In other words, the government failed to uphold its constitutional mandates. The police failed to carry out their duties as peace officers. And the citizens found themselves unable to trust either the police or the government to do its job in respecting their rights and ensuring their safety.
Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard) had been called on to work the event, and police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, police failed to do their jobs.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police "seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields" At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.
Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, Heaphy reports that the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to "let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly."
This is not much different from what is happening on the present-day national scene.
The Heaphy report focused on the events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it applies to almost every branch of government that fails to serve "we the people" when government officials and police leadership opt to advance their own agendas at the expense of constitutional rights and public safety
As the Pew Research Center revealed, public trust in the government remains near historic lows and with good reason, too.
This isn't America, land of the free, where the government is "of the people, by the people [and] for the people.
Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.
We have been saddled with the wreckage of a government at all levels that no longer represents the citizenry, serves the citizenry, or is accountable to the citizenry.
It doesn't matter whether you're talking about the federal government, state governments, or local governing bodies: at all ends of the spectrum and every point in between, a shift has taken place.
"We the people" no longer count for much of anything beyond an occasional electoral vote and as a source of income for the government's ever-burgeoning financial needs
Everything happening at the national level is playing out at the local level, as well: the violence, the militarization, the intolerance, the lopsided governance, and an uneasy awareness that the citizenry have no say in how their communities are being governed
As I have warned repeatedly, the architects of the police state have every intention of manipulating this outrage for their own purposes.
Predictably, the police state is allowing these protests, riots and looting to devolve into a situation where enough of the voting populace is so desperate for a return to law and order that they will gladly relinquish some of their freedoms to achieve it. And that's how the police state will win, no matter which candidate gets elected to the White House, and "we the people" will continue to lose.
So what's the answer.
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