Is Ameristan a Police State?

[Revoltingest]

Legally accepted bribery in the form of pay-to-play Justice System is one issue.

There is the lack of unbiased third party review of incidents of malfeasance too, ie IA investigations, as opposed to someone not in the justice system already.

Military did this with prosecuting and investigating sexual assault allegations. You can't get an answer or a good fix to a problem, when the people involved in addressing it, have a stake in how it plays out and it's outcome affects them.

Edit: America is not a police state at the moment. But it has elements of it, and it is getting worse.

A recurring joke about cops is....
"We've thoroughly investigated ourselves,
& we find that we've done nothing wrong."

 

[Kenny]

About the title...it's not clickbait. But don't get all fired up
thinking I equate Ameristan to N Korea or Nazi Germany.
I don't claim that level of oppression.
It's more isolated, ie, imposed upon an unlucky segment
of the populace who run afoul of an element of government.

Some elements of a police state / fascism / oppression....
1) Coerced confessions.
2) Punishment without a trial.
3) Court system rigged against some.
4) Applying laws & punishment selectively.
5) Punishment out of proportion to the offense.
6) Laws designed for disparate effect, ie discriminatory.
7) Great discretionary power granted to law enforcement.

I can add to the list, but those are more than enuf
to start a discussion....perhaps too many.

Most people won't ever experience these problems, so
it's not a "police state" to the people who don't attract the
worst kind of the wrong kind of attention from government.
But some people do get caught in government's meat
grinder.

It's a big topic with many aspects & illustrative examples.
I'll start with #1.

Cops use coercive techniques to get confessions, even
from people who didn't commit the alleged crime.
How do they do this?
In the old days, they'd beat confessions out of civilians.
That's greatly subsided, & been replaced with far more
subtle & sophisticated techniques....which actually have
SCOTUS approval.

Some cop tools....
- Offer light sentences instead of severe ones in exchange
for confession.
- Lie about incriminating evidence.
- Interrogate in a manner that induces stress, eg, threats,
fatigue, memory corruption.
- Entrapment to creating new prosecutable offenses.

Some info about false confessions (no paywall)....
Speaking of Psychology: False confessions aren’t always what they seem
Videos for those who prefer....

We are definitely in position for a socialist state ruled by few and the powerful!

 

[PureX]

Please take your partisan polemics to your own thread.
Yes, prisons are bad. But both Dems & Pubs have
their hands in these conditions.

You can't separate the social, political, and economic from the issue of police fascism and pretend to understand police fascism. The truth is that a lot of Americans LIKE fascism. They won't call it that, but they applaud many of the standard methods fascists use to maintain power and control. Not just by the police, but by other societal institutions as well. It's why we now have Supreme Court judges protecting fascist behavior. We deliberately elected politicians that we knew would deliberately appoint judges biased in favor of fascist practices.

Most police abuse and killings happen not because a citizen threatens a cop's life, but because a citizen refused to comply with whatever the officer was demanding of them. Even things as trivial as getting out of a vehicle. That is classic fascist thinking: compliance to the agenda of the 'dictator' being the paramount concern. Yet most Americans don't recognize this as fascism. And even applaud it as being reasonable and necessary (in many aspects of life, not just policing). Fascism has long been a mainstay of American institutional thinking. So ever-present that we don't even see it. It's why so many of us think meeting out the maximum punishment for the slightest non-compliant infraction of our own ethical standards is acceptable.

 

[Revoltingest]

We are definitely in position for a socialist state ruled by few and the powerful!

I'm advocating & hoping otherwise.
And I'm optimistic....it's in my nature.

 

[Revoltingest]

You can't separate the social, political, and economic from the issue of police fascism and pretend to understand police fascism.

This sounds like a fine topic for you to
explore in a thread you should start.
Why don't you?

Most police abuse and killings happen not because a citizen threatens a cop's life, but because a citizen refused to comply with whatever the officer was demanding of them. Even things as trivial as getting out of a vehicle. That is classic fascist thinking: compliance to the agenda of the 'dictator' being the paramount concern. Yet most Americans don't recognize this as fascism. And even applaud it as being reasonable and necessary (in many aspects of life, not just policing). Fascism has long been a mainstay of American institutional thinking. So ever-present that we don't even see it. It's why so many of us think meeting out the maximum punishment for the slightest non-compliant infraction is acceptable.

Bravo!
You're on track.
Yes, Very many Ameristanians don't know anything about
the dangers of interactions with cops. Thinking of one
close association who strongly believes in "question authority",
believes that honest people have nothing to fear, & should
cooperate, answering all questions honestly & without
challenge. That is a very dangerous Pollyanna attitude, ie,
a civil rights violation just waiting to happen.

Civics classes in school should train kids to be aware of
& to guard their constitutional rights. And to know that
many bad & incompetent cops are dangerous to them.

 

[Kooky]

This sounds like a fine topic for you to
explore in a thread you should start.
Why don't you?

Bravo!
You're on track.

Yes, this is a thread about the definitely very real danger of a socialist takeover of the United States.
No allusions to right-wing politics or fascism allowed!

 

[Kooky]

We are definitely in position for a socialist state ruled by few and the powerful!

I hear people in the US are already being socialistically forced to pay for communist roads and Marxist public schools, instead of allowing the free market and individual enterprise to take care of everything just like Our Lord Jesus intended.

 

[PureX]

This sounds like a fine topic for you to
explore in a thread you should start.
Why don't you?

Bravo!
You're on track.

Hmmm ... isn't controlling the story one of those fascist police characteristics? Making sure the newspapers don't print any side of the story that doesn't comport with the police's story of the events?

 

[Revoltingest]

Yes, this is a thread about the definitely very real danger of a socialist takeover of the United States.
No allusions to right-wing politics or fascism allowed!

Good.
You finally get it.
Ken's brief digression quickly ended.

 

[Kooky]

In that case, we can safely say that America is going to become a police state unless all government is being abolished - except for the police and the military, the sole guarantees against socialist police states.

As we all know, police states are characterized by uniquitous funding of welfare state measures and public infrastructure. Only real, true democracies invest in police and military rather than the welfare of the working class, as the latter can be trivially achieved by the go-getter attitude of individual entrepreneurs, while the police and the military are essential to maintaining freedom.

After all, tyrannies like the USSR or the PRC infamously fund public welfare rather than police or the military.

 

[The Hammer]

We are definitely in position for a socialist state ruled by few and the powerful!

I think the word you're looking for is "Authoritarian Dictatorship". (The few and powerful)

Not "Socialist"

 

[Revoltingest]

Hmmm ... isn't controlling the story one of those fascist police characteristics? Making sure the newspapers don't print any side of the story that doesn't comport with the police's story of the events?

Yes. A local lawyer here was once a radio DJ.
He personally witnessed an off duty cop leading other
cops on a dangerous high speed chase. Cops ordered
the station owner to order him to not report on it.

It also extends to entertainment media, which tend to
portray illegal acts by cops as necessary to achieve
justice because of inconvenient technicalities like the
Bill Of Rights, Miranda warnings, right to a lawyer, etc.

As I already said today, policing in Ameristan is more
like "The Shield" than "Dragnet". Vic Mackey & crew
are too real as characters.

 

[Kooky]

I think the word you're looking for is "Authoritarian Dictatorship". (The few and powerful)

Not "Socialist"

No, I'm pretty sure that everything that's bad is socialist by definition.

 

[The Hammer]

No, I'm pretty sure that everything that's bad is socialist by definition.

Fair enough, lmao

 

[Twilight Hue]

Yes, but not in a top-down way, at least not yet. In a federation of police states kind of way, but as you said above, there are degrees. We're not North Korea. But the militarization of the police, which increased rapidly after a huge amount of post-Iraq military surplus started being readily accessible to law enforcement to the point that even a small town might have its own armored vehicle. The more they battle-ready themselves, the more they want a battle.

I don't believe, and it's clear from your thread comments either you don't believe either, that such a complex and terrible issue can be reduced to a few bullet points, but you have to start somewhere. My few points would be: excessive militarization, such that it can be difficult to differentiate military from local police, white nationalist elements in the police force, pervasive corruption and code of silence which allows the police to operate outside the law regularly and with impunity, stop and frisk, no-knock searches for petty drug warrants and simply too much individual power in general.

It also started back with Timothy McVeigh for which the assault on the Branch Davidian's compound by federals included a re-purposed military tank.

More recently there were deployments of advanced robotics on citizens to which have been retracted. For now.

 

[Revoltingest]

It also started back with Timothy McVeigh for which the assault on the Branch Davidian's compound by federals included a re-purposed military tank.

Old saying....
"To a man with a hammer, all problems look like nails."
So to a cop with a tank,
all civilians look like dangerous enemy combatants.

 

[PureX]

Yes. A local lawyer here was once a radio DJ.
He personally witnessed an off duty cop leading other
cops on a dangerous high speed chase. Cops ordered
the station owner to order him to not report on it.

It also extends to entertainment media, which tend to
portray illegal acts by cops as necessary to achieve
justice because of inconvenient technicalities like the
Bill Of Rights, Miranda warnings, right to a lawyer, etc.

As I already said today, policing in Ameristan is more
like "The Shield" than "Dragnet". Vic Mackey is all
too real a character.

And my point is that many Americans WANT IT THAT WAY. The American people have always had a fascist streak a mile wide. Our cops ARE US. They behave the way they do because that's how a lot of Americans think it's acceptable to behave. Dirty Harry is one of our cultural heroes for a reason. And Dirty Harry was basically a violent, fascist cop.

We really need to face this cultural demon within us if we ever hope to make any real changes to the way our police behave.

 

[Revoltingest]

And my point is that many Americans WANT IT THAT WAY. The American people have always had a fascist streak a mile wide. Our cops ARE US. They behave the way they do because that's how a lot of Americans think it's acceptable to behave. Dirty Harry is one of our cultural heroes for a reason. And Dirty Harry was basically a violent, fascist cop.

We really need to face this cultural demon within us if we ever hope to make any real changes to the way our police behave.

I agree that many Ameristans approve of this type of "law & order".
They're trained by TV. They should instead be spending more
time on youtube watching auditor channels.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Can't forget California’s dildo head.

 

[Secret Chief]

We are definitely in position for a socialist state ruled by few and the powerful!

Only an American could believe that the US is on the brink of being a country based on the social ownership of the means of production.