The police began militarizing their forces as laws were gradually changed as a reaction to the domestic Civil Rights and anti-war street actions of the 1960’s. In the summer of 1967, over 100 American cities were on fire. It started there and since then any excuse to up the arms race against the citizenry has been used. The unconstitutional no-knock law was a direct reaction to the Black Panthers supposed serious attempt at revolution as portrayed by J. Edgar Hoover, and echoed by the media. This method of baiting the citizen with his own irrational fears has been effective since ancient Egypt and it still works today.
National Guard were used to quell “violence caused by demonstrators” in the early ‘60s and throughout that decade and the next against anti-war demonstrations. In California, Reagan used them liberally, probably the only thing he ever did, liberally. Before the 1960’s, using the Guard against it’s own people was extremely rare. Using any kind of military against the citizenry was popularly taboo after the 1932 Bonus March fiasco, but that all changed in the 1960’s. Then there was Kent State. Other than students themselves, hardly a murmur came from the public, cloistered in their homes behind their TV screens, reading Newsweek’s parasympathetic and inaccurate description of events. Times had changed radically.
The nature of government is to accrue more power, and it will do so, even in a democracy, if unhindered by the people. Non-resistance is interpreted as permission. There is no conspiracy theory required. It is the natural instinct of all governments. If the people are not vigilant, it will happen, and it has. I think our founding fathers had a lot to say about this, but we don’t listen anymore.
In the late ‘60s, we began seeing for the first time search and destroy squads on the local police forces known as SWAT teams. They even made a TV show about the lives and loves of a SWAT Team in order to sell the idea to an initially resistant public. The message was that SWAT Teams are human, too, just like you and I, not special forces commandos the likes of which that have never been seen on American soil against Americans.. The public bought it and shows of this ilk have been popular ever since—as have SWAT Teams—long after the original threats had passed. Nowadays, most often than not, news accounts of SWAT missions involve the murder of a single male with a gun and a vague notion of suicide who refuses to answer his own door. Deemed dangerous, he is given a chance to surrender, and when he rightly refuses, he is often destroyed and the building with him. Suicide by cop.
Resistance to this militarization died away with the end of the war, concessions to Civil Rights, and when the youth who took part in them got down to the business of careers and raising families. And it continued unhindered. A couple of years ago, a hicksville backwater like Pasco County, Florida bragged loudly that their Sherriff’s department had recently received their first two unmanned drones, but complained equally as loud that it didn’t have the budget to hire the operators. Drones. Grounded like a third world air force.
I remember reckless, even panicky, notices on convenience store entrances in Miami in 1980–81 when the Metro-Dade Police were on a slow-down strike during and after the Mariel Boat Lift and rather ragtag Haitian refugee incursion to the effect: “If you are a Vietnam War Veteran, the Metro-Dade Police Force needs you NOW.” The diaspora of a certain type of Cuban, over 80,000 of them into the city and environs, and another 60,000 starving, naked Haitian refugees impudently landing on sparkling South Beach, sent the city into panic and the LEOs got the budget they needed to get more choppers and field combat weaponry. Times change, as has justification for militarization of the police.
And now we have a whole generation of children who have come of age under the Patriot Act. A whole generation which is inured to the fact that, upon the opinion of a mere mid-level desk jockey, they can be jailed indefinitely on ICE without charges not informed of their whereabouts, without a defense lawyer, and even relocated abroad and tortured. It will never happen to the good guys, of course. But whether or not you are a good guy is determined by the government, not you. This can be a problem, but these kids don’t see it.
Things were coming along fine since the 1960’s, the government was able to overreach constitutionally at will and continues to do so. There was no reason for a false flag op on 911. It helped move things along nicely, but civil rights were going that way anyway. No reason to blow the hell out of the Twin Towers.
And now with the advent of social networking like Facebook and Twitter, hell, the NSA could probably retire half their domestic surveillance staff, the way people give every detail of their private lives away.
The truth of how this evolved and continues to do so under the naivete and stupidity of the average citizen, is much more disastrous to our freedoms than any conspiracy theory. These conspiracy theories are mere half truths and sideshows that are detracting people away from the real problem, which is the constant active erosion of our civil rights through mandate and the courts, as in cases such as Citizens United v. FEC..
@Dan_Lyons I have a conspiracy for you: What if there is a team of very creative NSA trolls whose job it is to create and virally disseminate thousands of conspiracy theories onto the net to further fracture the American public in order to hinder any real unity among the citizens, any consolidation of popular resistance to the civil rights abuses the government is allowing.to be perpetrated? Even create confusion as to who he real boogeyman is: Is it runaway government that is causing all our problems? Or is it their corporate masters?
What if, along with an apathetic public—who uses their free hours absorbed by their favorite TV shows—this cadre of government trolls strategically plants stories to sidetrack into thousands of directions those members of the citizenry who are more apt toward political—and thereby paralyze them in confusion and infighting? That sounds more believable, would be easy to do, and would also explain a lot.
So, if it were true that NSA trolls were pouring these theories blatantly onto the net on sites such as InfoWars, and more subtly into the comments sections of legitimate news sites and on threads in social sites like Answerbag, YahooAnswers, SodaHead, Fluther, etc., etc.—even Quora—in order to divide and confuse, it would mean that the dupes who buy into these theories are part of the problem, unknowing active members in the conspiracy., working against the very problems they wish to solve.. Even more sinister is that they are further perpetrating the confusion by spreading it as fact.
Inevitably, the people who buy into these theories realize that there will never be cohesion, that fractured America doesn’t care or is too confused to identify the true boogieman, and these potentially politically active radicals are neutralized into their own state of apathy. They realize that, without the unity of purpose and focus found in organized anti-government policy groups of the past, they can do nothing. Nothing can be done without unity.
It’s just a theory, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the more believable ones.
Anyway, there’s no conspiracy. Hell, it would be nice if we could blame this on someone or something else, Nope. The sad, ugly truth is that our government, pressured by insatiable corporate power, is incrementally accruing more power at our expense. And we stand by apathetically and let it happen because, we think, we have better things to do.
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