The police state has arrived and Americans are mostly ambivalent.

 Article first appeared in The Rutherford Institute:

There are no longer warning signs of a steadily encroaching police state. The police state has arrived.
Americans welcomed the city-wide lockdown, the routine invasion of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses. Watching it unfold, I couldn’t help but think of Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s remarks during the Nuremberg trials. As Goering noted:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

Whatever the threat to so-called security—whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

In America after 9/11, we made a deal with the devil, or with Dick Cheney, which is much the same thing. We agreed to give up most of our enumerated rights and civil liberties (except for the sacrosanct Second Amendment, of course) in exchange for a lot of hyper-patriotic tough talk, the promise of “security” and the freedom to go on sitting on our asses and consuming whatever the hell we wanted to.

The fact is that whatever dignified private opinions you and I may hold, we did not do enough to stop it, and our constitutional rights are now deemed to be partial or provisional rather than absolute, do not necessarily apply to everyone, and can be revoked by the government at any time.

The Obama administration has been lobbying to see this exception extended to all cases involving so-called terror suspects, including American citizens. Tsarnaev’s case may prove to be the game-changer. Yet as journalist Emily Bazelon points out for Slate: “Why should I care that no one’s reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights? When the law gets bent out of shape for him, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us.”

The lesson for the rest of us is this: once a free people allows the government to make inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny. And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government.

Clearly, the outlook for civil liberties under Obama grows bleaker by the day, from his embrace of indefinite detention for U.S. citizens and drone kill lists to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistleblowers.

The American people remain largely oblivious to the looming threats to their freedoms, eager to be persuaded that the government can solve the problems that plague us—whether it be terrorism, an economic depression, an environmental disaster or even a flu epidemic. Yet having bought into the false notion that the government can ensure not only our safety but our happiness and will take care of us from cradle to grave—that is, from daycare centers to nursing homes, we have in actuality allowed ourselves to be bridled and turned into slaves at the bidding of a government that cares little for our freedoms or our happiness.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/boston_strong_marching_in_lockstep_with_the_police_state

Police use of armored personnel carriers should concern every American:

Thanks to billions of dollars of funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), state and local law enforcement nationwide now have their own mighty military trucks. 

Bear Cats, made by Massachusetts based Lenco Industries, were out in full force on the streets of Watertown during the chase to find the remaining suspect, 19 year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 

It isn't clear whether any of those Bear Cats did anything useful during that search, other than ride around the streets of Watertown carrying heavily armed men as they searched house to house. I haven't seen reports suggesting that the Bear Cats performed any feats that any substantially cheaper (and less martial) police vans couldn't have managed.  

Bear Cats would certainly be useful if police were battling grenade launchers and machine gun fire. 

But does every SWAT team in Massachusetts need one? Is this kind of urban warfare a likely scenario on our civilian streets and in our neighborhoods? And were the Bear Cats at all useful the other day in Watertown?

As a matter of fact, the officers being driven around in those enormous armored trucks did not find the young Tsarnaev during their house to house searches. He was instead located when the government finally called off the "shelter in place request" and a man went outside to smoke a cigarette. The man noticed his boat's tarp was askew, and checked it out. He found the young man inside, reportedly barely conscious. 

Lenco Industries, apparently unconcerned about being accused of crassly exploiting Boston's tragedy for considerable financial gain, has prepared a solemnvideo set to cheesy piano music to advertise its product using the Watertown hunt as a real life backdrop.

Take a look and see what our police forces have become. And keep in mind as you do that those trucks cost about a quarter of a million dollars a pop.
http://privacysos.org/node/1044