“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”—George Orwell
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates.
1) The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”
2) Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.
3) Republicans and Democrats are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.
4) Presidential elections are not exercises in self-government. They are merely business forums for selecting the next CEO of the United States of America, Inc.
5) No matter which candidate wins this election, the police state will continue to grow. In other words, it will win and “we the people” will lose.
8) Americans only think they’re choosing the next president. In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting.
9) The US government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
10) The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance.
11) Fear, which now permeates the populace, leads to fascism.
12) If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
13) America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats who operate beyond the reach of the Constitution—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.
14) The government does whatever it wants.
15) You no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state.
16) Whether instigated by the government or the citizenry, violence will only lead to more violence. Anyone who believes that they can wage—and win—an armed revolt against the American police state is playing right into the government’s hands.
17) “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law.
18) Government eyes are watching you. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
20) If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.
21) From the moment they are born to the time they legally come of age, young people are now wards of the state.
22) Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police.
23) Government bureaucrats believe they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
24) Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
25) Finally, we all bleed red. And we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card. Remember, in a police state, you’re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.
These are not problems that can be glibly dismissed with a few well-chosen words, as most politicians are inclined to do. Nor will the 2016 elections do much to alter our present course towards a police state.
Indeed, the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House will not significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. Those life-changing decisions are made elsewhere, by nameless, unelected government officials who have turned bureaucracy into a full-time and profitable business.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization
