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September 20, 2023

With the unconscionable persecution of the January 6th protesters, the unabashed government censorship of speech, the weaponization of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the egregious abuse of presidential executive orders and emergency declarations, the American police state is no longer a hypothetical possibility but an increasingly indisputable reality.

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While imperceptibly evolving over many decades, the emergence of the American police state was significantly accelerated with the overreaction to the September 11, 2001 terror attack. Even more important was the Covid 19 pandemic that dramatically increased the momentum toward a police state as once a people are terrorized it is easy to impose a police state on them.

When societies lose their freedom, it is not ordinarily because autocrats or tyrants have forcibly taken it away.  It is usually the result of the population willingly surrendering their freedom in return for protection against an external threat.  While the threat is oftentimes real it is invariably exaggerated.  

In both 911 and Covid-19, the general public was stampeded into demanding action from their elected leaders.  The politicians responded and did not pause to ask whether the actions undertaken would work; just do something was the mantra.  They were unconcerned about the unintended consequences or the financial and societal cost to the nation. 

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Any student of history and human nature would recognize that these are the classic symptoms of collective hysteria.  Hysteria is contagious.  This nation turned itself inside out as the media and unscrupulous politicians grossly exaggerated these threats and did not stop to ask if the cure would be worse than the disease.

In times like those, it was to be expected that the citizenry would look to the government for guidance and assistance.  When that happens in an environment of mass hysteria, then it is unsurprising that the state will take on or assume new power as that is what has been demanded of it.  This historically has been the process which led to the rise of authoritarianism and police states.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the reality of international terrorism was fresh in the minds of the American people, The Patriot Act was passed.  An irrational fear had taken over the citizenry that the government used to justify the most sweeping forms of domestic surveillance in the history of the Republic.  The law granted virtually unchecked power to domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  Powers which were quickly turned against the American people who did not genuflect to the political establishment.     

However, it was the exploitation of Covid-19 that dramatically accelerated the formation of a potential all-encompassing police state as it handed the government an unprecedented weapon to manipulate the American people: the declaration of a national health emergency.

The American political class, utilizing the most draconian of tactics, plunged this nation into economic and societal chaos, claiming they had to do so in order to stem the tide of the “life threatening” Chinese Coronavirus.  Grossly error-prone projections and the choreographed shutdowns and mandates in Communist China were trumpeted by politicians and the media as fear and anxiety gripped the country.

Declaring a national emergency, shutting down a nation, and curtailing freedoms in order to combat a virus with an infection fatality rate essentially equivalent to the annual flu for people under 70 would have been unthinkable at any other time in human history but the politicians and bureaucrats began clamoring for a national shutdown by pointing to the spurious success of China’s lockdown policies.