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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (2481)	9/5/2003 2:32:04 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

Don, Re: I thought your comments on police being trained by the FBI was interesting. My guess is if it ever comes to a show down, the police will be mostly on the side of the people, as well as a big part of the military. Ordering an 18 year old PFC to kill strangers is a lot different than ordering a grown man to kill his neighbors. Things take on a different light when a vow to defend the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, becomes following the orders of domestic enemies to harm the country they swore to defend. I guess I'm not quite as sanguine as you are about the empathy that the police has for citizens. Maybe the tear gassing I experienced while protesting the Viet Nam War has given me the wrong impression about the attitude of the rank and file of the police. In any period of civil disorder, such as the labor movement of the early 20th Century, the civil rights and anti-Viet Nam War demonstrations, the urban riots from the late '60s through the latest in Cincinnati last year, the police have always closed ranks and sided with the greatest governmental authority and against the public. The same thing was true in Germany in 1930, when otherwise decent individuals were caught up in groupthink and paranoia. I will predict that if there is an episode of major civil unrest due to the excesses of authoritarian megalomania on the part of the Bushistas, the police will be willing participants in any effort to suppress dissent. The number of cases where police relate better to those the are organized to suppress than to those who pay their way can probably counted on the fingers of one hand. Only in the case of the most egregious inequality, such as was witnessed in France in the 1780s, could one expect an underpaid police force to side with the general public and against the current owners of the government.