This is a short post just to point people over to Charles P. Pierce at Esquire, and his commentary on what has happened to this country. He noted President Obama's meeting and how useless it is by itself, to deal with this occupying army we have militarized our police into becoming.
We should have meetings everywhere.
And those meetings should have as their theme one simple truth.
You work for us.
You cannot steal from any of us.
You cannot kill any of us without cause.
You cannot lie to us about stealing from us or about killing one of us without cause.
You work for us.
You work for all of us.
For far too long, the local police forces in this country have been allowed to cultivate in their membership the attitudes usually found in armies of occupation. For far too long, the local police forces in this country have been allowed to weaponize those attitudes with the kind of firepower usually used by armies of occupation. The 9/11 attacks certainly acted as an accelerant to trends that already had gathered considerable momentum; for one thing, they helped normalize a general attitude in the country that civil liberties were a luxury we no longer could afford, thereby making their violent abridgement easier, as long as it didn't happen to, you know, people like us. But, I fear, we would have reached this point eventually even if Osama bin Laden had died as a child. We already were well on our way.
Read the whole thing.