The Federal (DHS) Crackdown

It's too bad that one needed to consult The Guardian, the great English newspaper, to find out what the U.S. press has apparently ignored: that last week's crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protests all over the country was coordinated by the Federal Government through the Department of Homeland Security.  I've listened to people I know well denounce the camps as counter-productive or even pick up the line put out by the right-wing radio mob that these people are just a bunch of unkempt radicals. 

There was some reaction against the Chancellor of UC Davis  when the campus police proceeded to pepper-spray supine and unresisting students. It's appalling to me that we accept this kind of conspiratorial suppression by our government. Where are the Second Amendment stalwarts when the authorities truly have gone out of control?

The Guardian columnist had it right, I'm afraid.  All of the politicians are bought and paid for. So are all administrations. And even when the New York Times finally gets around to covering the sordid record of the New York police in beating up reporters and other neutral onlookers, it limits its coverage and opinions to that narrow bit of self-protection.

I doubt I would ever join one of the Occupy camps.  But they are protesting the right things--the giveaways to the rich, the banks, and the well-connected.  We have lost much of what we supposedly believe in when we fail to defend the rights of these people. We have created a monster--a Department of "Homeland Security" that acts like the secret police we denounce in totalitarian countries.  It absorbs a huge budget we cannot afford and wastes billions on adding yet more expensive devices at airports with domineering agents who harrass travellers and have never been shown to have detected a single terrorist.  


It has come to pass that in enabling the authoritarians among us to establish this order of things we have truly allowed the terrorists to win.