Is the USA becoming a "police state"?

In the follow-on to the Occupy movement, the draconian rules laid on by the Charlotte, NC City Council in advance of the Democratic National Convention, and a variety of other reports passing by on the various social media streams, some folks are claiming that the USA is becoming a "police state."

This claim, to me, is putting the cart before the horse.  While there are disturbing trends toward excessive use of force by the state in response to low level disobedience, what is happening is not yet to the level of a real police state.

History reveals that there is a periodic pattern in USA history that moves from tolerance of dissent to intolerance and overreaction.  Following the Civil War there was a period of intolerance, during World War II it got intolerant, in 1968 the reaction of the Chicago police was extreme, and the NYPD is, at the moment, overstepping its proper authority.

I submit, however, that these abuses do not rise to the level that would define a real police state.  Look at Iran, China, Nazi-era Germany, any any other example that is held up as a police state.  The statistics simply don't support a conclusion that the USA is approaching that level.

The "average" citizen is still allowed to exercise the right to speak out and carry on their activities and associations without a certainty of being punished for those activities.  There may be paranoia that notes are being taken and lists are being made (with some justification!) but the vast numbers of Americans can carry on without the trepidation of certain retaliation.

I am encouraged, for example, by the reaction of the Ninth(?) Circuit Court in the suit challenging some of the provisions of last year's NDAA. (The NDAA is one of those annual traditions that Congress and the White House have developed in the 20th century.)  Sure, the repressive possibility of detaining civilians by the military is there, but the courts are telling the government that they can't be quite so caviler about it.  This is merely the latest posturing that the government has issued claiming such powers.  I feel pretty sure, though, that if the government were to attempt to actually use these claimed powers on a widespread basis, the attempt would backfire and cause a second revolution that would reassert the rights reserved to the people.

This is (another) one of the situations in which the American experiment in government is required to maintain a careful balance between itself and the people that is laid out in the Constitution and subsequent laws and court decisions.  (A notable other example is the tension between religion and the government.)

There are abuses, to be sure, but we need to take a longer term view and act to maintain those balances.