The Poet's Eye
commentary by Lightning Rod
The Poets' Eye is skeptical without being cynical, innocent without being naive and critical without being judgemental.
Police State
(02-29-04)
The United States is a police state but it is not an evil place. The people are generally kind, generous and well-meaning. But these things don’t amend the fact that we are a police state.
police state-n.-- A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force
Throughout history power elites have developed and they have always devised mean by which the powerful few could exert domion over the mass of the people. Feudalism comes to mind. Capitalism and Communism are equally good examples. Mercantile Imperialism, Fascism, Nazism etc. All the ‘isms.’
Anyone that doubts that Amerika has secret police doesn’t understand the concept. First of all, any cop that’s not in a uniform is a secret policeman. When they can eavesdrop on your communications and search your house without a warrant, that’s secret police. When they can hold prisoners incommunicado and without counsel, that’s a police state. When the authorities can explore your data and keep dossiers on you, it’s a police state.
When the media is centralized and monolithic as it is becoming more and more, that is another characteristic of the police state—control over social and political life.
But Amerika is a nice police state. We have football and video games and for the most part the planes run on time. It’s an orderly society, and it’s going to get even more orderly.
It is the style of capitalist societies to use economic means as well as secret police in order to enforce rule and keep the masses in submission. It’s harder to rebel when you are trying to pay the bills. You don’t step out of line as often if you are worried about your job or your insurance or the cost of gasoline.
The object of any police state is to maintain power. In this society money is power. The Iraqi incursion is an example of how the oligarchs can use media power to sell the public on a war that was fought not for the reasons presented, but purely for economic gain.
When I hear our joke of a president pontificate about how the evil terrorists ‘hate freedom’ I have to laugh. They love freedom, that’s why they are terrorists. Because their culture, their resources and their freedom are being threatened by the worldwide police state that the corporate powers behind the US government are trying to enforce.
The Poet’s Eye sees that populations have traditionally angrily thrown off the yoke of police state oppression. And when they do it they are invariably called terrorists.
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