Why Should Anyone Trust a Government That Kills, Maims, Tortures, Lies, Spies, Cheats, and Treats Its Citizens Like Criminals?

Guest Post By John W. Whitehead
June 09, 2014

“Why should anyone trust a government that has condoned torture, spied on at least 35 world leaders, supports indefinite detention, places bugs in thousands of computers all over the world, kills innocent people with drone attacks, promotes the post office to log mail for law enforcement agencies and arbitrarily authorizes targeted assassinations? Or, for that matter, a president that instituted the Insider Threat Program, which was designed to get government employees to spy on each other and ‘turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches,’ which includes ‘any unauthorized disclosure of anything, not just classified materials.'”Professor Henry Giroux

Why should anyone trust a government that kills, maims, tortures, lies, spies, cheats, and treats its own citizens like criminals? For that matter, why should anyone trust a government utterly lacking in transparency, whose actions give rise to more troubling questions than satisfactory answers, and whose domestic policies are dictated more by paranoia than need?

Unfortunately, “we the people” have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch, so compliant and so indoctrinated on the idea that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us, or at least failed to recognize them as potential red flags.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the consequences of this failure on both our parts—the citizenry’s and the government’s—to do our due diligence in asking the right questions, demanding satisfactory answers, and holding our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law has pushed us to the brink of a nearly intolerable state of affairs. Intolerable, at least, to those who remember what it was like to live in a place where freedom, due process and representative government actually meant something. (Remember that the people of Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany also failed to ask questions, demand answers, and hold their government officials accountable until it was too late, and we know how that turned out.)

There’s certainly no shortage of issues about which we should be asking questions of our government representatives, demanding truthful answers, and subsequently insisting on changes within our government. Keep in mind, however, that the government has mastered the art of evasion. Thus, it’s not enough to ask the questions. We need to demand answers, and when those answers aren’t forthcoming—either because a government official claims to not “know” or because it’s outside his or her jurisdiction—we need to demand that they find out.

To get the ball rolling, here are just a few dozen of the questions that require honest answers by those individuals and agencies that are supposed to be answering to us. For my part, I’m going to send this exact list of questions to my government representatives and see how responsive they are. I’d suggest you do the same.

To start with, what’s the rationale behind turning government agencies into military outposts? There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department. As of 2008, “73 federal law enforcement agencies… [employ] approximately 120,000 armed full-time on-duty officers with arrest authority.” Four-fifths of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Department of Justice.

What’s with all of the government agencies stockpiling hollow point bullets? For example, why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and 320,000 rounds of hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?

Why does the Postal Service need “assorted small arms ammunition”? Why did the DHS purchase “1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, along with 7,000 fully-automatic 5.56x45mm NATO ‘personal defense weapons’ plus a huge stash of 30-round high-capacity magazines”? That’s in addition to the FBI’s request for 100 million hollow-point rounds. The Department of Education, IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, are also among the federal agencies which have taken to purchasing ammunition and weaponry in bulk.

Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country? And why is DHS acquiring more than 2,500 Mine-Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles, only to pass them around to local police departments across the country? According to the New York Times:

[A]s President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice. During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.

Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? In Richland South Carolina, for instance, U.S. army special forces are participating in joint and secretive exercises and training with local deputies. The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of the drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed. The Army and DHS also carried out similar drills and maneuvers involving Black Hawk helicopters in Texas, Florida, and other locations throughout the U.S., ostensibly in order to provide officers with realistic urban training.

What is being done to protect the American populace from the threat of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, being used against them? Policy analysts point to Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” (issued on Dec. 29, 2010), as justification for the government’s use of military force to put down civil unrest within the United States.

Why is FEMA stockpiling massive quantities of emergency supplies? On January 10, 2014, FEMA made a statement enlisting the service of contractors who could “supply medical biohazard disposal capabilities and 40 yard dumpsters to 1,000 tent hospitals across the United States; all required on 24-48 hour notice.” This coincides with other medical requests seeking massive amounts of supplies, such as “31,000,000 flu vaccinations,” “100,000 each of winter shirts and pants and the same for summer” and other goods and services requests as well like tarps, manufactured housing units, and beverages. And why does the TSA need $21,000 worth of potassium chlorate, a chemical compound often used in explosives?

Why is the Pentagon continuing to purchase mass amounts of ammunition while at the same time preparing to destroy more than $1 billion worth of bullets and missiles that are still viable?

Moreover, what is really being done to hold the Pentagon accountable for its doctored ledgers, fraud, waste and mismanagement, which has cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars? According to Reuters, “The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China’s economic output last year.”

Given the similarities between the government’s Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis, how much of what is being passed off as real is, in fact, being staged by DHS for the “benefit” of training law enforcement, leaving us none the wiser? These training exercises come complete with their own set of professionally trained Crisis Actors playing the parts of shooters, bystanders and victims in order to help “schools and first responders create realistic drills, full-scale exercises, high-fidelity simulations, and interactive 3D films.”

Given that Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack, why is the government spending trillions of dollars on “national security”? How exactly is the $75 billion given to 15 intelligence agencies annually to keep us “safe” being spent? And why is the DHS giving away millions of dollars’ worth of federal security grants to states that federal intelligence agencies ruled have “no specific foreign or domestic terrorism threat”?

Why is the government amassing names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation, and what criteria is the government using for this database? Keep in mind that this personal information is being acquired and kept without warrant or court order. It’s been suggested that in the event of nuclear war, the destruction of the US Government, and the declaration of martial law, this Main Core database, which as of 2008 contained some 8 million names of Americans, would be used by military officials to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security, a program to be carried about by the Army and FEMA.

Taken individually, these questions are alarming enough. However, when viewed collectively, they leave one wondering what exactly the U.S. government is preparing for and whether American citizens shouldn’t be preparing, as well, for that eventuality when our so-called “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is no longer answerable to “we the people.”

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Westcoaster
Westcoaster

This “Too Big” meme cure is simple. Let’s call these entities “Too Big To Exist” and either shut them down or bust them up into small pieces. That also goes for the 5 or 6 mega companies that control all media, communications, agriculture, transportation, finance, you name it. Break them up and be amazed at the job opportunities created.
We as a society also need to review the idea that just because technology allows something to be created (Total information spying, drones, driver-less cars, microwave crowd control, fracking, deep sea oil drilling, etc) it doesn’t mean we should move ahead letting technology trump good sense.

AWD

It’s like waiting for a hurricane. You can read about it coming, watch the radar, and it just grinds slowly, until it makes landfall and everything is wiped out. We don’t know what the Feds know, but considering what they’re doing, documented in this article and many, many others, it’s big. They have big plans to crush the people of this country. Do you think a country that has more people in prison by far than any country in history won’t resort to mass murder if it serves their purposes?

They know a collapse is coming, and the Feds, the government, those in the oligarchy, in power and in wealth, are going to protect themselves by killing and eliminating all threats. They are gearing up for fight they know is coming, they have their kill lists made, and they will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and power. It’s happened over and over again throughout history. This country is no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people”. You are a serf, a tax-cow, or dependent on a socialist fascist government, and you better give up everything you have, or they will take it by force and jail or kill you. Once you accept this fact, and prepare yourself for what’s coming, the better off you’ll be. You might survive. If you can’t see what’s coming, or don’t believe it, than God help you. You will be a victim, and you won’t survive very long.

Billy
Billy

“For example, why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns…”

Erm… don’t have a problem with the article except for the above… what, exactly, is a “semiautomatic submachine gun”?

See, it’s stuff like this that throws the article into doubt… how can we take the article seriously if the author doesn’t even have the wits or sense to know what the fuck he is talking about when it comes to something like describing accurately that which he is pissed off about?

If he can’t even get the little piddley things right, how are we supposed to take him seriously on the big things?

Stucky

That’s a great set of questions.

Not enough people will read it, understand it, or care. Not enough TBPers and similar sites to make a difference … or, so it seems.

The author himself says the same —— “Unfortunately, “we the people” have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch, so compliant and so indoctrinated …”

When and how that will change I do not know. Perhaps it’ll happen according to a thread posted last week ….. when people start going hungry.

bb

Billy , I have a semiautomatic submachine shot gun.I also have a semiautomatic flame thrower. I learned to fire both when I was in the junior marines.You really have been under a rock.

OUTTAHERE
OUTTAHERE

First of all, a submachinegun fires pistol ammo. A machinegun fires rifle ammo. A shot gun cannot be a submachine shotgun. It may be a semiauto shotgun, but not a submachine shotgun. IF you had a fully automatic shotgun, I don’t think they exist, then that would be an awesome weapon indeed.
And who says WE THE PEOPLE aren’t preparing? WE THE PEOPLE are keeping the shelves of all retail stores that sell ammo virtually empty because we are stocking up for what’s coming. We know it and they know it — there’s a confrontation coming.
I believe that I read that approximately 600,000 people in Wisconsin alone have hunting licenses.
That means that at least that number have guns of some sort and most likely many of them would be glad to defend their country. Other states have similar numbers that add up to over 20 million hunters:
This report estimates that 21.8 million Americans hunted at least once over the past five
years. Previous estimates have shown over 14 million youth and adults hunt each year,
but not all hunters take to the field every year.
From the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
http://www.nssf.org/PDF/HuntingLicTrends-NatlRpt.pdf
My point? If only 10% of those hunters were willing to go to battle with TPTB it would represent an army of over 2 million people — a pretty sizable army. How many govt. drones are we talking about? A couple hundred thousand? The military? Maybe another couple hundred thousand? Can they really cover the entire US and suppress WE THE PEOPLE? Not likely. I’m betting on the people prevailing. If fact, I’m getting my life on it!

llpoh
llpoh

Outtahere – full auto shotguns do exist. Primarily found in Asia.

llpoh
llpoh
OUTTAHERE
OUTTAHERE

I forgot about the AA12, but it’s not available to the public in the USSA anyway, as far as I know. I have one of the semiauto shotguns as shown in the 2nd video and it is badass.

ragman
ragman

I seems as though SOME people don’t trust the govt and are willing to do something about it: ask Eric Cantor how it’s going this morning.

overthecliff

We are WROL now. It really has always been that way but 80% have believed their civics classes and perceived that the application of law was fair and honest. They therefore “voluntarily” complied with laws. When their perception changes and they stop their compliance, it is gong to be the wild west. There won`t be enough police to enforce the law. We will all be doing what we can “get away with”

Might will makethe right, and we will descend into “the Dark Ages”again.

Above all else be armed and stealthy.

We would do well to remember how Stalin and the Khmer Rouge consolidated their power.

Rise Up
Rise Up

That Russian dude is awesome! Great vids.

@AWD, you are spot-on with your comments. How much longer until the tension releases like a thunderclap in the middle of the night?

Rise Up
Rise Up

Even feminist and (former?) liberal Naomi Wolf recognizes we are war with the guv. She “gets” the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. Bravo Naomi!

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