Turning America Into a War Zone, Where We the People Are the EnemyJohn W. Whitehead Life in the American police state is an endless series of donts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: dont talk back to police officers, dont even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), dont run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, dont carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, dont expect privacy in public, dont let your kids walk to the playground alone, dont engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, dont try to grow vegetables in your front yard, dont play music for tips in a metro station, dont feed whales, and on and on. For those who resist, who dare to act independently, think for themselves, march to the beat of a different drummer, the consequences are invariably a one-way trip to the local jail or death. What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the city on the hill, a beacon of freedom for all the world. Far from being a shining example of democracy at work, we have become a lesson for the world in how quickly freedom turns to tyranny, how slippery the slope by which a once-freedom-loving people can be branded, shackled and fooled into believing that their prisons walls are, in fact, for their own protection. Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, we failed to protest when the war hawks turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of warthe military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.to be distributed for free to local police agencies and used to secure the homeland against we the people. Its not just the Defense Department that is passing out free military equipment to local police. Since the early 1990s, the Justice Department has worked with the Pentagon to fund military technology for police departments. And then there are the billions of dollars worth of federal grants distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, enabling police departments to go on a veritable buying spree for highly questionable military-grade supplies better suited to the battlefield. Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves in the midst of a war zone? We live in a state of undeclared martial law. We have become the enemy. In a war zone, there are no policeonly soldiers. Thus, there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all intents and purposes, already become the military. In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived threat is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later. In a war zone, even the youngest members of the community learn at an early age to accept and fear the soldier in their midst. Thanks to funding from the Obama administration, more schools are hiring armed police officerssome equipped with semi-automatic AR-15 riflesto secure their campuses. In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When youre being held at bay by a militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom of assembly. When youre being surveilled with thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy. When youre charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to question or photograph or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And when youre a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely, kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no mistaking the prison walls closing in. This is not just happening in Ferguson, Missouri. As I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, its happening and will happen anywhere and everywhere else in this country where law enforcement officials are given carte blanche to do what they like, when they like, how they like, with immunity from their superiors, the legislatures, and the courts. You see, what Americans have failed to comprehend, living as they do in a TV-induced, drug-like haze of fabricated realities, narcissistic denial, and partisan politics, is that weve not only brought the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan home to be used against the American people. Weve also brought the very spirit of the war home. This is what it feels like to be a conquered people. This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation. This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned. This is what its like to be a citizen of the American police state. This is what its like to be an enemy combatant in your own country. So if you dont want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, by all means, stand down. Cower in the face of the police, turn your eyes away from injustice, find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got. But remember, when that rifle finally gets pointed in your directionand it willwhen theres no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned. It works the same in every age. Martin Niemoller understood this. A German pastor who openly opposed Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp, Niemoller warned: Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institutewhere this article first appeared.He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State andThe Change Manifesto. 