Have you noticed how much life increasingly feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone? Only instead of Rod Serling’s imaginary “land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas,” we’re trapped in a topsy-turvy, all-too-real land of corruption, brutality and lies, where freedom, justice and integrity play second fiddle to political ambition, corporate greed, and bureaucratic tyranny. It’s not merely that life in the American Police State is more brutal, or more unjust, or even more corrupt. It’s getting more idiotic, more perverse, and more outlandish by the day. Somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to idiocracy,  and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens). Examples abound.

The U.S. government has unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances. These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike. You don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. 

The U.S. government has unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances. These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike. You don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. 

The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer. Not even a slap on the wrist. In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government officials, the courts have ruled that the cops have qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that incentivizes government officials to engage in lawless behavior without fear of repercussions. This is the heartless, heartbreaking, hypocritical injustice that passes for law and order in America today.

The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer. Not even a slap on the wrist. In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government officials, the courts have ruled that the cops have qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that incentivizes government officials to engage in lawless behavior without fear of repercussions. This is the heartless, heartbreaking, hypocritical injustice that passes for law and order in America today.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs. It’s all a ruse. In one month alone, government agencies—including the Department of Defense—went on a $97 million shopping spree that included $670,000 for golf carts, $1.7 million for musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones, $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab, almost $8 million for iPhones and iPads, and nearly $10 million for workout and recreation equipment.    

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs. It’s all a ruse. In one month alone, government agencies—including the Department of Defense—went on a $97 million shopping spree that included $670,000 for golf carts, $1.7 million for musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones, $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab, almost $8 million for iPhones and iPads, and nearly $10 million for workout and recreation equipment.  

You think you’ve got rights? Think again. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will. Our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs. Consider a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Mitchell vs. Wisconsin) in which Wisconsin police officers read an unconscious man his rights and then proceeded to forcibly and warrantlessly draw his blood while he was still unconscious in order to determine if he could be charged with a DUI. 

You think you’ve got rights? Think again. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will. Our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs. Consider a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Mitchell vs. Wisconsin) in which Wisconsin police officers read an unconscious man his rights and then proceeded to forcibly and warrantlessly draw his blood while he was still unconscious in order to determine if he could be charged with a DUI. 

With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Yet it’s not just the surveillance and the buying and selling of your data that is worrisome. The ramifications of a government—any government—having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Yet it’s not just the surveillance and the buying and selling of your data that is worrisome. The ramifications of a government—any government—having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

We have now entered into a strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law. This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separates and shares power between three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. This attempt by President Trump to declare a national emergency to build a border wall merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

We have now entered into a strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law. This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separates and shares power between three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. This attempt by President Trump to declare a national emergency to build a border wall merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Even so, I’m not breaking up with America this Valentine’s Day, and neither should you. Instead, get outraged at what has been done to our country. What has been done to our freedoms. Get off your duff, get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Even so, I’m not breaking up with America this Valentine’s Day, and neither should you. Instead, get outraged at what has been done to our country. What has been done to our freedoms. Get off your duff, get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

These are dangerous times. Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute. No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing army to steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill. What you won’t hear in any State of the Union address—and what the president and his cohorts fail to acknowledge—is that it’s the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

These are dangerous times. Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute. No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing army to steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill. What you won’t hear in any State of the Union address—and what the president and his cohorts fail to acknowledge—is that it’s the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

Sixty years after Buddy Holly's plane crashed in a frozen Iowa cornfield, Holly remains one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, the acknowledged progenitor of nearly every world-class rock talent to emerge in our lifetime (The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and others), one of the first musicians to produce his own work, and a revolutionary musician who rebelled against the apartheid that had divided white rock artists from blacks.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. These raids are one more vivid example of how the government’s short-sighted use of immoral, illegal and unconstitutional tactics become dangerous weapons turned against the American people.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. These raids are one more vivid example of how the government’s short-sighted use of immoral, illegal and unconstitutional tactics become dangerous weapons turned against the American people.