When the riots begin
Sweetleaf
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Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,461
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
Unfortunately, I am no longer some crack ball muttering madly to myself about impending social dislocation. You can all tell now from the march of events that social upheaval is coming. Please remember that many of these "revolutionaries" are going to be armed.
Well I can understand why people would want a revolution...if violence truly is the only way things will change, well then I guess I can't complain too much. Corporatism is pretty evil....its like a mix of capitalism and facism, as for capitalism there are some good elements of capitalism but its certainly not all good.
I prefer the idea of peacefully trying to change things but in this world? not sure if its very realistic.
The problem is also this.
The combined police power of the USA (civilian and military) cannot maintain control of the masses. Iraq is glaring proof of how limited our power is...we couldn't even dominate a nation around the size of Texas. Heck, we never had 100% control of the capitol city (hence the "Green Zone" versus the rest of Baghdad).
As more flareups happen and people realize the police really can't do much, it will embolden more rebellion. Sadly, rather than patriots taking a stand for a just cause, it will be the anarchists who will push the envelope just because they can.
If all hell does break loose, there is no way for the state to really ensure the safety of everyone. The powerlessness of the government was made very clear during the UK riots earlier this year. The Chinese have a saying: the few cannot defeat the many. With their superior numbers, the mob can prevail. But this is not the real problem.
An issue which no one is presently discussing is the return of large numbers of veterans to the United States. American withdrawal from Iraq is nearly complete and the drawdown in Afghanistan is in full swing; meaning that many former soldiers, specialists in the arts of violence, have come home. Burdened and traumatized by their experiences on the battlefield, even in the best of times, it would have been hard to situate and root these former warriors into civilian lives. But in this economy, the veterans return to a world which have no place for them.
One of the most frightening things about Occupy Wall Street is that the veterans seem to have taken to the movement with gusto. At OWS they give vent to their rage and seek solace for their despairs. But no matter what they do, regardless of how patiently everyone else endures, a spirit so twisted by violence cannot heal. Their cries go unanswered because it is unanswerable. Blood in, blood out. They will do what they know best, what they know only.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le2226104/
Again, the Canadians. She is spot on when she says that many of the OWS occupiers are unemployable because of the bad choices they made and not because of what anyone else did.
Sweetleaf
Veteran
Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,461
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
Again, the Canadians. She is spot on when she says that many of the OWS occupiers are unemployable because of the bad choices they made and not because of what anyone else did.
Sounds like some bs propaganda to me, considering all the various reasons why someone may be unemployable or unable to find a job. to simply say they all deserve to be in the situation they're in is bs. That's like saying everyone within the wealthy 1% deserves everything they have which is not the case.....but it does not really matter what anyone thinks about it s**t will probably hit the fan soon enough and then all that will matter is survival.
I wish that there were BS propaganda from OWS because that would help everyone to understand what these people are protesting about. Try as I might, there is no discernible ideology to be found that might thread the movement together other than a sense of rage against the system.
The violence is ratcheting up. The cold is really starting to bite and tempers are fraying.
kxmode
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Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,613
Location: In your neighborhood, knocking on your door. :)
Don't worry. It'll happen. "And the wolf will actually reside for a while with the male lamb, and with the kid the leopard itself will lie down, and the calf and the maned young lion and the well-fed animal all together; and a mere little boy will be leader over them. And the cow and the bear themselves will feed; together their young ones will lie down. And even the lion will eat straw just like the bull. And the sucking child will certainly play upon the hole of the cobra; and upon the light aperture of a poisonous snake will a weaned child actually put his own hand. They will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain; because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea." (Isaiah 11:6-9) In other words true peace between humans and animals... including invertebrates.
You say civilization, I say entitlements that are no longer affordable. Billions of people live far simpler lives for a lot less than what the malcontents in Europe and America claim as their inalienable birthright.
Your appreciation is most likely missing things like cost of living. I can get the food for a day with 1.00 dollar in here. Good luck doing that in Europe or America.
It's doable here if you actually cook your food. Easily doable. My friend's Indian family of 4-5 people ate on $90 a month. But regardless of rice and beans being available, Americans will riot for sure once they stop affording hot pockets and frozen pizzas.
And as far the original topic of the dollar dying, I'm a bit too lazy to watch the video at the moment, but uh, my thoughts on that. I think the dollar will die a slow painful death. It already is. I remember energy drinks I bought just a year ago raising in price by a dollar, just simple things like that are going up. I don't think the dollar will catastrophically just "explode" there may be mile markers we see in hindsight, but yeah. All we have to hope for is that it doesn't end up in Zimbabwe dollars or post WWI German marks or something to that effect, which it probably shouldn't, as while USA is bad off, we're not a worthless country. We manufacture stuff, we own land, etc.
If anything, what I think is much more likely is China and others will let, you know, the American economy not explode, if we give them something in return. We were basically giving them reputation points, but now they've found out those don't go as far as they used to. Now they're probably going to want actual tangible things. I'm wondering what the tangible things our debt holders want. Also, too, geopolitically, even with China, China owning our debt, would, say, give them leverage to use against us, so we don't go invade North Korea or something to that effect.
And as far as riots happening. Well, they are. Occupy Wall Street? Yep, people are mad about stuff. It will get worse. I don't agree with the riots really, but hey, they're happening. It's only going to get worse, but I don't think it's going to be recognizable as being worse due to our own human minds working the way they do. We can see in hindsight, turning points, culture shifts, etc, but we usually cannot see them while they're happening, as we're too concerned with our own survival to analyze the situation and make a judgement about it relating to the future or how things were in the past.
Again, the Canadians. She is spot on when she says that many of the OWS occupiers are unemployable because of the bad choices they made and not because of what anyone else did.
i'm assuming that the globe and mail is like the canadian equivalent of the daily mail in the uk?
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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?
Adam Smith
The violence is ratcheting up. The cold is really starting to bite and tempers are fraying.
Wait until the cold months of winter come. Then those scruffy people will have to go indoors and off the streets.
ruveyn
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/ ... LA20120121
This is the year the world is supposed to end or the U.S. economy will collapse or George W. Bush becomes POTUS again. The prepper movement is gaining steam and it is driven by the same motive force that first created the Tea Party and then the Occupy movements - the deep, inescapable and profoundly unsettling awareness that Americans have of their own decline. In a sense these people are right, civilization as they know it is coming to an end; though it does not mean that civilization itself is ending. The end of one epoch simply marks the beginning of another.