Editor:

George Floyd’s murder was tragic, but what has happened in spite of it is even more so. Minneapolis literally had the chance to address police brutality and systemic racism all in memory of this man. Sadly, instead they burnt it to the ground. I don’t mean that figuratively either, they literally burnt it to the ground.

The whole nation that saw the horrendous video of his murder sat in solidarity. We forgot our differences whether they be about politics, race, or anything else, to stand in defense of a man who was murdered at the hand of an agent of the state. I have never understood how rioting and stealing a flat screen television honors a man’s memory, but now I truthfully believe that only the thugs remain.

Fascism is coming to America, but not through the ballot box as so many Democrats feared when President Trump was elected. It is coming through our actions as a nation in the larger cities, and it will slowly spread throughout this country until we are either compliant or we are arrested.

Once military is deployed on our native soil, we are going to see the reality of what fascism truly means. Military is not meant to police a populace; they are trained heavily to do one thing. I am not saying that it is not important to learn those skills for active warzones, but as time has shown us, we have become more of the world’s police force and less of an isolationist entity that only retaliates.

Fascism, as it slowly spreads, will not leave with our current president. As we have seen since the creation of our great nation, and especially since the Civil War, once the federal government has power, it tends never to let it go.

We need only to look back at the Patriot Act, which has only been strengthened since its creation. Even when Edward Snowden risked his life and his liberty to show us that the government was actively ignoring our civil rights through the NSA, we as a people were outraged for two months and then went back to living our lives.

Our government has done as all empires do. They rig the system for the wealthy and try to circumvent their very own laws and regulations to get more power in their hands at the expense of their citizens. They have done everything in their power to make sure this could happen, and now they will capitalize on the opportunity. The COVID-19 pandemic has already become a memory in most of our lives, only to be replaced by riots. As November comes closer and we turn to our ballots, let us remember how quick the government was throughout this year to bail out large corporations, to keep us locked in our homes, to infringe on our rights and then to use our own military against us when fuel was added to a dim fire.

I am not saying that this is Trump’s fault or that he is even to blame for the actions of one officer. I am simply saying that larger government, whether it be federal or local, is never a good thing. It starts with the best of intentions, as all social programs do, and the results never deliver.

Patrick Ballinger

Evanston