When it comes to the arming of the police in a country in which rural sheriffs proudly sport battlefield-grade mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, and urban police units in New York City are being outfitted with Colt M4 semiautomatic assault rifles and machine guns, a report that 20 campus cops at Boston’s Northeastern University are going to be armed with semiautomatic rifles qualifies as sort-of normal. American police have been up-arming with a kind of passion since 9/11. Americans are now so over-weaponized that it seems as if both the police and the citizenry are in an undeclared arms race.

The militarization of the police has taken place amid an upsurge of protest over police brutality, abuses, and the endless killing of young black men, as well as a parallel growth in both the powers of and the protections afforded to police officers. All this could easily add up to the building blocks for a developing police-state frame of mind. The national news has been dominated by panic and hysteria over domestic terrorism. Add to that the Republican debate over “national security,” which turns out to mean “ISIS” and immigration, and it seems the way is being paved for institutionalizing a new kind of policing in this country in the name of American security and fear. (Tom Despatch)

I don’t think I will see it, but I believe that by the middle of the century, if nothing is done, the Disunited States will fall into violence, fueled by the 300 million guns, cynical politicians and sinking incomes. With that will come a police state and any pretense of democracy will fade away. Already the rule of fear is setting us on track for just the above, fueled by the current election campaign. Needless to say, it is utter anathema to every known tenet of Epicureanism. Unfortunately, an insufficient number of people seem to care. In an “exceptional” country, built on the rule of law, facism couldn’t take hold – or could it?