Gov. Lamont (Democrat, Connecticut) issued an executive order that expands policing forces by fusing previous non-policing posts with a policing function. Without arrest or trial or conviction, these extended police auxiliaries have the power to issue fines of $100 for failure to wear masks in public. That power itself is totalitarian, but of equal importance is this fusion of civil government agencies with police. The ones with the new power are “Commissioner of Public Health, local health directors, district health directors, and their designees; municipal chief executive officers and their designees; and state and municipal police officers, peace officers …special police forces … and public safety departments of institutions of higher education to issue fines.”
Such an expansion directly makes policing more of a “total” presence against a personal matter and choice (to wear or not to wear) that has zero external effect on other people. This can correctly be seen as a thoroughly totalitarian measure.
This expansion and fusion is similar to organizational changes made by the Nazis after assuming power. In the first place, fining for non-mask wearing is a preventive measure and that’s totalitarian. “The Nazis offered the police the broadest latitude in arrests, incarceration, and the treatment of prisoners. The police moved to take ‘preventive action,’ that is, to make arrests without the evidence required for a conviction in court and indeed without court supervision at all.”
In the second place, the devolution and extension of police power to municipalities and local health officials and their designees, an unbounded power if there ever was one, is similar to the Nazi fusion of policing organizations. “The Nazi state fused the police with the SS and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD), two of the most radical and ideologically committed Nazi organizations.” In the Connecticut case, health and safety personnel are being assigned a policing function. They effectively become police, and they are named along side of police and peace officers.
The raft of unconstitutional (and deadly) actions taken by state governors during this COVID episode is one of the biggest revelations of 2020. They show a truly alarming condition of ignorance and lack of wisdom and prudence. Add to this the incredible actions of a number of leftist city governments and lax district attorneys such as in Portland, Seattle, Chicago and Minneapolis. Add in also the bowing and scraping toward the nutty and obnoxious BLM and its crowds. Then add in the radicalization effect of 4 crazy democratic socialists on the entire Democratic party. And this would not have happened but for the popularity of Bernie Sanders, itself a reflection of a political milieu that requires surgery and repair to remove some serious cancerous growths if the body politic is to survive and thrive.
1:41 pm on September 17, 2020
