Now will people believe me when I say we live in a de facto police state?

[onenote]

170. I disagree

While it may serve as an emotional outlet to label the US as a "police state," all that does is water down the meaning of the phrase. Saying that police states exist in different degrees is like saying there are behaviors that can be labeled slavery because they are somehow comparable to slavery or that the treatment of Gazans can be equated to the Holocaust because it is simply a matter of degree, not kind. But there is a reason to reserve the label Holocaust for a singular event. There is a reason to reserve the label Apartheid for the specific treatment of South African blacks. There is a reason to limit the term slavery to the actual ownership of human beings. And there is a reason to limit the term police state to uniquely repressive regimes like the old Soviet Union, like North Korea, like Nazi Germany. To broadent the term is to create a false equivaency that diminishes the horror of those regimes and exagerrates the very real problems in this country.

Does this country violate the rights of its citizens? Yes. Always has. Does it treat its citizens unequally? Yes. It always has. Does it give police too much leeway in using deadly force? Yes. Always has. Does that mean the US has always been a "Police State"? No, although there were times and places in our history (Jim Crow south) where it essentially was a police state for a significant portion of the citizenry. But to equate what is going on today, as bad as it is, with the Jim Crow south is, again, a false equivalency that diminishes the horrors that African Americans faced in the South under Jim Crow laws.