Are the Ferguson Riots the Early Signs of Revolution

By Tom Rhodes, 11/25/2014

Remember Rodney King? It was the first use of a home video camera to capture police abuse that made national news. Form knocking suspects out of wheel chairs, to kicking handcuffed girls, to lobbing stun grenades at toddlers, the list of abuses by the police that go unpunished, or just result in a slap on the wrist is huge. Youtube has thousands of hours of video showing the not just police’s contempt for the people, but downright violent abuse. Just Googling “cops assault wheelchair” and the number of instances on video of cops beating up wheel chair bound people is astounding. The problem is that cops are only rarely even charged much less convicted of their crimes. The Rule of Law is dead.

No Knock raid on the wrong house resulting in death of black children are not uncommon in the USA. Nor is injury to innocent children uncommon. The fact is the police botch paramilitary no-knock raids so regularly they are now not news worthy. That and many in the press would rather not cover police abuse than become a victim of it.

The fact that the evidence clearly suggest Brown was justly shot as being a violent criminal attacking a cop is irrelevant. The Ferguson Riots now happening are not because in this instance a cop justly shot a criminal who happened to be black, the Ferguson Riots were triggered by a white cop shooting a black youth and not being charged with murder. With such a plethora of examples of the police getting away with assault and murder without being charged, and more so in the black community, it was bound to happen. Because the police have in general, and for good reason, lost all credibility, they are in a lose lose situation. A condition that they created for themselves.

Not all police are evil and abusive. But the Thin Blue Line, that exists that allows the minority of bad cops to literally get away with murder. Means every good cop that doesn’t arrest his fellow bad cop is a coconspirator and just as guilty. The reality is that black people commit a disproportionate amount of murder and assault, and usually against other black people. That means they will have a disproportionate amount of interaction with the police, and will disproportionately be abused by the police. Two decades of video showing disproportionate police abuse against blacks has had its toll.

The truth of the individual event is not relevant. The accumulation of police abuse and increased paramilitary tactics and more violent reaction of the police has systematically transformed the trust in the police and it will take decades to ever regain that trust. It’s not just the black community. All of America now generally distrusts the police. When you can’t drive without being stopped by homeland security and being asked about your citizenship. Watching grandma routinely getting felt up at the airport by the government “for our safety.” The fact is that killings by police outpace gang, drug, child-abuse homicides. BusinessWeek today headlines “NYC Incurs Record $732 Million Cost as Abuse Settlements Rise.” The reason abuse settlements are on the rise is that despite the well documented fact that crime in the USA is dramatically less, abuse by the police is up.

Our government, through our various law enforcement agencies, has clearly decided that they rule the people instead of serve the people. And as the sheer volume of laws increase, the amount of force to make a people who generally believe in freedom and liberty, bow to that ever increasing government is increasing proportionately. Obama announced over 3000 new regulations, without law being passed this week; that over 3000 more instances to use force against the people of the United States. This country was not founded by people, nor is it populated by people, who quietly bow down to government. The character of the USA is such that violence against an oppressive government is not considered immoral. One of the bloodiest wars in history was our Civil War.

The militarization of our police, coupled with Obama’s clear disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution is changing the game. Law enforcement officers routinely get away with disregarding the law. The idea that the law exists to control the people, not limit the ruling elite is pervasive in all levels of our government from the lowest deputy to the Commander and Chief of all the armed forces. That means the laws and duty to obey the state are no longer valid. It is the early signs of the destruction of our republic.

I suspect soon you will see direct threats against law enforcement personnel and their families. Soon after you will see them and their families killed for their abuse as a message to others that the people will not stand for their tyranny anymore. That will be followed by police quitting their jobs and the state finding it difficult to hire people to become LEOs. Small businesses will simply refuse to service or sell to LEOs and other government agents. This is already happening in some parts of the west.

I’m very conflicted about the Ferguson Riots. Rioting over a criminal being shot and the cop not being charged when the evidence is clear it was a just shooting is simply wrong, as is the looting; but the buildup and militarization of the police and clearly observable increase in police abuse with little or no legal means of ameliorating the problem cannot stand. The government has been exposed: exposed as thinking the people are stupid; exposed as not charging and trying big bankers who they know broke the law and destroyed hundreds of thousands of peoples fortunes and futures; exposed as having contempt for the average man; exposed as believing the law is meant to control the masses and not limit the ruling elite. The Ferguson Riots are just a symptom, a symptom of our government becoming tyrannical and the people refusing to acquiesce. Ferguson is just the urban version of the rural Bundy Ranch. The people are rebelling against tyranny.

We can’t escape and live free by moving to the frontier anymore. There is no more frontier. The state wants, nay demands, control of the people cradle to grave. The state is proving it willingness to use force to terrorize the people into capitulation. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States, it may now be a necessity to alter our former system of government.

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UPDATE:
From Today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch were some interesting quotes that confirm the above.

Steven Rodriguez, 22, of Ferguson, said, “This violence wasn't planned. This happened because people are sick and tired of being shot and bullied by the police.”

With him was Kenneth Covington, 24, of north St. Louis, who added, “There have been so many black men killed by police but police are never held accountable for it.”

Briana Bobo, 25, Ballwin, stood outside the police station with tears in her eyes. “It seems that nothing that we do matters,” she said. “We can't win for losing.”