The massive and, IMO, unethical exercise of force without provocation against University of Pittsburgh students is an indictment of the worthlessness of our mythological Constitutional rights.
The following video is inexplicable:
A student is "arrested" by thirty to forty fully armored, militia and forced to pose on her knees for a trophy photograph as if these ever-vigilant soldiers had captured Osama Bin Laden.
It is pointless to complain about such behavior. The militia is immune from criticism or accountability. The silliness of the slaps on the wrist reprimands only embolden these thugs to push the envelope further the next time.
The G20 militia exercises need to be understood for what they are and that is training exercises that use unwilling college students as crash-test dummies for the latest technological advances in civilian warfare. Like so many of our military campaigns, this is child's play.
Demonize an urban civilian population as anarchists and socialists and then practice your best baseball swings on their bodies. Enjoy it. Take pictures as if they were illiterate teenagers in countries too poor not to be considered terrorist states. It's a reality show for the sado-masochism that has become our modus operandi.
There is no excuse for any American city to become a theater of war. There is something sociopathically wrong with a government response that cannot distinguish between civilian protest of an event and urban warfare. There are plenty of techniques for crowd control that don't result in confrontation and state-sponsored police brutality.
The overwhelming show of force tactic is an act of war not social management. To apply Colin Powell's shock and awe military intimidation schemes into the hearts and minds of American citizens is an exercise in creating further distrust of government.
And this government has already drifted far and wide of what used to be a democracy that ensured the Constitutional rights of citizens to exercise those rights.
The question of what happened to America is more than an academic musing. Restore this country or stop lying to our children that there's something left of it worth being proud of.
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