The Dorner Explosion - when asymmetrical warfare is used to tie up an entire city's police department, and at the same time, expose the problems and corruption of that police department. Timed correctly, it can harness the rage of a population across an entire nation and become a political mechanism for institutional change.
What is going on?
The Dorner incident taps into extreme feelings that American have been reluctant to recognize. The feelings of helplessness and powerlessness from the loss of civil liberties such as habeas corpus, the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment and the open endorsement of killing Americans without trial by politicians of both parties and the mainstream media.
The rage feeding into Americans can be traced back to the Battle in Seattle, the anti-World Bank protests. More acutely is the use of police to crack down on Occupy protesters, who were basically unemployed kids who camped out in a park. Yet, they were so threatening to the institutions of power in the United States that a coordinated multi-city plan was created to crack down on the Occupy movement at once. It had mixed results, as the movement splintered and created a hundred different variations of Occupy targeted to specific interests.
America watched as basically harmless hippies were rounded up, pepper-sprayed and arrested. Although the politicians and those who finance them rested easier, they created a bigger problem: lack of trust in law enforcement institutions.
This lack of trust, combined with the history of distrust of the LA police department, has tapped into an American rage that isn't going to stop with the death of Mr. Dorner. If it was just a matter of the LA Police Department peeing in their own pool, this would be a tragic story nationwide, but would not be garnering the political power it is.
Americans all over the country are sympathetic to Mr. Dorner because they know that drones are being used to monitor their movements for the government. And since those same drones are armed and killing people in other countries, they believe that it is a matter of time before the same thing happens here.
Every online communication in this country is being recorded and stored in data fusion centers. There is no requirement for a warrant for police to gain access to your computer information. And if law enforcement had the trust of the American people, it would be less of a problem. But we all saw how, during Hurricane Katrina, police were used to shut down a bridge people were trying to use to get out of New Orleans. They also saw how the police were used to protect BP after the oil spill when activists were arrested trying to get sand samples and help wildlife.
Hidden cameras are recording our actions without our permission or even basic notice.
Americans can be detained without trial or even formal arrest. The Obama Administration may be of the opinion that most Americans are more worried about football and are not aware of what they are doing, but that is incorrect.
The police have been co-opted as a tool for the rules of corporate America. Aaron Swartz is the most recent example. A corporation wrote a Terms of Service that he violated. A Federal prosecutor, whose career is in a death spiral, used that corporate rule as a basis to threaten 30 years in prison for an Internet pioneer.
Americans watch these actions, then along comes Mr. Dorner. He feels he has been wronged. The actions and history of the LA Police Department gives them so little credibility that they actually have to reopen the case where Mr. Dorner was fired to prevent riots. That is pathetic. But they did it to themselves. The years of racism, brutality and corruption have eroded the public trust and support for law enforcement in that town. I know I never want to live there now. Didn't feel that way before all this came to light.
The nationwide traction that this case has is a direct result of the eroded trust of law enforcement in general. Americans have been watching as police buy drones to spy on us. As cars with old women are shot up. As roadside stops turn into sexual assaults. As teen football players have a license to rape in Steubenville with no consequences from the police or the law.
So you did this to yourselves. A tremendous anger has been tapped. It was the same energy that asked for "hope" and "change", and got "more" and "same." People were confused at the passion for Obama in 2008. The rage we are starting, only starting, to see now has its roots in that energy. It is the passion for change that we were promised, but denied.
Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
