Is The US a Police State?

Is The US a Police State? – Second Thought

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[majl]

America is like the Titanic. Too big to turn, too slow to react, in denial about sinking, and there aren't enough life boats for everyone.

[mageyeah]

If peaceful protest is illegal, what incentive is there to remain peaceful?

[tonyjones]

I’m black, male and lost any idea that the USA *wasn’t* a police state 40 years ago…

[cattibingo]

"You can only protest in the designated protest area at the designated protest time."

[ManobadhikarForEveryone]

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.”
― Michael Parenti, Against Empire

[satevo]

"Don't break the law"
"What law?"
"The Law we are going to make up so we can arrest you".

[cloudcity]

The irony of two Black men who directly benefited from peaceful protest becoming the hammer to stop peaceful protests can not be overstated.

[JohnClarkW]

Your take on throwing cops at homelessness, mental health, and poverty is so spot on. Our courts have criminalized all of that, and even with the creation of crime out of thin air, we still have declining crime rates, which make this all even more absurd.

[Souchirouu]

Police: You should not wear a mask that is what cowards do!
Also Police: Decked out from top to bottom with armor and face covering helmets.
I guess it takes one to know one.

[MrDolearon]

a protest that does not disrupt is not a protest at all.

[jinxshadow]

It's truly disturbing, when you talk to an ordinary person and it becomes apparent that in their mind, illegal equals wrong. Breaking the law is always fundamentally evil to them, while they never question where those laws came from in the first place.

[TreeHairedGingerAle]

Oh SHIT.

I just remembered, a writing acquaintance of mine saying that, recently, the supreme court decided that it's _okay to subject homeless people to cruel and unusual punishment in the US..._

*At the same time that US is experiencing a housing crisis.* SO many people are winding up homeless in the US right now, for an array of terrible reasons.

I feel like there MAY be dots to connect here.

The billionaires and their corporations want more prisoners fed into their modern day slavery system.
And the cops are only too happy to enact homeless camp sweeps and jail the homeless people they find there...how much better for the oppressors that they won't have to treat this new crop of slaves in any particular humane way?

[jimmytimmy]

Arizona's private prisons just sued the Arizona State for not providing them with enough inmates. 🤯

[lucasmonteverdebustamante]

“Fascism is colonialism turned inwards” Aimé Césaire

[lorenam]

The proper gander of the USA is seriously insane, how they got people convinced of the most insane things:
"We're a democracy"
"We believe in human rights"
"Everybody is equal to the law"
"It's normal to be in debt for health care"
"It's normal to be in debt for education"
"We're the good guys"
"We go to war with other countries to defend democracy"
"The people we fight against are the baddies. They just also happen to have natural resources we want"
"Our police system is fair and honorable. We were trained by Israel, so of course we're very moral"
"There's so no such thing as a gender side by us or our allies, only by people who oppose us "
Our military bases around the world are there to keep Americans safe. Abroad. In countries that we want to bully 🤫"
"Socialism is bad. Except when it's for the rich. Of course we will bail out the banks. But not the hike owners. Socialism for the poor is BAD"
...
I can't even be bothered to continue, it's endless 🤦🏻‍♀️

[ichaukan]

Land Of The Free™, where rejecting corporate police state terrorism is met with a rabid increase in corporate police state terrorism.

[michaelbraxner]

After visiting the USA in 1947 Simone de Beauvoir wrote:
"What is most striking to me, and most discouraging, is that they are so apathetic while being neither blind nor unconscious. [...] They witness the rise, more ominous every day, of racism and reactionary attitudes---the birth of a kind of fascism. [...]
But they themselves don't feel responsible for anything, because they don't think they can do anything in this world. [...]
In America, the individual is nothing.
He is made into an abstract object of worship; by persuading him of his individual value, one stifles the awakening of a collective spirit in him. But reduced to himself in this way, he is robbed of concrete power."

[Soul_underground]

"Dont break the law"
"We're not"
"Stop resisting arrest criminals"

[killy]

Remember guys, Second Thought did not kill himself nor was he depressed

[oscarbjb]

thanks for being the one who radicalized me