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In reply to the discussion: If you don't think we're already living in a police state, consider this. [View all]Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)54. When younger, I would NEVER have believed the USA could EVER sink to 46th in press freedom
The United States plunged 14 places in the annual Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday. The group said it was "one of the most significant declines" in press freedom it had tracked during 2013.
The US in now ranked 46th on the RWB list, in between Romania and Haiti. It was ranked 32nd in the 2013 index. (Finland tops the entire list.)
The press freedom group was blunt in its explanation. It cited increased efforts to track down whistleblowers and the sources of leaks, mentioning Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in particular. It also condemned the Justice Department's surveillance of reporters, and the continued leak battle facing New York Times journalist James Risen. . . .
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024487392
As Naomi Wolf notes:
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.
Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
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If you don't think we're already living in a police state, consider this. [View all]
99th_Monkey
Feb 2015
OP
14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism (http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm)
blkmusclmachine
Feb 2015
#1
It is 14 out of 14, the first step is to define realized what religion is being intertwined
happyslug
Feb 2015
#160
But to this degree and such highly sophisticated organization against democracy for ALL?
lexington filly
Feb 2015
#79
At some point, the pendulum will begin to swing away from this practice toward equality for all.
Dont call me Shirley
Feb 2015
#3
I consider it the most sane of woowoo notion that at some point a critical mass of sanity triggers
Dont call me Shirley
Feb 2015
#13
i hope that eventually a switch will be thrown in the unconscious mind of everyone.
TimeToEvolve
Feb 2015
#60
Yes and I have been in the blackness of eternal night, and I made it through.
Dont call me Shirley
Feb 2015
#24
The phrase actually comes from Hermeticism - A swing to the right is a swing to the left
Hestia
Feb 2015
#138
Interesting, but the pendulum I referred to is meant to cut victims in half
HereSince1628
Feb 2015
#162
Yup! When I saw the beatdown of Occupy and the neo-military response to Furgoson
OffWithTheirHeads
Feb 2015
#14
Brightened my day! We still got Obama, the White House, all the good States, and all the good ideas.
Fred Sanders
Feb 2015
#30
oh pleeeez...you insult people being persecuted around the world by using this term for the USA.
uhnope
Feb 2015
#26
When younger, I would NEVER have believed the USA could EVER sink to 46th in press freedom
Faryn Balyncd
Feb 2015
#54
+10000 And..The United States has the largest prison population in the world,
woo me with science
Feb 2015
#100
"I mean some people who claim to be poor even have microwave ovens and TVs..." Fox News
whereisjustice
Feb 2015
#112
We lost this game a long time ago. The two minute warning was when we let the Supreme Court
world wide wally
Feb 2015
#40
I think your first paragraph could use more detail because as I read about the last 40 years being
Bluenorthwest
Feb 2015
#46
yes. The INCREASE in freedoms in the USA in last 40 years doesn't fit into the narrative
uhnope
Feb 2015
#52
I see. So there's a plan by the "The Oligarchs" to fool us by giving us some freedom
uhnope
Feb 2015
#59
You demean the years of struggle against your straight culture that produced the progress in
Bluenorthwest
Feb 2015
#91
I think the fact that you feel you can characterize me with impunity suggests a lack of equity in
Bluenorthwest
Feb 2015
#141
What specifically leads you to believe that gay rights was a "carrot" developed by oligarchs?
LanternWaste
Feb 2015
#144
and how does this supposed Police State USA compare to actual police states in...
uhnope
Feb 2015
#55
Asking questions in lieu of presenting an actual counter argument seems to indicate
rhett o rick
Feb 2015
#145
police reform is of the utmost importance IMO but reform is stalled by yahoos yelling "police state"
uhnope
Feb 2015
#147
OK, you may be conflating a number of issues, hyperbalizing things and calling up a mythical past.
pinto
Feb 2015
#68
The answer is two fold. "Can it be a true police state whil citizenry are armed?"
rhett o rick
Feb 2015
#146
Excellent post, the rich are funding a police state to stifle dissent as they steal
whereisjustice
Feb 2015
#115
The fact this post stays up, and DU actually exists, speaks against the idea of a police state.
Drunken Irishman
Feb 2015
#118
Armed officers appearing at people's residences over building code enforcement
aint_no_life_nowhere
Feb 2015
#119
A slowly boiled frog doesn't get it until he's dead, at which point, he's oblivious.
merrily
Feb 2015
#142
You might want to re-think your "investigative journalists" with the benefit of hindsight
Blue_Tires
Jan 2018
#169