The more things change...

A little over 40 years ago today, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to preach at a small black church in Shreveport, Louisiana. As the Rev. Harry Blake revved up the congregation from the pulpit, suddenly the front doors of the church were burst open by a battering ram and Shreveport police officers marched in and started whipping the congregation with their batons as police dogs snarled. Black men and women in their Sunday best climbed over each other to get away from the whipping batons and snarling teeth. The Rev. Blake thundered from the pulpit, "How dare you defile a house of God! Are you servants of Satan?" At that point Public Safety Commissioner George D'Artois, a Mafioso who had been elected year after year to "keep the niggers down", rode his white horse up the aisle of that church and directed two of his officers to pistol-whip the Rev. Blake. They did so, within an inch of his life, inflicting permanent injuries that would be with him for the rest of his life. D'Artois then turned to the congregation and announced, "There ain't gonna be no meeting with no commie nigger outside agitator in my city. Go home."

People ask me if I'm afraid of Osama bin Laden. No. Osama is a two-bit dipshit hiding in a cave in Pakistan. He got lucky once, but won't get lucky again now that Americans know what he's up to. Misters Smith and Wesson will make sure of that, if any of his minions show up on this shore they are toast. What I am afraid of is a militarized police force which views the population that supposedly hires them as "the enemy", which will happily beat down a black pastor in the pulpit of his church or in the halls of Congress until it takes an ambulance to haul him off, which would happily enforce martial law against "terrorists" if so ordered by their superiors. What I am afraid of is a "free" press which proudly proclaims "Negro riot broken up by Shreveport City Police!" or "Black preacher assaults police officer!" (yeah, he assaulted the belly of the police officer with his broken leg when the police officer jumped on it, yssiree"). What I am afraid of is a population that, by and large, really doesn't care about whether they live in a democracy or in a fascist dictatorship as long as they can continue to go shopping. What I am afraid of, in other words, are the enemies of democracy who are already here and have been here for as long as I've been alive, not some dipshit in Pakistan who would get shot dead if he ever dared set foot on American soil. I have met the real enemy of America, and it is us.

-- Badtux the History Penguin