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At least in some Western countries, the standards are to break the door down anyway, and maybe hold him at gunpoint (see: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...)

As good a place as any to drop Mr Balko's opus: "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" which is all about this kind of madness.

http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

>While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America.

It would be convenient to keep the word "totalitarianism" forever connected with the very specific practices of Nazi Germany or, say, Stalin's USSR, and only those. Unfortunately the word and the practice existed way before and will continue to exist in the future. And there's not just a single form of it.

One can spend all his life between home, office, some cosy restaurant or cafe, friends house, and never understand anything that's going on in society at large, if he's so inclined. Especialy if he's on the upper echelon, e.g not a black, latino, native american, or "white trash", so he doesn't get to transparently see the structures of totalitarianism in a day by day basis.

From the militarization of police: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

to cities built for exclusion and closing down of public space: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...

to the privitazation of prisons (and the highest incarceration rate of the world by far, surpassing even Stalin's era Gulag percentages when it comes to blacks): http://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Sale-Private-Business-Incar...

to the dwindling middle-class (which is, when it exists, the real pillar of democracy): http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending-Middl...

Add mass surveillance, three-strike laws that resemble 19th century ethics, the concentrated control of mass media, constant external war, etc etc and you have quite a potent mix.

⬐ rainsford

It is also convenient to redefine "totalitarianism" to simply mean aspects of government/society that you don't like. Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...especially compared to most of the rest of the world. I agree that your examples are generally bad things, but it's hard to see how some of them are even instances of totalitarian behavior much less representative of the overall political state of the US. It's hard for me to see much argument for the idea that the US is really totalitarian at all, much less especially totalitarian by global standards or increasingly totalitarian (the implied part of most of these arguments).

⬐ ricardobeat

That's the gist of the article... that the state achieves control over society not via forceful means, but more subtle psychological action, political apathy and instilling materialism.

⬐ coldtea

>Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...

Well, not that hard. For one, there's a humongous legal framework, criminalizing and turning almost all aspects of everyday life, from speech to nutrition, into a legally mediated issue.

Second, a way over the top (compared to regular liberal western democracies) use of police force (and incarceration).

Third, devising of new ways of tranfering powers to the state (from extended no-rights zones around airports to the Patriot Act).

Fourth, total surveillance over society.

Political scientists and philosophers have read totalitarianism in these (and other aspects) for ages. Putting them in constast to the relative freedoms of 1960 or 1880 paints a bleak picture.

It's like slowly boiling the frog while it watches Miley Cyrus twerk.

⬐ maratd

A fine argument, but you must realize that same argument has been made by many men from the very inception of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion

Whatever is being suffered now by any minorities, etc. pales in comparison to what they would have been put through in the past. I don't see too many blacks being hosed down by a fire truck nowadays, do you?

So let's keep things in perspective. We have a lot of work on ours hands. But it's a hell of a lot less work than we had in the past.

Radley Balko’s book, which is cited in the article, "Rise of the Warrior Cop"[0] actually makes a very good argument that the 3rd Amendment which prohibits the quartering of soldiers during peacetime was referencing this exact situation, wherein a group of government controlled "peace officers", which are essentially military personnel, are in constant deployment inside the United States of America keeping tabs on it's citizens. He argues that it has nothing to do with literally being forced to give up your bed to a soldier, but entirely with the state housing soldiers within it's walls. With the gifting of Tanks, M16s and other paramilitary gear to ordinary police officers, we're essentially creating another branch of the armed forces.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610392116/

Absolutely. You might be interested in Radley Balko's book: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

In Balko's book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

he talks about various aspects and how those incidents were relatively rare, and militarization has not been happening all that much because of outgunning, but rather government incentives for the War on Drugs and measures designed to have closer coordination between the military and police forces.

Read: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

Excerpt from a book by Radley Balko, The Rise of the Warrior Cop (link: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...)

Never forget Radley Balko on this topic, and he's got a new book out, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...) as well as an old, hard/$$$ to find one, *Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (http://www.amazon.com/Overkill-Paramilitary-Police-Raids-Ame...).

Makes for very depressing reading.