By John W. Whitehead
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you, pull your beard, flick your face, to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.” —John Lennon
What is unfolding before us is not a revolution.
The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: It is an anti-revolution.
The protesters are playing right into the government’s hands, because the powers-that-be want it. They want an excuse to lockdown the Nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger.
It’s happening faster than we can keep up.
The Justice Department is deploying federal prison riot teams to various cities. More than half of the Nation’s governors are calling on the National Guard to quell civil unrest. Growing numbers of cities, having just barely emerged from a coronavirus lockdown, are once again being locked down, this time in response to the growing upheaval.
This situation is how it begins.
The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: Under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.
This way lies certain tyranny.
For just one fleeting moment, “we the people” seemed united in our outrage over this latest killing of an unarmed man by a cop hyped up on his own authority and the power of his uniform.
That unity didn’t last
Indeed, it didn’t take long, no surprise there, for us to quickly become divided again, polarized by the misguided fury and senseless violence of mobs taking to the streets, reeking of madness and mayhem.
Deliberately or not, the rioters have directed our attention away from the government’s crimes and onto their own.
It is a distraction.
Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted.
Let’s not lose sight of what started all of this in the first place: The U.S. government.
More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government constitutes a greater menace to the life, liberty, and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
Case in point: George Floyd died at the hands of the American police state.
The callous, cold-blooded murder of the unarmed, 46-year-old black man by police is nothing new: For eight minutes and 46 seconds, police knelt on Floyd’s neck while the man pleaded for his life, struggled to breathe, cried out for his dead mother, and finally passed out and died
Floyd is yet another victim of a broken system of policing that has placed we the people at the mercy of militarized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to serve and protect.
Daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist.
It is about the growing numbers of unarmed people who are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something, anything, that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to safety.
Killed by police for standing in a shooting stance. Killed for holding a cell phone. Killed for holding a baseball bat. Killed for opening the front door. Killed for being a child in a car pursued by police. Killed for approaching police while holding a metal spoon. Killed for running in an aggressive manner while holding a tree branch. Killed for crawling around naked. Killed for hunching over in a defensive posture. Killed because a police officer accidentally fired his gun instead of his taser. Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Killed for reaching for his license and registration during a traffic stop. Killed for driving while deaf. Killed for being homeless. Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. Killed for peeing outdoors. Killed for having his car break down on the road. Killed for holding a garden hose.
These incidents make clear that the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.
Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws, where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person, in principle at least, to a nation of law-enforcers, or revenue-collectors with weapons, who treat us all like suspects and criminals?
It is not how you keep the peace.
It is not justice. It is not even law and order.
It is certainly not freedom. This is the illusion of freedom.
Unfortunately, we are now being ruled by a government of psychopaths who communicate using a language of force and oppression.
The facts speak for themselves.
Whatever else it may be, a danger, a menace, a threat, the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.
For too long, the American people have obeyed the government’s dictates, no matter now extreme. We have paid its taxes, penalties and fines, no matter how outrageous. We have tolerated its indignities, insults and abuses, no matter how egregious. We have turned a blind eye to its indiscretions and incompetence, no matter how imprudent. We have held our silence in the face of its lawlessness, licentiousness, and corruption, no matter how illicit.
We have suffered.
How long we will continue to suffer depends on how much we’re willing to give up for the sake of freedom.
We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom.
I make clear in my book, “Battlefield America: The War on the American People,” we are at our most vulnerable right now.
—The Rutherford Institute