All of the events that are featured in Karen’s post occurred in small towns, the very places where this sort of thing did not happen before.  All of us who were brought up in small communities remember the time when everyone knew the police officers and they knew us, and the kind of police assaults and escalations simply did not happen.

Unfortunately, today is different.  Even in tiny towns, it is “us against them” and police are trained to kill or attack anyone who might disobey a police order.  For example, not that long ago, the police in a town like Toccoa, Georgia, would have known the preacher who was shot, and he would have known them.  There would have been no raids, no rushing of his car with guns drawn.  These things rarely happened at all.

Now they are regular occurrences.  We are not talking about New York City.  We are talking about Toccoa, Georgia, and Glenrock, Wyoming. THAT is the pattern that has developed, and it tells me that the America in which I grew up is dead.  Dead.