The Game Is Rigged: Why Americans Keep Losing To The Police State

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The Game Is Rigged: Why Americans Keep Losing To The Police State (The Rutherford Institute, Dec 9, 2014):

“The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.”
– Leo Tolstoy

My 7-year-old granddaughter has suddenly developed a keen interest in card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Blackjack, and War. We’ve fallen into a set pattern now: every time we play, she deals the cards, and I pretend not to see her stacking the deck in her favor. And of course, I always lose.

I don’t mind losing to my granddaughter at Old Maid, knowing full well the game is rigged. For now, it’s fun and games, and she’s winning. Where the rub comes in is in knowing that someday she’ll be old enough to realize that being a citizen in the American police state is much like playing against a stacked deck: you’re always going to lose.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, we stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that our luck will change.

The problem, of course, is that luck will not save us. The people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the country and us.

It really doesn’t matter what you call them—the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.

Incredibly, no matter how many times we see this played out, Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that it’s our politics that divide us as a nation. As if there were really a difference between the Democrats and Republicans. As if the policies of George W. Bush were any different from those of Barack Obama. As if we weren’t a nation of sheep being fattened for the kill by a ravenous government of wolves.

We’re in trouble, folks, and changing the dealer won’t save us: it’s time to get out of the game.

We have relinquished control of our government to overlords who care nothing for our rights, our dignity or our humanity, and now we’re saddled with an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

Even revelations of wrongdoing amount to little in the way of changes for the better.

For instance, after six years of investigation, 6,000 written pages and $40 million to write a report that will not be released to the public in its entirety, the U.S. Senate has finally concluded that the CIA lied about its torture tactics, failed to acquire any life-saving intelligence, and was more brutal and extensive than previously admitted. This is no revelation. It’s a costly sleight of hand intended to distract us from the fact that nothing has changed. We’re still a military empire waging endless wars against shadowy enemies, all the while fattening the wallets of the defense contractors for whom war is money.

Same goes for the government’s surveillance programs. More than a year after Edward Snowden’s revelations dominated news headlines, the government’s domestic surveillance programs are just as invasive as ever. In fact, while the nation was distracted by the hubbub over the long-awaited release of the Senate’s CIA torture, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court quietly reauthorized the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records. This was in response to the Obama administration’s request to keep the program alive.

Police misconduct and brutality have been dominating the news headlines for months now, but don’t expect any change for the better. In fact, with Obama’s blessing, police departments continue to make themselves battle ready with weapons and gear created for the military. Police shootings of unarmed citizens continue with alarming regularity. And grand juries, little more than puppets controlled by state prosecutors, continue to legitimize the police state by absolving police of any wrongdoing.

These grand juries embody everything that’s wrong with America today. In an age of secret meetings, secret surveillance, secret laws, secret tribunals and secret courts, the grand jury—which meets secretly, hears secret testimony, and is exposed to only what a prosecutor deems appropriate—has become yet another bureaucratic appendage to a government utterly lacking in transparency, accountability and adherence to the rule of law.

It’s a sorry lesson in how a well-intentioned law or program can be perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes. The war on terror, the war on drugs, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school zero tolerance policies, eminent domain, private prisons: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns. However, once you add money and power into the mix, even the most benevolent plans can be put to malevolent purposes.

In this way, the war on terror has become a convenient ruse to justify surveillance of all Americans, to create a suspect society, to expand the military empire, and to allow the president to expand the powers of the Executive Branch to imperial heights.

Under cover of the war on drugs, the nation’s police forces have been transformed into extensions of the military, with SWAT team raids carried out on unsuspecting homeowners for the slightest charge, and police officers given carte blanche authority to shoot first and ask questions later.

Asset forfeiture schemes, engineered as a way to strip organized crime syndicates of their ill-gotten wealth, have, in the hands of law enforcement agencies, become corrupt systems aimed at fleecing the citizenry while padding the pockets of the police.

Eminent domain, intended by the founders as a means to build roads and hospitals for the benefit of the general public, has become a handy loophole by which local governments can evict homeowners to make way for costly developments and shopping centers.

Private prisons, touted as an economically savvy solution to cash-strapped states with overcrowded prisons have turned into profit- and quota-driven detention centers that jail Americans guilty of little more than living off the grid, growing vegetable gardens in the front yards, or holding Bible studies in their back yards.

Traffic safety schemes such as automated red light and speed cameras, ostensibly aimed at making the nation’s roads safer, have been shown to be thinly disguised road taxes, levying hefty fines on drivers, most of whom would never have been pulled over, let alone ticketed, by an actual police officer.

School zero tolerance policies, a response to a handful of school shootings, have become exercises in folly, turning the schools into quasi-prisons, complete with armed police, metal detectors and lockdowns. The horror stories abound of 4- and 6-year-olds being handcuffed, shackled and dragged, kicking and screaming, to police headquarters for daring to act like children while at school.

As for grand juries, which were intended to serve as a check on the powers of the police and prosecutors, they have gone from being the citizen’s shield against injustice to a weapon in the hands of government agents. A far cry from a people’s court, today’s grand jury system is so blatantly rigged in favor of the government as to be laughable. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the growing numbers of Americans betrayed and/or victimized by their own government, in which case, you’ll find nothing amusing about the way in which grand juries are used to terrorize the populace all the while covering up police misconduct.

Unfortunately, as I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’re long past the point of simple fixes. The system has grown too large, too corrupt, and too unaccountable. If there’s to be any hope for tomorrow, it has to start at the local level, where Americans still have a chance to make their voices heard. Stop buying into the schemes of the elite, stop being distracted by their sleight-of-hands, stop being manipulated into believing that an election will change anything, and stop playing a rigged game where you’ll always be the loser.

It’s time to change the rules of the game. For that matter, it’s time to change the game.

1 thought on “The Game Is Rigged: Why Americans Keep Losing To The Police State”

  1. All of this is true, but the game is going to change. Not because we the people got some spine and did anything to fix it, but because the US is on the precipice of economic collapse. This is due to the endless corruption, the unfettered, uncontrolled spending on fool things nobody needs, and money has a very consistent quality…………it only spends once.

    The greedy guts in power figured this out, so started leveraging the money they did have. The standard line of business was to take $100 million and leverage it into $100 billion…………..1000:1 ratio.

    Then, as things got tight, they started leveraging the leveraged funds………1000:1 again…….only this time, nothing was involved but air.
    It didn’t take long for the rest of the world to figure out what they were doing, they were too stupid to hide it. Their arrogance is beyond belief.

    The rest of the world, disgusted with the continuance of the Bush doctrine under this sock puppet in the White House, the endless wars and attacks on nations that had done nothing to deserve it, began to back off. Once it became clear nothing was going to be done to rebuild the middle class, clean up the banking system or investigate the criminals who caused the worst global economic crash in modern history, anger grew.

    Add in Obama’s mad pursuit for war with anyone and fruitless search for allies and coalition, it would be obvious to anyone the US has a problem with its world relations. Diplomacy has been replaced by threats.

    When disasters hit other nations, the US would promise help, and provide a sliver of what was promised. They could not be trusted to do anything they said they would do. Meantime, BRICS has entered the picture, and is offering loans to small nations who need help but don’t want US financial domination. Business is brisk.

    The US cannot get anyone to join with them in war, even provide places for troops to get supplies, loan them any money or do any business with them. An entire new economy, very similar to the one we always had, but with one significant difference. This new economy offers voice to all nations who join, an open basket of currencies makes that very clear. The old system of US our way or the highway has been abandoned by all but the US and the EU. The EU strongest members, Germany, France and the UK are already finding trade systems working around the dollar………it is but a matter of weeks now.

    OPEC’s refusal to cut production regardless of the pain for itself and all its members, it’s ally, Russia and other nations is one of the final strikes at the US economy. The US is now the #1 producer of oil, regardless they are destroying the drinking water of its citizens and causing earthquakes where none ever occurred before. This is a huge blow to the already over-leveraged, bankrupt US……and it shows the world that OPEC is as disgusted with the US as everyone else.

    The US sending tanks towards Russia is the last straw. It is but a matter of days or weeks before the EU has to speak out. Either they go with Putin and BRICS and get back the E120 billion a year GDP that Russia provided before the fool sanctions, or go down with the US. Dumping the dollar is far easier than providing troops or coalition for other nations, especially the US. Germany told the US this week to back off of Russia, their reply was to send tanks towards Russia. Many of their nations need loans. The US offers no loans, they are broke, yet BRICS has plenty of money to lend. Who would you choose?

    It is obvious to all that a madman is in control of the sock puppets we have in congress and the smiling Manchurian Candidate in the white house. I cannot recognize this government, the behavior of all makes no sense at all. It is totally self destructive.

    So, don’t worry too much. The system has burned itself out of relevance, the dollar is going to collapse in a matter of weeks or days. None of the stuff in this article really will matter much……….and the US leaders seem clueless as to what has happened.

    Most of the world has dumped the dollar. The EU has kept it afloat. When it chooses the right economic choice for themselves, they will join the rest of the world……..no nations will self destruct to help a rogue nation they can no longer recognize.

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