It is easy to be distracted right now by the circus politics that dominate the news headlines. But stop being distracted. Don’t be fooled, not even a little, no matter how tempting it seems to just take a peek. Why? We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

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Show Notes

Sean O’Hagan, “One angry man,” The Guardian

John W. Whitehead, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State

H.L. Mencken, “Bayard vs. Lionheart,” Baltimore Evening Sun (Jul. 26, 1920) as cited in Roger Cohen, “The Man Who Would Not Be President,” The New York Times (Nov. 18, 2016)

Christopher Ingraham, “How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church,” The Washington Post

Les Christie, “The other foreclosure crisis: Losing a home over $400 in back taxes,” CNN Money

Brad Heath, “DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash,” USA Today

Andrew Dugan, “Majority of Americans See Congress as Out of Touch, Corrupt,” Gallup

Norah O’Donnell, “Dialing for Dollars,” CBS News

Isaac Arnsdorf, “The lobbying reform that enriched Congress,” Politico

Christopher Ingraham, “Congress to constituents: ‘Show me the money,’” The Washington Post

Jon Schwarz, ““Yes, We’re Corrupt”: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics,” The Intercept

Brian Christopher Jones, “Don’t Be Silly: Lawmakers ‘Rarely’ Read Legislation and Oftentimes Don’t Understand It . . . But That’s Okay,” Penn State Law Review, Vol. 118

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” The Atlantic

Reuters, “US spending three times more on prisons than schools: Federal report,” Raw Story

Jason M. Breslow, “New Report Slams “Unprecedented” Growth in US Prisons,” PBS Frontline

Steven Nelson, “Single Mother 'Arrested for Grass' After Not Mowing,” U.S. News

Donna Murch, “Paying for Punishment,” Boston Review

Jennifer Golbeck, “All Eyes On You,” Psychology Today

Kim Zetter, “DHS Launches ‘Minority Report’ Pre-Crime Detection Program,” Wired

Jillian York, “The chilling effects of surveillance,” Al Jazeera

“Fatal Force,” The Washington Post

Sam Brodey, “SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes,” Mother Jones

Bonnie Kristian, “The troubling rise of SWAT teams,” The Week

“Baltimore police conducted more than 60 illegal strip searches, some in public – DoJ,” RT

Rebecca Klein, “Set to Stun,” The Huffington Post

Tom Coburn and Adam Andrzejewski, “Why Does the IRS Need Guns?” The Wall Street Journal

Emily Heil, “Mark Twain on Congress: idiots, criminals, dumber than fleas,” The Washington Post

Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire

Etienne de La Boétie, “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: How Do Tyrants Secure Cooperation?”

This Is How Tyranny Rises and Freedom Falls: The Experiment in Freedom Is Failing

Battlefield America: The War on the American People

Rutherford Institute