Why do we have more than a million cops who have been fitted out in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon "every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making?
I'll tell you why.
It's the same reason why the Trump Administration has made a concerted effort to expand the police state's power to search, strip, seize, raid, steal from, arrest and jail Americans for any infraction, no matter how insignificant.
This is no longer a government "of the people, by the people, for the people."
It is fast becoming a government "of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations," and its rise to power is predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a life of indentured servitude.
Cops in America may get paid by the citizenry, but they don't work for us.
They don't answer to us. They're not loyal to us.
And they certainly aren't operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution.
That "thin, blue line" of loyalty to one's fellow cops has become a self-serving apparatus that sees nothing wrong with advancing the notion that the lives--and rights--of police should be valued more than citizens.
The myth of the hero cop really is a myth.
Cops are no more noble, no more self-sacrificing, no braver and certainly no more deserving of special attention or treatment than any other American citizen.
This misplaced patriotism about police and, by extension, the military--a dangerous re-shifting of the nation's priorities that has been reinforced by President Trump with his unnerving knack for echoing past authoritarian tactics--paves the way for even more instability in the nation.
Welcome to the American police state, funded by Corporate America, policed by the military industrial complex, and empowered by politicians whose primary purpose is to remain in office.
It's a short hop, skip and a jump from the police state we're operating under right now to a full-blown totalitarian regime ruled with the iron fist of martial law.
The groundwork has already been laid.
The events of recent years have only served to desensitize the nation to violence, acclimate them to a militarized police presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.
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