Breitbart has a lurid account this morning of “violent riots” that have “shut down” the city of Baltimore. To anyone who was paying attention, it is obvious that it was the high handed antics of the Baltimore police, not the protests themselves, that shut down the city.

It is important to realize that in today’s cultishly authoritarian police culture, the resulting outrage is not a bug but a feature. From travelers stranded on the closed interstate to the imprisoned crowd at the ballpark, thousands of complete innocents got the message loud and clear that the cops can do anything they like and there is fuck all the little people can do about it.

I think we might be headed for a catastrophic breakdown of law and order in this country. People are fed up with being robbed and abused at every turn by the very people they have empowered to prevent robbery and abuse. Police excess and arrogance, from gleefully shooting dogs and beating old ladies to “asset forfeiture,” is designed for one thing, to intimidate the law abiding, to emphasize the power and supremacy of law enforcement to the “sheep.”
The problem with this is the apparent assumption by many police that their power and authority is theirs and theirs alone. This is why they remain so amazingly oblivious to the rising tide of anger and resentment from all points of the political spectrum. They lost the left decades ago, and they are in the process of losing the right.

Their power is not theirs alone, though. Their power and authority is still, both legally and practically, based solely on the consent of the public. Think about it: The average urban police department is outnumbered hundreds to one by the people they increasingly seek to dominate and whose consent is essential to their power. Some spark, an urban equivalent of Bundy Ranch for example, could lead to a conflagration that could spread across the country in a matter of hours when people realize just who has the real power and who does not.