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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (6088)	3/12/2007 9:06:33 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

"How could we tell when (and if) that takes place?" I presume you aren't asking about a formal situation like a declaration of Marshal Law, or a society dictated by Military rulership. It seems you are implying a state or situation that could be slipped into by an unsuspecting culture. If so, I see the following scenario, that could occur in a closed system: For a police state to evolve in a closed system two inter-dependent conditions need to be present. 1) The individuals in the populace find validation primarily in criminal activity, which defines their membership as a community member and where confronting civil authority is viewed as a strength (in character if nothing else). 2) Domestic government operations are dependant upon the expectation of people behaving in a criminal fashion and on-going disobedient events. This serves as a mechanism to control and regulate while providing justification for the policing roles. Once these two conditions are present it becomes more desirable for both the citizens and the government forces to have law breaking citizens. Of course there is a threshhold that can only be defined by circumstance. But the threshold is crossed when to reduce government forces would result in a chaotic and criminal collapse of society while a serious reduction in crime would result in a collapse of the government infrastructure that is feeding on it.