There’s a lot of debate going on about who or what ‘matters.’

I won’t touch on that except to say all sides seem to be perpetuating a carefully constructed narrative meant to harm and divide people rather than strengthen or help anyone.

Whether you’re from the left and believe black lives matter, the right so you think blue lives matter, or a Reptilian so you know green lives matter and will destroy humanity to prove it, one thing I think most of us can agree upon is that we don’t want to live in a society where tanks are rolling up and down our streets. Well, the Reptilians probably do want that, but I digress.

But let’s wander away from that topic for a moment and talk about something that in my humble view matters very much: the militarization of America’s police forces.

A May report in Forbes states that between 2014 and 2015 over 2.2 billion dollars in military gear was transferred from the armed forces to local police departments across the country.

With all the heated rhetoric it kind of seems to me like we’re ignoring the fact that our local cops are being molded into little paramilitary outfits right before our eyes.

Could it be that this militarization might be contributing to a certain attitude among cops that they are something other than keepers of the peace?

The Obama Justice Department in 2012 introduced its COPS Hiring program which provided grants of 111 million dollars to local law enforcement on the condition that the money be used to hire returning Veterans from wars fought after September 11th, 2001.

So we have trained soldiers with military gear policing our streets now.

Do we really want that?

And even more importantly, do we want to see what it leads to?