The Pentagon has a stock of about 20,000 MRAPs, most of which will eventually find their way into local police arsenals, along with Predator-style drones and other military hardware field-tested overseas.

Pro Libertate

“One of the most disturbing things about the Western world of our time is that it is beginning to have much more in common with the Communist world than it has with the professedly Christian society of several centuries ago. On both sides of the Iron Curtain we find pathological varieties of the same moral sickness: both of them rooted in the same basically materialistic view of life. Both are basically opportunistic and pragmatic in their own way…

On the level of political, economic, and military activity, this moral passivity is balanced, or overbalanced, by a demonic activism, a frenzy of the most varied, versatile, complex and even utterly brilliant technological improvisations, following one upon the other with an ever more bewildering and uncontrollable proliferation.”

— Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post Christian Era

Eisenhower in 1961: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government…”

Well, now more than ever. After 50 years of making stuff for killing, and a decade of lucrative contracts for weapons manufacturers, there is quite a surplus available. Hence, the Department of Homeland Security has been giving it away to local law enforcement agencies. $4.2 billion worth of military equipment has been given away. The products of the merchants of death now proliferate across our towns and cities, The Guardian reports:

America’s police are looking more and more like the military |  theguardian.com

No, this won’t turn out badly at all. Simone Weil puts it best:

A Stanislaus Sheriff officer displays an “inert” rocket launcher provided by the Pentagon.

“A moderate use of might, by which alone man may escape being caught in the machinery of its vicious circle, would demand a more than human virtue, one no less rare than a constant dignity in weakness…Thus is the nature of might. Its power to transform man into a thing is double and it cuts both ways: it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.” — Simone Weil, The Iliad: A Poem of Might

A poll of troops last year found that nearly one in 20 members of the Armed Forces said they had experienced violence or threats of violence.

via Labour: new measures to make insulting military personnel a criminal offence – Telegraph.

So the crime would be “attacking” military personnel, and I’m guessing that an “attack,” as defined in this law, will include both physical attacks and verbal “attacks.” If this weren’t the case, then existing laws against assault and battery would surely suffice. And who defines what kind of verbal expression is deemed “an attack”? Is an insult an “attack”? Is criticism an “attack”? Is a question an “attack”? Is a failure to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance (or whatever the equivalent is in the United Kingdom) and “attack” or an “insult”? Is this website an “attack”? Is it “insulting”?

militarism (N): the tendency to subordinate all other interests to the interests of the military

Interests such as:

• freedom of expression
• freedom of thought
• freedom
• thought

These articles from summer 2013 talk about the militarization of local police forces. I’ll never forget a couple of years ago, I was walking through a suburban neighborhood park where I had a plot in a community garden. A cop drove by in a golf cart, not a plain white golf cart, mind you — a camouflage golf cart. Why on earth he needed to be camouflaged was beyond me! The golf cart was clearly made to look like a tank or something but come on: it was a golf cart. I wanted to spray him with my garden hose, but he would probably Tase me, so I didn’t.

Everyone Deserves a SWAT » Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog.

“The Department of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high” Rise of the Warrior Cop >> The Wall Street Journal