-07-13T03:10:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T10:10:55","slug":"responsibilities-of-a-resident-of-the-police-state-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/13\/responsibilities-of-a-resident-of-the-police-state-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Responsibilities of a resident of the police state, part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

First they came for the …<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

One of the hardest things about living in a police state<\/a> is watching other people be crushed by state power and feeling unable to do a thing about it. <\/p>\n

We read Pastor Neimoeller’s famous lines as a warning to ourselves. But really, there’s not much chance of heeding the warning in a way that changes anything — except perhaps for the worse. <\/p>\n

If the police state is as ruthless (and as popular among the citizens) as Hitler’s, speaking out is only likely to get the speaker rounded up along with all the other “enemies of the state.”<\/p>\n

There are exceptions<\/a>. But they’re rare and usually involve extenuating circumstances.<\/p>\n

If the police state is like ours — “kinder and gentler” (e.g. more worried about public image or still bound to a few dying freedom traditions) — we’re “allowed” to stand there and shout our lungs out, mostly unmolested — though preferably in a designated, barbed-wire enclosed “free speech zone” where no politician will be discommoded by our unimportant proletarian opinions<\/a>. We might as well be shouting into a black hole. Or so it seems.<\/p>\n

The question is: What is the responsibility of a resident of a police state? If speaking out doesn’t help … then what?<\/p>\n

I know: Our first responsibility is to ourselves and our families. We didn’t create the police state. What government does isn’t our responsibility (except to whatever extent we support its actions). Yet we’re people of conscience. We can’t watch others be crushed without feeling a stab of their agony. We know, as others are crushed, that the crushing machinery gathers momentum and will roll toward our own lives. We know that not only we, but the ideals that sustain civilization, are being crushed. And that matters to us. Matters vitally, painfully, heartbreakingly. No matter what else we do, we can’t stand by and watch that happen without feeling an obligation — or at least a passionate longing — to do our all to stop it.<\/p>\n

I don’t care how many hotshots take a perfectly reasonable “me first” attitude to freedom. I don’t even care how many times people like me advocate shrugging, withdrawal of consent, or various other forms of resistance, creative disregard, or personal freedom-building. Don’t get me wrong; those things matter. We need to do our damnest to live free, aside<\/i> from the police state. Still, when the crushing machinery rolls, we all suffer.<\/p>\n

And we feel the need to do something effective to stop it. Something aside from or in addition to creating our own personal freedom.<\/p>\n

But how? What? And why does it keep rolling on so inexorably when so many are<\/i> speaking out?<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

To avoid going crazy trying to cover the thousands of government outrages — from TSA groping to secret laws to business-destroying regulations to wholesale data-snooping to unjust wars to “detentions” without charges — I’m going to use as an example one category of police-statism: police abuses against individuals.<\/p>\n

Can those be ended? Or drastically reduced, with swift, condign penalties laid against the malefactors? Can we, above all, render police thuggery culturally unacceptable? If mere speaking out doesn’t do the job … what then?<\/p>\n

One reason to select police abuses as an example is that they’re so widespread — and growing. And so well documented in these days of a camera in every pocket.<\/p>\n

Another is that they’re so horrible, so blatant, sometimes so deadly, that they wrench the heart of anybody this side of The Grinch.<\/p>\n

Another is that, since they’re often local matters, they ought — in theory — to be fairly easy to stop.<\/p>\n

Another is that thousands of people are<\/i> speaking out against them. We’ve got great writer\/researchers like Radley Balko<\/a>, multitudes of crusading legal aid groups, CopWatch<\/a>, and iPhone apps for instantly uploading and protecting videos of abuses. We’ve got unique organizations like Oath Keepers<\/a> trying to instill consciences in the abusers and awareness in the public and the “protect and serve” profession. They’re joined by other individuals and organizations battling the related horrors of the drug war and asset forfeiture.<\/p>\n

If there are any credible voices speaking out in favor<\/i> of cops killing innocents in their homes, cops smashing people’s video cameras and phones, cops obliterating family pets, cops wrestling people to the ground and arresting them for dancing, and cops getting mere slaps on the wrists for the most egregious crimes, I’ve never heard them. <\/p>\n

Oh, sure, in the wake of some horror, the local police chief always “conducts an investigation” and finds that his officers were “following proper procedure.” Sure, the police union always defends the scummiest of its members. Sure, the local taxpayers may fork over for millions in settlement money to make individual claims go away. Sure, propaganized minions “support their local police.” Sure, fools believe every one of these horrors is just “another isolated incident.” Sure, millions of “brand-holes” are too busy running up their credit cards to notice or care what’s going on outside their narcissistic little bubbles.<\/p>\n

None of those are what you’d call credible voices.<\/p>\n

Do you hear a single knowledgeable, thoughtful, humane voice arguing that six a.m. door kicking, wrong-house raids, puppycide, or military-style raids for paperwork violations are good, wholesome activities that belong in a free society? No, you do not. How could you? Every person of conscience stands against such things.<\/p>\n

Then with so much indignation roused against them, police abuses against individuals ought to be among the easiest police state activities to halt. Even if you acknowledge such (admittedly big) factors as the federal government paying, equipping, training, and otherwise encouraging local cops to be thugs, in theory outraged local people (supported by a howling Internet) ought to have a relatively easy time putting a stop to such local outrages.<\/p>\n

But despite the outcry, the abuses don’t stop.<\/i> They don’t even slow down<\/i>. Instead, we now see SWAT-style raids used to enforce housing code violations<\/a> and catch student-loan scofflaws<\/a>. We see polite objectors being charged with the catch-alls of disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice, or resisting arrest — and less polite objectors killed on the spot. We see tasers — once billed as “non-lethal” alternatives to firearms — being used as “compliance tools” against old ladies, grade-school children, diabetics, epileptics, and handicapped teenagers. We see people who photograph cops being threatened with long prison sentences<\/a>. We’re told the horrendous lie that “freedom” requires absolute, forelock-tugging, dirt-scuffing, unquestioning obedience to Authoritah — and we’d better believe it OR ELSE.<\/p>\n

You know all that, of course.<\/p>\n

And it pains your conscience, doesn’t it? It makes you want to scream in frustration. Makes you want to take the law into your own hands and end the abuses by any means necessary<\/i>. Makes you wonder if the entire country hasn’t lost its mind — and makes you sure<\/i> that the entire “justice system” has well and truly lost its collective marbles — or perhaps isn’t intended to be a “justice” system at all.<\/p>\n

No matter how loudly you yell, how many times you show up to support a victim in court, how many letters you write to editors, how many times you speak at public forums, how many times you do exactly what Martin Niemoeller mourned that he didn’t do<\/i> … things just get worse.<\/p>\n

And if something so local, so personal, seems impossible to halt, then how do ordinary We the People end ever-more-distant, more secretive, more deeply entrenched and institutionalized horrors perpetrated by a government that aims to rule us at all cost?<\/p>\n

So we come back to the question: What’s the responsibility of a resident of a police state? If mere speaking out doesn’t change anything, what does? And how do we do it?<\/p>\n

More to come …<\/i><\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The term “brand-holes” comes to you courtesy of Jake MacGregor.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First they came for the … One of the hardest things about living in a police state is watching other people be crushed by state power and feeling unable to do a thing about it. We read Pastor Neimoeller’s famous lines as a warning to ourselves. But really, there’s not much chance of heeding the warning in a way that changes anything — except perhaps for the worse. If the police state is as ruthless (and as popular among the citizens) as Hitler’s, speaking out is only likely to get the speaker rounded up along with all the other “enemies…<\/p>\n

Continue readingResponsibilities of a resident of the police state, part I<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,23,30,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-mind-and-spirit","category-thuggery-and-bad-law","category-resistance","category-war-on-some-drugs","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}