How can you tell that you’re living in a police state? What criteria would you apply to make that determination?
Is it when your government starts scanning your electronic communications for keywords and tracking who you’re calling on your phone?
You seem surprisingly OK with that, America.
How do you feel about your government barring entry to artists, or journalists?
Last year, nine foreign journalists trying to get into the US were “repeatedly questioned, fingerprinted, searched, handcuffed, and held overnight in cells.” Then they were sent home. All because they wanted to cover a video game conference. (Society of Professional Journalists)
Recently, the guitarist of a silly glam rock group from France called Fancy was denied a work visa for a concert tour in the US because his name, Mohammed Yamani, was kinda like that of Abou Mohammed Al Yamani, a former Bin Laden minion. Former, as in he’s dead. (thanks to Vincent for this tidbit)
Also not long ago, they turned Sebastian Horley away. His crime was writing a naughty biography called Dandy in the Underworld in which he talks about his wild party days. Sex. Drugs. The usual. After grilling him for eight hours at the border, US Customs decided not to let him in the country to attend a book signing for reasons of “moral turpitude.” (via BoingBoing)
Moral turpitude? What do they think we are, infants? How many Americans my age didn’t gobble up Bukowski’s dissolute genius and wash it down with Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as teenagers? To name just a couple. A lot of us did a bit of merry prankstering ourselves and are probably the better for it.
Maybe the question I ask should be “When do you start to care that you’re living in a police state?”
Police state ?
From superfrenchie :
2.3 million people are now incarcerated in America, and according to a new study by the Pew Center on the States, the population behind bars has grown by 25,000 in 2007 alone.
That is the largest penal population of any nation both in absolute numbers and in incarceration rate per capita. By comparison, China, with a population of one billion people, was second in the world with 1.5 million inmates, followed by Russia with 890,000 people in the slammer.
“We have the highest incarceration rate of every country in the world, including backward and despotic countries like Cuba,” said Del. Curtis Anderson, a Baltimore Democrat who has sponsored several bills that would lower maximum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.
The U.S. has 756 inmates per 100,000 residents. Worse, among adults, more than 1 in 100 is locked up. Among people in their 20s, it’s one in 53.
The U.S. rate of incarceration per 100,000 residents is 9 times the rate of France (85 per 100,000, or 1 in 1,176), 5 times the rate of England (148), and 12 times the rate of Japan (62).
In spite of the rising prison population, the national recidivism rate has virtually stood still. Tough policies, such as “three strikes” laws boosting prison time for repeat offenders, have mainly fueled the rise in the penal population, rather than an explosion in crime or overall population, the Pew study said.
Note to Celestine Bohlen: blacks may have an easier time getting elected mayors in the U.S. than in France, but first, they have to manage staying free: one in 15 African-Americans is behind bars. For young black men, it’s one in 9.
And all of this does not come cheap: at around $24,000 per person per year, the U.S. spends about $44 billion a year on its prison and jail system.
The numbers speak for themselves but it is worth mentioning that when Americans mock Western Europeans for their high rate of unemployment, those figures are not taken into consideration. Depending on the study, if the U.S. had the same rate of incarceration as France, it would have close to 2% additional unemployment. When you add the fact that long-term unemployment is not counted in official U.S. figures, those jobless rates are much closer than they appear to be.
Sknob, thanks for the info. Another symptom of the police state of affairs in the US.
Over 900,000 people are on US terrorist watchlist. Check it out: http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html
I wonder if big-mouthed bloggers are making the list yet.
I also wonder if Americans are wondering when the US government is going to start hassling and censoring their own journalists and artists…
Sorry for the spamming.
I have no hard evidence, but my gut tells me that most Americans know on some level, and either actively or passively, proudly ou shamefully consent. They’d rather err on the side of fascism-lite® and feel safer, than on the side of principles (the constitution) and feel more vulnerable.
I have no doubt that you’re right.
“actively or passively, proudly or shamefully” –beautifully stated.
If I were an American, I’d be frightened.
Really frightened.
Even more disconcerting than frightened: confused and basically not knowing how to handle these far reaching attacks on my constitutional rights.
Let’s face it: even if a Democrat makes it this year, will this ongoing “state of war” by the US against its own citizens subside?
Why should it? Obama may have radically different ideas about the invasion of Irak or social rights,
but will that stop the erosion of the US constitution?
I doubt it.
Hi Peter.
Well, I’m sure the 20% of Americans who are actually aware of what is going on are frightened. I am convinced that the remaining 80% couldn’t tell you what habeas corpus is. Or they don’t care.
I think either of the Dems would undo the changes and set up safeguards so that other ideologues couldn’t walk in and inflict their personal obsessions on America and the world. If Congress would let them, that is. There’s no guarantee the Republican (and spineless Democrat) Congress won’t just tie the hands of any Dem president.
Unfortunately, there’s also no guarantee we’ll get a Dem, as I said in a comment on your blog one day. There was a poll the other day that said that McCain has the highest popularity rating of all the candidates at 67%. Obama’s at 62 and Hillary’s at 53 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/105073/McCains-67-Favorable-Rating-Highest-Eight-Years.aspx). This is despite his belligerence and ignorance. Or probably, if I put my realist hat on, because of it. Unbelievable.
So, like you, I have little hope for America’s redemption.