Reflections on “Police State”
30th October 2023
Mrs Rodin and I watched Dinesh D’Souza’s Police State on Rumble yesterday. I hope this review, summary, or whatever will not cause you to not watch it yourself.
First, is “police state” the correct description of America, today? My initial inclination is to believe that it is true for some and not true for many. That America is now a “surveillance state” is beyond question. It shifts into a police state whenever the apparatus of the state using the surveillance data at hand picks and chooses to harass/destroy “disfavored” persons and cower the remainder into submission.
If one looks at history, the existence of a police state does not require the full quiescence of a people. There will always be dissenters within a police state. We tend to regard dissent’s failure to “move the needle” in such places as evidence of the existence of the police state. And so it is, when viewing an historically free and democratic society, it can be difficult to judge when a police state might exist because there is always some level of sturm und drang reflecting political debate within that society, some level of criminality associated with political belief, and a desire to characterize any failure to gain ideological purchase within the larger society as the result of state machinations.