Why we're existing in a police state.

The recent assault, torture and arrest of University of Florida student Andrew Myer by campus cops is but the latest example of what has become an increasingly frequent phenomenon in the United States of America.

When ass-kissing chickenshit David Petraeus lied his ass off before Congress about the failed "surge", capitol hill police tackled and arrested a pentecostal minister, damaging his ankle in the process. His "crime"? Trying to get in to watch and listen to the hearings.

As reported in the Nation magazine, sixty-year old Carol Trainer -- a Vietnam veteran -- was arrested and hauled away as the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky sat and glared at her.

Last November, a student at UCLA was assaulted, tasered and arrested by campus cops, for failing to show his identification. A blogger who wrote about this abuse of power also pointed out how, in Houston, Texas that same month, a bunch of striking union workers were trampled by police on horseback, arrested, and subjected to what amounts to torture.

As writer Naomi Wolf writes,

once society has been acculturated to that use of force, the 'blurring of the line' begins and the parameters of criminalized speech are extended -- the definition of 'terrorist' expanded -- and the use of force begins to be deployed in HIGHLY VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY SHOCKING WAYS against people that others see and identify with as ordinary citizens. The first 'torture cellars' used by the SA, in Germany between 1931 and 1933 -- even before the National Socialists gained control of the state, during the years when Germany was still a parliamentary democracy -- were informal and widely publicized in the mainstream media. Few German citizens objected because those abused there were seen as 'other' -- even though the abuse was technically illegal. But then, after this escalation of the use of force was accepted by the population, students, journalists, opposition leaders, and clergy were similarly abused during their own arrests. Within six months dissent was stilled in Germany.

If you think America isn't undergoing the same slide into fascist dictatorship today as Germany did in the 1930s, you're kidding yourself. Each of the six examples of police brutality I cited, all of them against nonviolent students and protesters, has taken place within a roughly ten-month period. But where is the outrage in the mainstream media? Why aren't the steps of the Capitol Building and the gates of the White House being flooded with protesters demanding accountability for abuses of executive power that has so permeated society that it infects our local police departments?

And therein lies one reason why this is happening. Although there has been some dissent, some outrage, it has been largely confined to the blogosphere and political discussion forums. People dare not stand up publicly against these police state tactics to silence dissent. They dare not risk being beaten down. Another reason, pointed out by the Rude Pundit, is that there are those in American society who not only actually approve of this shit, but go so far as to cheer it on! "Yeah!" they think. "Show them what they get for stepping out of line!"

Those two reasons, more than the brutal assaults on people and the First Amendment, are why America is devolving into a bad replay of Nazi Germany. The lack of national outrage, to the point we do something about it; and the support of it by mindless groupthinkers in society who are so stupid they think it's a good thing that we're being subjected to tyranny.

God help us all.