It's a train wreck just waiting to happen.
In fact, we're already seeing this play out across the country. For instance, police carried out a welfare check on a 12-year-old Colorado boy, who was then suspended for flashing a toy gun across his computer screen during an online art class.
An 11-year-old Maryland boy had police descend on his home in search of weapons after school officials spied a BB gun on the boy's bedroom wall during a Google Meet class on his laptop.
And in New York and Massachusetts, growing numbers of parents are being visited by social services after being reported to the state child neglect and abuse hotline, all because their kids failed to sign in for some of their online classes.
You see what this is, don't you?
This is how a seemingly well-meaning program (virtual classrooms) becomes another means by which the government can intrude into our private lives, further normalizing the idea of constant surveillance and desensitizing us to the dangers of an existence in which we are never safe from the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother.
This is how the police sidestep the Fourth Amendment's requirement for probable cause and a court-issued warrant in order to spy us on in the privacy of our homes: by putting school officials in a position to serve as spies and snitches via online portals and virtual classrooms, and by establishing open virtual doorways into our homes through which the police can enter uninvited and poke around.
It's only a matter of time before the self-righteous Nanny State uses this COVID-19 pandemic as yet another means by which it can dictate every aspect of our lives.
At the moment, it's America's young people who are the guinea pigs for the police state's experiment in virtual authoritarianism. Already, school administrators are wrestling with how to handle student discipline for in-person classes and online learning in the midst of COVID-19.
Mark my words, this will take school zero tolerance policiesand their associated harsh disciplinary penalties to a whole new level once you have teachers empowered to act as the Thought Police.
If you think the schools won't overreact in a virtual forum, you should think again.
These are the same schools that have been plagued by a lack of common sense when it comes to enforcing zero tolerance policies for weapons, violence and drugs.
For instance, several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of "cops and robbers" during recess and using their fingers as guns. Students have also been penalized for such inane "crimes" as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades. A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.
These police state tactics did not made the schools any safer.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, police state tactics never make anyone safer so much as they present the illusion of safety and indoctrinate the populace to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government's dictates.
Now with virtual learning in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, the stakes are even higher.
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