Our police state: capitalism at war against workers and the poor

Published on New York Times blog in response to news article, “Protests erupt across U.S. over George Floyd’s death,” and related articles and opinion essays, May 30, 2020:

"He compared the havoc to wars that Americans have fought overseas, and said he expected even more unrest on Saturday night," reports the Times on statements by the Governor of Minnesota.

What an interesting statement. How is the policing of riots and protests in America similar to wars fought by our government overseas? First, it is not really a response to violence, but to perceived threats to order; that is, to the rule by those ruling and benefitting over the rest of us, wherever we are.

That is why the police or other military forces are regularly called out in situations of protest that are not violent.

What unites the two--policing and war--is that it is a capitalist government that considers as a threat to it the organized or spontaneously collective protest or resistance anywhere of members of the world's working class and poor. So much for patriotism: Our government ultimately does not even make a distinction between its own citizens and hapless people elsewhere. As if it represented not a nation and its people but a system or a class.

Increasingly, policing and war are identified or confused. Abroad, wars are fought under the banner of peace keeping, and America in particular has long posed as the world's police force. At home, policing now is largely militarized, and heavily so.

They operate with a massively overwhelming armed force. They treat poor people in urban ghettos like presumed enemy combatants. It is with extreme ease that they determine that someone is in that category. They are trained to assume that a citizen or ordinary person is hostile and a mortal threat to themselves, though this is rarely the case. They shoot first and think later. Police officers now are trained to protect themselves first and foremost. Not citizens. Those are rules of engagement for war, nothing more nor less.

Fascism? With elections and free speech, but murderous all the same?