Yes good points, the earliest militarization was certainly the hup-hup-hupers. The post 9/11 was to militarization what the H-bomb’s invention was to atomic war. d

On the war, I mean to say, and someday will edit it, “remember Reagan’s war on drugs.” As you point out that war is a much older concept. The whole “war on X” probably starts with the earlier War on Poverty.

Sort of. The major kick for it under Nixon was, as everything with him, motivated by “enemies” and racism. As Erhlichman said in several interviews years later:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did,” he concluded.

That particular quote is from a 1996 article by Dan Baum.

And remember that serious police militarization could be traced to 1965 when Daryl Gates (LAPD) organized the first swat team to respond to the Watts Riots. It was poorly funded — team members had to bring their own weapons, but that changed quickly. LAPD records show they began using body armor in 1974 in a fight with the Symbionese Liberation Army.

The important question now is whether the over-arming of police has become so entrenched that it can’t be stopped.

And yes, there is no doubt that the “Patriot Act” has proven to be one of the worst bits of
legislation ever passed. We can only hope ever gutless wonder who voted for it pays dearly for it in some way.

Different start to policing here in Canada but racism, particularly against indigenous peoples, is rampant in the system. One only needs to look at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to realize how bad it is.