Third, there's the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security made up of more than 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, and supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military.
A national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies, the DHS--aptly described as a "wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast"--has been ruthlessly efficient when it comes to establishing what the Founders feared most: a standing army on American soil.
Finally, there's this whole question of martial law.
Technically, a good case can be made that the Constitution-free border regions within the United States are already under martial law carried out by a standing army comprised of militarized police and the U.S. military.
Then again, for all intents and perhaps, the American police state is already governed by martial law, is it not? Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government's purpose.
This is what martial law looks like, when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it. This is martial law packaged as law and order and sold to the public as necessary for keeping the peace.
It doesn't matter whether the so-called threats to national security posed by terrorists, extremists or immigrant armies ever became a reality. Once the government acquires--and uses--additional powers, it does not voluntarily relinquish them.
The damage has been done.
Face it: we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
We've been heading in this direction for some time now, but this downward trajectory has picked up speed since Donald Trump became president.
All of the government's ongoing assaults on the constitutional framework of the nation have been sold to the public as necessary for national security.
Remember when George W. Bush claimed the country was being invaded by terrorists post-9/11 and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the government and its gun-toting agents greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest?
The terrorist invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired police powers made possible by the USA Patriot Act.
Remember when Barack Obama claimed the country was being invaded by domestic terrorists and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial?
The invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired detention powers made possible by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Now you have Donald Trump claiming the country is being invaded by immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe is to empower the military to "assist" with border control.
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