Overproduction in military equipment goes to the police?
 

The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US
(via business insider magazine)
Seriously? Grenade launchers and military robots?!?? I knew the US was preparing for a fight with its increasingly rebellious citizens and that military robots would eventually be used against civilians but now already?

Hmm... I would just have to copy&paste everything I wrote in the "Nonviolent Protesting" thread to here, but you've read them already, and so have everyone else who care about these things.

It is a sad thing, but all of this is going to end some way, and right now it's not looking all that pretty.

well, idk how likely a civil war is, but I sure hope there isn't one, because it'd be damn bloody considering how many Americans own guns.

But yeah, this is pretty bad news that I hadn't known about.

There's been lots of evidence of police militarization for about a decade or two now (think about how many SWAT raids occur now vs 10-20 years ago). The use of excessive force is becoming more and more commonplace. First it was "less lethal" equipment that was all the rage, now I guess the lethal stuff is making a comeback, in numbers never seen before.

This is the birth of a police state. George Orwell predicted this. Bread and circus is no longer an effective way to control the vox populi, so now the boots stomping faces are becoming the new method of control.

The Militarization of Local Police Forces | FDL News Desk

American police: To serve and protect (the 1%) — RT

More Reporting On the How and the Why of Police Militarization - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

I think a big part of this is caused by the increasing size of protests. The old control methods don't work on crowds of a certain number, maybe.

...Is there a preferable alternative? Stuff takes money to store.

You know, before the police reaction to OWS, I probably would have looked at this article, shrugged and gone "Eh, makes sense".

I think we would be going with the Huxley alternative if we could afford it so to speak, because most of the recent unrest is the result of the standard of living going down, so that enough people can no longer afford bread and circus. I think the time before the whole economic crisis, society was well on its way to Brave New World. That is of course only because those who reap the benefits of our society also get to make all the rules, and the rest suffer in oblivion.

But now that people have woken up to realize how wrong our world is, there is no easy way of going back to status quo with lies and misinformation. That's the way I see it anyways.

Stop making so much stuff that is only good for killing? Then I realize this is America we are talking about...

At this point, keeping the charade going is rather cheap.

Most people, even the poor, already have the means to access bread and circus. Even if people can't afford new TVs or computers, most people have access to these things that they purchased in the recent past prior to the crisis, or even earlier. Or used items. Though also electronics are at a record low in price, so affording a new "ticket to the circus" isn't that expensive anymore. And even then, there's always credit cards. We've built this infrastructure of distraction by buying their electronics and programing accounts, and they know we've become addicted to them, to the point where we'll spend our last dimes to keep them, or even go into debt to keep them. Not to mention radios, which nearly all of us have access to, either in our cars or that old transistor radio tucked in the closet somewhere.

And even if people have to cut back on their internet/television accounts, there is still good 'ol word of mouth.

Really, it's the bread that is driving the unrest, not the circus. Most people can afford electronics (or at least sustain them), but more and more people are dealing with hunger (or the new quaint term "food insecurity"). How people can put TV and computers before nutritional sustenance, I don't know, but that's the order of importance most of us have been programmed to believe.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that circus has become cheap enough that it would have been an effective tool of long-term control, even among the poor, that is, if people didn't start waking up as they are.

Orwell knew Huxley's world was unsustainable. Eventually someone would wake up, and begin to wake up others. There's no way to completely brainwash billions of minds, there will always be dissent somewhere. Which is why the next step in a dystopian society is authoritarianism. Entertainment might lost it's effectiveness against a population, but brute force usually retains it's effectiveness more...effectively. An existential threat to someones life is more apt to lead to compliance than, say, a glut of entertainment. Not to mention it makes activities such as purges more easy to accomplish, as people will begin to see death and pain as commonplace. Remember all the rocket-bombs that bombard Oceania? People stopped caring that people were dying around them. Hell, Winston ended up grabbing a severed hand after an attack, and just shrugged it off.

I'm afraid I understand all too well what you mean...

But I have to go now, because I'm currently quite sensitive to emotions, and all I want to think now is happy...

The main thing I'd be worried about is the armoured vehicles. Like, seriously? Police with APCs and tanks?
Also, who knows? It might help the US' debt crisis if they stop producing so much military equipment...

Wait, they don't already?







I'm asking seriously. I realize that's just a movie, but I figured they probably had something like that in major metropolitan cities.

Good points.
But I think that bread and circus still have potential. As you said, the circus is cheap, and so is the bread really. Massive subsidies go into that (directly and indirectly), especially into the food production.
I think you have a good point there with credit - because that is sort of what drives the present day unrest in the US. While in many other parts of the world, it really is the bread that is missing (the Unrests in North Africa and Middle East are to a large degree "food riots", igniting on single food issues, like the price of cheese in Israel - the origin of many ideas in the "occupy movement"), I think in the US the situation is less focussed on food, because there is just so much cheap corn stuff and subsidized meat. But the possibilities of people to get credit and buy a new part of the circus, like a new 3D-TV or something broke down temporarily. The thing with the circus is, that you cannot use old programs. People will always be ok with bread as long as you also provide some cheese and butter, but in entertainment, you need progress to keep the happiness level constant. Nobody wants to see the same stuff again and again - new programs, new attractions need to be invented. A transistor radio or Walkman just dont have the same effect anymore on calming down and occupying people with entertainment - now you need HD-TV for the same effect and soon 3D-TV. People with only a radio may actually wake up. So my guess is that a lot of the attention is going to allowing people to get back to their comforts - give them more cheap (and worthless) food and encourage cheap imports of entertainment products. If expenses in some other area skyrocket as a cause, it is less important, I guess.

We are hollow inside, so we seek to fill our lives with meaningless content in attempt to appease our needs, but no amount of trivial content like that will ever be enough.

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I apologize that the background makes part of it difficult to read. On the left it says

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