America’s police state: Started under Obama, continued under Trump

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America's police state

On July 2, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama made an interesting promise during a Boulder, CO campaign stop when he said:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” (emphasis mine)

During his 2012 reelection campaign, Obama put some muscle behind this promise when his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered billions of rounds of ammunition — enough to empty five rounds into the body of every living American at the time.

In both cases, conservatives were concerned about the possibility that Obama was building a Gestapo-styled police state within the DHS capable of seizing control over local law enforcement one city at a time.

Fast forward to the Trump presidency.

Just days after his inauguration, Trump indicated he was ready to pick up where Obama left off when he threatened to “send in the Feds” if the City of Chicago failed to address its violence problem to his liking.

Just like Obama in 2012, Trump’s is using his 2020 reelection campaign to put some muscle behind his threats.

In October 2019, Trump made preparations to make Obama’s police state a reality when he spoke at the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago. In his speech, he announced his plan to launch a sweeping crackdown on crime using a program he referred to as “the surge” — Ron Paul called this plan “the Patriot Act on steroids” — but he never launched it . . . until now.

Thanks to coronavirus hysteria, the Black Lives Matter riots, the current political climate, and his collapsing campaign, Trump’s ready to do what’s necessary to bring his tyrannical, police state ambitions closer to reality.

Last week, Trump’s Department of Justice ordered the DHS to begin “the surge” in Portland, Oregon, where federal agents dressed in fatigues and wearing no badges or Federal ID abducted protesters, hauled them off to detention centers in unmarked vans, and conducted intelligence gathering as instructed by the DOJ.

This Gestapo-styled attack on liberty pleased Trump so much so that he threatened to send federal troops to “other cities to deal with unrest.”

Trump made good on this threat a few days ago when he announced that he will be sending federal troops to Chicago and Albuquerque.

Tom Ridge, the first DHS Secretary, believes Trump’s actions have turned the Department into “the president’s personal militia,” a sentiment shared by Judge Andrew Napolitano, who also believes Trump’s police state actions are “unconstitutional.”

While arguments are inevitable between Trump sycophants who believe he has the authority to use the DHS in this manner and liberty-loving conservatives who recognized long ago the threat he is to the Constitution, one thing remains abundantly clear: our God-given rights are under attack and are in danger of being lost forever.

The sooner we face this reality, the sooner we get rid of the tyrannical Republican/Democrat duopoly and replace them with patriots who will work WITHIN the Constitution and not AROUND it, the sooner and more likely we are to reclaim our Republic.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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