This is what a police state looks like (part 1 of ???)
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.
Show me what a police state looks like…
This is what a police state looks like.
Local events have been keeping me away from blogging about the raids, round-ups, and paramilitary assaults on protesters in St. Paul. I’ll be posting more and saying some more about this soon. In the meantime, though, you need to see these videos. Remember that so-called electoral democracy — in fact, nothing more than an imperial elective oligarchy — never means that we (meaning you and I and our neighbors) are respected as sovereign individuals or left alone to manage our own affairs. What it means is that a highly organized, heavily armed elite insists on the privilege of representing
us, ruling over us, and ordering us around, on the excuse that, once every several years, we are given some minimal opportunity to select which of two tightly regimented political parties will take control of the ruling apparatus. It is, in other words, not freedom, but rather a Party State, in which we are given only the choice of which of two bureaucratic political parties might control our lives and livelihoods, with their authority supposedly justified by the ritual of elections and the mandate of popular sovereignty. And if the people (again, meaning you and I and our neighbors) should dare to think that we might challenge the authority of the regime supposedly representing
us, you’ll find that it’s the people that go out the window, not the rigged electoral system or the parties’ grasp on the authority supposedly derived from those people.
More to come.
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Thanks for putting this RG. The fact that it looks like you could start up a new series of posts called, “This is what a police state looks like” is disturbing enough, but to not know at what point it might end is downright frightening.
I’m sure some will call us, and other civi libertarians, “chicken littles”, “paranoid”, and “ignorant”. They’ll likely say that we’re “over-reacting”, “not seeing the big picture”, or perhaps even “harming the cause of more ‘reasonable’ civil liberties proponents”. I’ve stopped caring so much about that.
On that first video, the recording can also be found at the gnooze site: http://gnooze.com/archives/235 The YouTube video is available in both High (i.e. suitable for iPod) and Standard qualities. I’ve also been given the URL of a higher quality version (i.e. 640×480) for download (it’s about 99.8 MB). It’s wrapped in a .mov container, suitable for QuickTime, or whatever else you may have that plays that format.
http://e10.video.blip.tv/1380005259809/Gnooze-ProtestorsTearGassedRawFootageGnoozeTearGassedInStPau196p.mov
Discussed at www.eridu.org.uk /#
Liberty Alone » Blog Archive » More from the Twin Cities:
One does begin to wonder whether it is time to shoot the b@st@rds.
John,
Unfortunately, the political class is probably thinking the same thing about us…
John:
Well, you know what Claire says…
Civil disobedience is now terrorism in their eyes, John, so if they push people to that, they really can’t say we didn’t try.
As I wrote the other day, cops may look back fondly on the days when we conveniently gathered in one place to peacefully oppose the establishment. The alternative – insurgency – is a lot messier for cops. Iraq is a great example. It’s in THEIR interests to respect proportionality.
Discussed at radgeek.com /#
Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-09-17 – The statist “We don’t”: