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TokenBoomer@lemmy.world

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Is the U.S. a Police State? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by TokenBoomer@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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Let’s look at evidence:

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[–] queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone 108 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Well seeing as we:

Call officers who hide as "undercover agents" but we call them in other countries "secret police" and
We have police who hide in unmarked cars
Both parties love cops more than its own citizens, increasing funds for cops than any regulation on them. One even has a cop as a VP.
Cops aren't required to know the laws they arrest you for
"Innocent until proven guilty" is often a farce when you're any form of minority, where people are killed on death row for crimes they never committed
Cops are paid more for militarization than teachers and social programs who prevent future criminals
Cops can shot anyone for any reason with a rare chance of even being punished for it by leaving to join a different police force
The NSA, FBI, and CIA know more of its citizens than neighbors know each other, despite it being illegal.
Not even getting into how cops often crack down on citizens' movements and protests, especially those of BIPOC and Queer.

I'm going to go with "Since at least 2001, way longer if you're any form of minority." China learns from the Americans, like Nazi Germany did from our treatment of its citizens.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

White Nationalists will tell you that all this is to protect you from the evil foreigners, and it will magically go away as soon as we've "won".

They'll also tell you the Deep State has been overrun by (((communists))) and you can't trust the government to do anything right. That's why they need supreme executive power to clean the swamp.

Whichever way you turn, the answer to the current moment is always "more bigger deadlier cops".

China learns from the Americans, like Nazi Germany did from our treatment of its citizens.

The Red-Baiting is a big part of what makes our national security state such a cancerous mass. We have to become China to beat China. And we need to believe China is the worst thing we can possibly think of (Nazis), when our modern police/military state has already surpassed 1930s Germany by leaps and bounds.

So long as Americans are convinced that every other foreign country is either a crime ridden hell-hole or an open-air prison (or, paradoxically, both at once), we'll continue to tolerate further erosion of civil liberties in hopes of relieving anxiety that the police state exists to impose on us.

[–] BobGnarley@lemm.ee 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Rethinking the war on drugs would be a serious step to change a lot of this.

They'll let us all die before they ever consider that though.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Nixon's War on Drugs was always intended as a tool to crush PoC and "hippie" counterculture revolutionaries.

Now it's an excuse to harass and cage migrants, too.

[–] Enkrod 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

when our modern police/military state has already surpassed 1930s Germany by leaps and bounds

This thread man... I don't think you guys have much of an idea how bad Nazi Germany was. If you said stuff like this on the street over here in 1934 you'd end up in a concentration camp. Hans and Sophie Scholl were guillotined for distributing leaflets for fucks sake.

[–] Enkrod 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Call officers who hide as “undercover agents” but we call them in other countries “secret police” and

Holy shit dude, secret police and undercover pigs are not the same. Not that I harbor any sympathies for the pigs, but at least you live in a nation where people don't just get disappeared. The Stasi and the Gestapo... those guys would laugh at your police. They could black bag you and noone would ever know what happened to you... you'd just disappear, no courts, no lawyers, no way to find out... just poof, gone in the night... Shit, the SRB alone killed half a million people in Uganda.

The Mississippi SovCom was a secret police and under Hoover the FBI could be called a secret police, but the mere fact that you can express this opinion here and now without fearing repercussions is a testament to how much you do not live under the thump of a secret police.

You're spot on on the rest of your points, but this one error undermines your argument, don't make it.

[–] queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My bad, I meant the CIA blacksites that can detain citizens for no reason, the vans that kidnapped protestors during the BLM movement, and that the supreme court has ruled that of you're near a border, you don't have rights.

[–] AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hell, the Chicago PD had a blacksite modeled after CIA blacksites, called Homan Square. More than 7,000 people were detained there, and only 68 of them were ever allowed access to an attorney.

[–] queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 months ago

Yep. American police are on par with USSR, East Germany, and China. We just think we're better because our flags are red white and blue, not red and gold.