New paradigm

Murph's [possibly final, if it pisses off the wrong people] Political Rant of the Month:

It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to know that things have gone very wrong in this country over the last thirty-forty years or so. 

Very wrong very quickly.

I was reading an article the other day about police officers in Oregon tazering a naked autistic eleven year old.  Fifteen years ago that would've been considered outrageous, now we barely even notice.  Or if we do notice, someone makes a joke about how she was asking for it, or makes some indignant statement about how that level of force is necessary if we're to be protected from whichever bogeyman the network TV writers have worked into the big ticket dramas this season. 

Hell, someone sent me one the other day about an eight man SWAT team raiding an animal shelter in full tac gear in order to execute an abandoned fawn, still in it's spots.   Now I don't get sentimental about Bambie, I've killed, cleaned and eaten enough venison in my life to not be squeamish about that.  But why does it take an eight man entry team, complete with body armor and automatic rifles, to kill a spotted fawn?  One guy with a pocket knife and a letter from the county sheriff in that area could have accomplished the same thing without detaining all the shelter employees at gunpoint.

I'll offer another example.

I grew up in a county with 36,000 people in it.  
That same county now as two, armored personnel carriers.  Two!  For a county with a population smaller than most cities!

I currently live in a county with a population of roughly 200,000.  A couple years back the sheriff's department were talking about purchasing bayonets. (they said that they would be used to 'cut through screen doors' when searching property).  I've got to say, that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Add to that all the things that our government has admitted to in recent years, from total surveillance to indefinite detention of it's own citizens on their own soil, to drones in our airspace, to torture... 

When did we decide to accept this as the American way?

Now I'm sure there are some cop sniffers out there who are going to accuse me of being a traitor or a crook or something for being offended by this sort of thing, so I'll mention here that I come from a first responder family.  Uncles, are cops, grandparents were cops, parents were firefighters and EMT's.  My siblings, my cousins and I are/were all first responders for a while in our youth.  I don't claim to representa all of them, but I've worked with, lived with, eaten with, and grown up with a lot of cops, firefighters, paramedics, soldiers and civil servants. 

For the most part I don't see the ones I've known doing these sorts of things.  The older ones can't even believe that they're happening.

I had one relative call me after the coverage in Boston a few weeks back, a relative who had been a soldier, and had worked in government for a good thirty years, wondering what on Gods earth gave these guys the idea that they could dress up like soldiers and kick in the doors of entire neighborhoods, pull families out of their homes at gunpoint and toss their houses at will just to find one guy. 

No hot pursuit, no immediacy of threat. 
Just cops dressing up and playing soldier.
And people cheering them for doing it.
The cops I know were fairly sickened by it.
The soldiers in the family were downright irate over it (a couple even going so far as to say that they joined up so that these sorts of things wouldn't be happening on American soil).
But our society either ignores it, or goes on TV and talks about how wonderful it is.

and God help you if you disagree.  Might end up under surveillance, or worse (another thing that would have been unthinkable for our government to admit to twenty years ago).

And I can hear the snotty newbies out there now, telling me that I didn't care about this when Bush junior was in office.  Well yes I did, spoke out loudly against this sort of thing then, and had people telling me that I was paranoid, and that I didn't care about it when Clinton was in office... when I was also speaking out loudly against this sort of thing and being told that I was part of the lunatic fringe, and that I didn't care about it when Bush senior was in office...

And don't feed me any shit about the ends justifying the means, or how it makes us safe from terrorism or it being the price of a "free" society. 

There have always been people who wanted to do us harm, there always will be.  In years past those people were dealt with quite effectively without all this extra surveillance, military equipment on our streets, intrusion and government sanctioned random violence. 

Every so often a few would get through, because no system is perfect, but for the most part the majority of the really bad ones were neutralized before they had a chance to wreak havoc... 

So what changed? 

Did the world suddenly become a more dangerous place? 

Well not really.  It's just as dangerous as it's always been, we just became more aware of it. 

Did people suddenly become worse than they've ever been before?

Well, not really.  A bit more shallow perhaps, a bit dumber, but for the most part folks are still folks, and they still want the same things.

The only thing that seems to have changed is that a handful of well positioned people were able to take advantage of our fear and hysteria, and essentially remove any last vestige of control that we, the unconnected, had over our society.

It's been getting worse every year.

And all measures that have been taken so far to try to effect a change have either failed, or been subverted into this new paradigm of dealing with the American people.

So I think We, the People need a new paradigm. 

Something that hasn't been tried before.

Mass uprisings won't work, they're more than ready for that (if they weren't, there wouldn't be APC's and such stationed in every county in this country and SWAT teams wouldn't be practicing assault tactics on animal shelters)  Hell, they want people to revolt, that's easy to deal with.  People rise up on Monday, they make a few examples on Tuesday, non-stop coverage of collateral damage on Wednesday and Thursday, splatter it all over the evening news with the right spin and Joe and Jane Q Public will be begging for a dictatorship by close of business Friday.

Peaceful protest won't work (if you think it will, just ask anyone who was part of the occupy protests, now that their movement has been marginalized and all but forgotten ).  The only reason peaceful protest worked in the 60's was that the media hadn't figured out how to turn it into a joke.  But now it's become so common that it's comical.  Honestly, does sitting on a street corner singing kumbaya until you get arrested really change anything?

Going to the ballot box won't work (if you think it will, just ask a Tea Party member, now that their newly elected representatives have proven themselves at least as corrupt and abusive as the ones that they replaced).  If you think voting works, then tell me, when was the last time you saw a third party candidate in a presidential debate?  Been a few years hasn't it?  In all but the most inconsequential elections we're essentially given two choices, both equally odorous, and then told that their behavior post election is sanctioned by the people who (for the most part) voted against what they thought to be the greater evil.

We, the People, need new ideas if we ever hope to regain control of our government. 

I wish I knew what those ideas were (though if I did I'd probably end up a statistic).

But if you're unhappy with the way things are in this country, I think that's where you should be focusing your efforts.  Coming up with new ideas.

The rest is just an excuse to get yourself killed, waste your time, or sanction another bunch of assholes and crooks do what you were hoping to put an end to in the first place.

Anyway, hope to write some more on the subject (assuming I don't end up in some dark unpleasant place with a car battery hooked up to my nipples for writing this).