Is America A Police State?

Contributed by Sherwood Ross

You know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, “Are you okay?” and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.

You know you live in a police state when said prisoner is barred from exercising in his cell and told where he may and may not put his hands when he goes to sleep at night. Only a police state would dictate 
how an individual can sleep.


You know you live in a police state when the government punishes,
rather than honors, whistle-blowers who reveal its crimes such as the
U.S. massacre of civilians in Baghdad that PFC Bradley Manning
exposed.

You know you live in a police state when wardens force pregnant women
prisoners to deliver their babies while in chains. (Not exactly “the
new birth of freedom” of which Abraham Lincoln spoke.)

You know you live in a police state when the president orders the
assassination (i.e., murder) of American citizens without bothering to
arrest them and bring them to trial.

You know you live in a police state when police forces across the
country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper
spray and clubs.

You know you live in a police state when hundreds of thousands of
citizens are rotting in prisons for victimless “crimes” such as
smoking pot and your country leads the world in incarcerations with
2.3 million behind bars and when hundreds of thousands of these
prisoners are sexually assaulted.

You know you live in a police state when working people who say
overwhelmingly that they want to join a union cannot do so for fear of
being fired, and in which the money earned by the poor is taken by the
state and given to the rich. If the government can rob one person, it
can rob every person.

You know you live in a police state when your government makes
terrible, punishing wars on small countries after falsely accusing
them of having a “weapon of mass destruction” while it possesses tens
of thousands of them.

You know you live in a police state when the president signs into law
an Act allowing him to arrest innocent citizens on his say-so and have
the military imprison them indefinitely without charge,  legal
counsel, or trial before a jury of their peers.

You know you live in a police state when you can be barred from flying
in an airliner on suspicion of “terrorism” that has not been proven
and which is impossible for you to challenge.

You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by
Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and
the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political
views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and
when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements,
and “private” papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbors and
employer and follow you around.

You know you live in a police state when the military gets the biggest
percentage of your tax dollars so that it can spend as much for war as
the next 20 nations combined while claiming it is attacking other
countries in the name of peace and order.

You know you live in a police state when the Pentagon has more than a
trillion dollars in research projects underway to make sophisticated
killing machines that will give it control of the entire planet from
2,000 military bases and outer space and to terrify the world with its
arsenals of nuclear weapons and germ warfare.

You know you live in a police state when people write to you to
commend you for your “courage” for writing critically against the
government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in
fear of so doing.
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(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant for “good
causes” who formerly wrote for major dailies and wire services. To
contribute to his Anti-War News Service or comment write him at
sherwoodross10@gmail.com)