What, exactly, did you expect would happen?

It's starting to happen all over the United States.  Stories are starting to spring up on a daily basis.  In the last few days alone:

"Dallas sniper attack: 5 officers killed"

"Not just Dallas: Attacks in three states target cops"

"Police say officers have been targeted in Missouri, Georgia, and Tennessee"

"Chaos in St. Paul - Police Injured"

"Gunfire hits San Antonio police headquarters"

"Report: Cop, Bailiffs Shot at Courthouse"

"Sunday Slaughter Baton Rouge: 3 Cops Dead; Nation Tense"

If we are being realistic, we should expect these headlines to continue to crop up in the coming months.

Before I continue, I want to make it clear that I do not, in ANY way, condone the use of deadly force against people who have not wrongfully harmed others.  This will always hold true, whether the wrongfully harmed is a police officer or just another civilian.  This is, and will continue to be, a life-shattering tragedy for the families being destroyed.

But if we actually take an objective look at the history - especially more recent history - of policing in America, can any of us truly say we are surprised it has come to this?  After all, you can only kick a dog so many times before he snaps and rips your throat out.

What we are seeing today is a involuntary, almost compulsive reaction by people who have been pushed beyond their limits.  People who look at the way things are and feel sick to their stomach. People who shake their heads and say "This is wrong, and it can't be allowed to continue."  Their methods might be wrong, but they feel like they have to do something, and nothing they have tried within official channels has changed a damn thing.

For the last 45 years, "law enforcement" has used the horrendously immoral War on Drugs as an excuse to commit endless unspeakable acts of aggression against people who would never have harmed anyone.  No-Knock drug raids are frequently employed, and too often on the wrong house.  Innocent homeowners who try to defend themselves against these aggressive and unannounced  invasions are gunned down in cold blood.  Flash bang grenades have been lobbed into the cribs of sleeping toddlers.  Countless millions of non-violent people are routinely brutalized, caged, and killed in the name of a war which was started by a power-drunk politician as nothing more than a means to suppress political dissent.

Another invention of the unconscionable War on Drugs is Civil Asset Forfeiture.  This allows police to "legally" seize peoples' property on the mere suspicion that the property (usually money, but often vehicles, homes, and more) was intended to be used to buy, sell, or produce drugs.  "Innocent until proven guilty" is then flipped on its head: You can't get your property back unless you prove in court that it was not going to be used for the reasons suspected.  Using this method of legalized robbery, police now steal more property from individuals than all private sector criminals combined.

It seems like almost every other day we see yet another story in the news about police activity that results in the death of (often) non-violent or otherwise innocent people.  In 2015, police were involved in the deaths of at least 1,200 people.  Granted, not all of these were unjustified, but far too many of them were.  Just last week, police executed a man who they had pinned to the ground.  And this week, an officer shot a man 4 times during a tail light stop, apparently because the man was licensed to carry a firearm and informed the officer of this before he reached for his Driver's License (as requested).  The man's girlfriend and her 4-year old daughter were in the car as he bled out.

At face value, it should be natural to assume that it is wrong to do these things to people.  But rather than being held accountable for apparently wrongful actions, police are almost universally internally investigated and determined to have operated "By the book."

People who defend the institution of policing claim that it's "just a few bad apples."  However, it is difficult to swallow this line when you consider what happens to the few GOOD apples.  Case in point: An officer who refused to make an illegal arrest was promptly relieved of his employment and black listed.  Crossing that "thin blue line" is one of the very few things that will get a cop fired.

People need to stop holding uniformed personnel to different standards than everyone else.  Any "officer-involved shooting" that was not done out of self-defense should not be called an "officer-involved shooting."  It should be called by its real name: Murder.  Taking peoples' property on the suspicion it was related to drugs should not be called "civil asset forfeiture," it should be called armed robbery.  Ticketing a driver who had caused no actual harm to anyone should not be called "traffic enforcement," it should be called extortion.  The list goes on, and encompasses any agent of the State on any level you want to imagine.

How can we be expected to teach our children to trust someone in uniform when you look at the situation objectively?  How are we supposed to differentiate between the "good apple" who will just let us know we have a tail light out and go on his way versus the one who just might murder you (and your dog) in front of your family at the drop of a hat?  How are any of us supposed to feel secure in a system that clearly holds its agents in infinitely higher regard than its subjects?  This is a system that objectively identifies law breaking by its own top agents, and then promptly dismisses the very idea of bringing charges against them.  Police now fill the role of the mafia goon in an objectively and abjectly corrupted system.  They have to.  Their very livelihood depends upon their willingness to "just follow orders," and "not make the law, just enforce it," no matter how disgustingly destructive that law might be to the clear-eyed witness.

It should be pretty obvious by now: People have lost respect and gained mistrust for law enforcement, and increasingly, this entire system of government.  If you can't see why by now, it is only because you don't want to see.  At this point, I don't know what can be done to regain that respect and trust.

At the very least, the following would need to happen:

• The war on drugs must be ended IMMEDIATELY.  This would be the single biggest good-faith measure that law enforcement personnel could make to show they want to bring an end to hostilities.  The roughly half of all prisoners now behind bars on non-violent drug charges should likewise have their families made whole.

• The "vast majority" of good police need to start aggressively weeding out the bad ones, and in the most public manner possible.

• Politicians who flippantly break laws need to be publicly and permanently removed from office.

• Government employees need to be treated like they're actual human beings and not some God-like entity with their own special set of rules (or lack thereof).

• All law enforcement activities whose only purpose is revenue generation must be stopped.  Any time an officer interfaces with the public the only purpose of this interaction should be the protection of non-violent people.

• Police should start functioning like the fire department - we don't need them proactively patrolling the streets.  Realistically, you cannot "prevent crime."  All cops can do is show up in time to chalk the body and write a report.  We can still have them do this without them aggressively seeking reasons to take more money from people, either through tickets or civil asset forfeiture.  STOP STEALING OUR STUFF.

Even if these and other actions were taken, I don't know that it would be enough.  Personally, I will never trust someone who wants to be in a position to "legally" use violence against me in the name of conformity.

Politicians might be beyond hope at this point, but things don't have to be the way they are between the police and public.  We are being artificially pitted against one another by an authoritarian system that only cares about its own power.  To people like Hillary Clinton, we are all just disposable pawns.

Obviously, it would be reasonable for anyone to defend themselves from an attack.  The people who are currently targeting police should fully expect return fire.  I want to urge both sides to stop killing one another.  To the enforcement arm: The power-elite at the top will not give you the "go ahead" to take the necessary actions to end this fighting.  It will be up to you as an individual to choose to end this.  Stop looking to your superiors for the "wink and nod."  You have to look into your own conscience to decide what is right or wrong here.

Unless and until there are some serious overhauls to the way things are done now, violence between cops and the public will be inevitable.  He might have held it together admirably well for a long time, but the repeatedly kicked dog seems to have reached his breaking point.  Calling his lashing out "unprovoked" and saying there is "no possible justification" for it is more than a little bit disingenuous.  It may be true that the recently fallen officers did not personally harm innocent people, but they wore the mantle of those who do so on an alarmingly regular basis.

When is it acceptable to shoot a cop?  No sooner or later than the moment it would be acceptable to shoot anybody else.  If you think it is never okay to defend yourself against an officer, I want you to take a long hard look at the line of reasoning behind that thought.

"You always have to follow the lawful orders of police!" - German Gestapo circa 1939

Violence vs. Voluntaryism: There's Always a Better Way

Have you ever examined the basic mechanisms of the society in which you live?  From my perspective, there are two basic ways to organize society: Voluntary cooperation, or violence and coercion.

Most of us experience some mix of the two.

In our interpersonal lives - usually up to the neighborhood level - societies are largely based on voluntary cooperation, or at least the Non-Aggression Principle.  In other words, on this level, people know it is unacceptable to initiate violence against one another to force desired behaviors.  People know that if they do start a fight, the person they are starting it with is completely justified in using aggressive defensive force.

In America today, this is where civility and voluntary cooperation end.  There is still a thin veneer of civility; some illusion of the absence of violence underpinning the functions of society.  But that's all it is - an illusion.  From the town level on up to the Federal, the rest of American society has its basis completely in coercion and threats of violence, up to and ultimately including deadly force.

Don't believe me?  Try not paying property taxes.  Or refusing to comply with local government workers who order you to stop doing construction on your own house without their holy permission.  Or refusing to pay income taxes to the IRS.  Or consuming a plant deemed "dangerous" by the FDA.  The initial contact by government workers on all levels might start out civilly enough, but if you don't comply with their demands, it won't be long before they show up with an armed person to forcibly extract your wealth or put you in a cage.

And if you don't want to have your property stolen or to be kidnapped?  The person with a gun will shoot you dead.  This is the ultimate conclusion of every "law" now on the books.  This is the reality of how American society is now organized.  There is no element of voluntary cooperation - either you will do what your rulers say, or they will put you down.  In my view, this is an absolutely unacceptable way to behave towards other human beings.

Any human interaction that is not voluntary is inherently wrong.  If your ideas are good enough to be followed, you will not need to employ people with guns to force your neighbors into compliance.  And if you do need to employ such people, your ideas really sucked to begin with.  This is true whether you are homeless and on the streets or the President of the United States.

Bottom line: There is ALWAYS a better way to get things done than by using force.  The only time violent force is legitimate is when it is used in self defense or the defense of another.  Anything else is just plain wrong.

"The problem isn't the person who is sitting on the throne.  The problem is that the throne exists at all." - Larken Rose