Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:44 pm
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
From the tortuous Republican presidential primary to the brutally vicious general election campaign, many political writers and Americans cognizant of world history remarked often that there were glaring similarities between Donald Trump’s rhetoric and Nazi Germany. The end of the campaign and disastrous election results did little to put an end to the alarming resemblance of Trump supporters to rabid Nazism. Of course, there is the raging Trump propaganda campaign that even Hitler’s Herman Goebbels would envy, and the rise of anti-Semitism certainly follows Nazi dogma, but there was yet no real and present danger of a Gestapo-like police force although there have been calls to put one in place.
Now, the largest police union in the nation is joining the calls for Donald Trump to pay dividends for their unwavering support. But they don’t want his money, just authority to begin what will end up being a police state that Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler would be proud of. Oh, it is true the Fraternal Order of Police did not verbally call on Trump to create a police state for their enjoyment, but they did call for, and expect, Trump to “militarize” police and make racial profiling a national policy. It is noteworthy, too, that the police union’s “expectation” is that Trump will fulfill his campaign promises and have a militarized police force with unchecked authority within the new administration’s first 100 days. Seriously, these maniacs are not joking; they expect Trump to deliver their dream of a police state right away because that is precisely what he promised for a year and exactly why the union endorsed his candidacy.
Since the union, all 330,000 of America’s fine and noble “public servants” endorsed despicable Don for president, they laid out “their” demands and expectations in a document titled, “THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: The First 100 Days.”
As Matt Agorist with the Free Thought Project rightly noted, the police set an agenda that is a clear prediction of [Trump’s] executive “action to reinstate so many of the tyrannical practices overturned by the last two administrations.” Yes, it is true; even the George W. Bush administration banned atrocious racial profiling and America’s “public servants” are still furious that a Republican president dared adhere to that one part of the United States Constitution that protects Americans from law enforcement abuse in the form of profiling.
The union made up a little list for the Trump in case he forgot what he promised them over the past year. First and foremost they demand that he honors his oft-stated campaign pledge to immediately “rescind Executive Order 13688 which imposed limits on State and local law enforcement equipment programs throughout the Federal government.” What that really means is that the sworn law enforcement officers who pledge to “protect and serve” demand that they get back each and every one of their “grenade launchers, .50 caliber firearms, Bayonets, tracked armored vehicles, mine-resistant vehicles, amphibious assault vehicles, Apache attack helicopters, and any other battlefield equipment” that all local police departments require in conducting day-to-day operations.
But that immediate militarization of the nation’s police departments was just a start in the FOP’s demands. Let’s face it, there is hardly much use for a militarized police force if law enforcement officers are issuing traffic citations and directing traffic. Militarized cops need an obvious enemy to wage war against and without the authority to target large segments of the population with all that military gear, they are just police officers protecting and serving the community.
One of the most anticipated acts by their hero Trump in his first 100 days is “Reverse or amend the broad, Bush-era ban on racial profiling.” Although Bush Jr. presented many issues for decent Americans to despise, he was responsible for banning, for the first time in American history, 70 law enforcement agencies in the United States from using any American’s “racial makeup in decisions on law enforcement.” It appears that some of those 70 law enforcement agencies are still angry that Bush had the temerity to support the Constitution’s due process protections, and it is likely why they wholeheartedly endorsed and embraced an authoritarian tyrant who has little use for the Constitution.
Apparently, like their hero Trump, the police union has little regard for the Constitution they swear to uphold. They forget how laws are enacted and set out some new laws and penalties for Trump to enact regarding immigration enforcement. They expect Trump to impose mandatory 2-, and 5-year minimum sentences for illegally re-entering the United States after a previous deportation, and to unilaterally reform visa rules to enhance penalties for any “foreigner” who dared overstay; Trump’s old lady is safe (now) because she eventually became naturalized and in spite of her foreign accent, she is a really, really rich white woman.
Curiously, the police union also demanded that Trump better “reverse the position of the Federal government on the use of private prisons.” The police union must have investments in the corporate, for-profit prison industry because they are livid that the Obama Justice Department “announced in August it will no longer use private prisons to incarcerate federal prisoners.” Since the announcement, the for-profit private prison industry’s stocks plummeted because the government was not funneling any more taxpayer money to the corporate prisons; because “they are both less safe and less effective.” The day after the election, corporate prison stocks shot up with celebration Trump would put them back in the black and in receipt of taxpayer largesse.
In announcing the government’s position, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said,
“They [corporate prisons] simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”
What this list of demands and expectations really reveals is that the police union is uninterested in “protecting and serving” Americans. Instead, they appear Hell-bent and duty-bound to play army against American citizens that don’t quite fit the “alt-right’s” definition of really American; white, Christian and horrifically ignorant of the Constitution.
If any American believes for a second that an emboldened and empowered militarized police force will be satisfied with legalized “racial” profiling, they are insane and stupid. Remember, the Nazi Gestapo didn’t originally target any and all dissent against Hitler, but once they were granted unlimited authority from their hero, no German was safe and it will be no different in 2017 America. It may not be called Gestapo, or Stasi, or KGB, but an American militarized police force acting on Trump’s predilection to tyranny and bigotry will rapidly transform America into exactly Trump and his alt-right supporters dream about; America as a police state.
h/t MattAgorist
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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