Praise the Lord and pass the MRE's

There was a cable TV show a few years ago about "preppers", people who thought "the gubment is gonna come get us", or a meteor will strike Earth, probably somewhere near Des Moines, or both.  I watched it simply because it was good for a laugh.  (Remember, this was long before the Donald and Hillary Show.)  But now I'm reading things in major, respected journals and newspapers that are advocating essentially what those nut-cases preppers were doing back then that we poo-pooed as goofy.  Seriously?

Yeah, seriously.  They started out reminding us that climate change is doing some weird things these days.  Like Hurricane Sandy tearing up the northeast a few years ago, and more recently flooding in Louisiana, and in central Texas a few months before that.  And how about those killer winters storms that don't let up for weeks, or those tornadoes we're seeing in "the alley" almost year-round?  I don't even want to think about a west-coast earthquake.  Yikes!

Those showed us that "shit happens" "feces occurs", and that until help arrives, you're on your own.  FEMA might bring you a bag of ice, and the nice church people will pass out sandwiches as fast as they can, but hour-to-hour, day-to-day, you are all you'll have. 

More recently the experts are warning that evil people, be they foreign governments or terrorists, are working overtime to learn how to shut down our financial system, or our electrical grid(s), or our transportation system, and it's only a matter of time before they successfully cyber-attack us.  Lovely.

Now, to add insult to injury, they're saying we shouldn't be surprised by civil unrest after an election that didn't go the way the well-armed losing side wanted, or after a police-minority incident escalates out of control.  Too much mayhem, too few police.  Too many fires, too few firefighters.  DOH! 

OK, fine.  I'll look into it further and report back all the things you need to know to make it to 2017, like the shelf life of Hostess Ding Dongs, or where to buy the most accurate long-range sling-shot.  Stand by.  ;)

S

I'll get the coat hangers, you get the marshmallows

I think many of us are scared to look over our shoulder, afraid of what we might see.  And as more evidence of the denial we are in (IMO), here's what nobody dares say out loud:  Our country is crumbling before our very eyes.  And worse, violence may not be far behind.

Things are near a boiling point.  For years the approval rating of Congress has been less than 10%.  Republicans and Democrats will almost never sit down and find common ground.  Republicans say "no" to President Obama before even hearing what he has to say, and if a President Trump is in our future, I'm sure Democrats will treat him the same.

African Americans feel they are being profiled and abused by the police, and many are quick to take to the streets.  The Donald has said, and apparently many agree, that Mexicans are thieves and murderers and rapists and should be kept out by a tall wall.  The threat of Islamic terrorism has us willingly (?) giving up our civil liberties.  Remember the Occupy Wall Street movement? 

Police are ambushed and killed somewhere almost every day.  It is becoming increasingly difficult for them to protect us when they must first think of protecting themselves.  There is little respect left for "law and order".  "Patriots" are occupying Federal property at gunpoint in Oregon.  The Second Amendment is sacred; guns are bad, blah, blah, blah.  There is no tolerance, and the chasm is getting wider.

Americans don't normally think in terms of armed revolutions.  Those things only happen in Argentina, Eastern Europe, and some of those far-away countries that end in "stan".  We're above all that, right?

I say "don't be so sure."

"Oh Scott, you're paranoid.  You watch too much TV, and you know how the media sensationalizes."

Really?  I live in Ted Cruz country, where 1.2 million people voted for him just yesterday.  He's brilliant and totally without scruples, I don't care how much Scripture he quotes.  I'm around many of his believers every day, and I can tell you that far too many of them are pissed-off knuckle-dragging zealots.  They are emblematic of the underlying anger simmering everywhere.

While it might be good politics to preach love and tolerance, it's unlikely to dissuade the guy hurling a Molotov cocktail at you or taking pot-shots at your car.

Sure, most of us just put in our 40 hours at work, watch a little TV, and coach the kids little league team.  We're not the problem.  But there seems to be no shortage of anger across the country, and it doesn't take many malcontents to set a few fires, randomly kill a few innocents, and intimidate the majority to send our society into a tailspin.  (Then multiply by 10 when you figure in the copycats and the publicity sicko's.)  That's what mobs do, and it works!

I'm just advising you to stay alert and take nothing for granted.   And hope I'm wrong.

S

Trouble in Paradise?

Refugee centers in Sweden are being burned to the ground in what appears to be a statement against the significant number of refugees the country has allowed in.  The multiple arsons have all been at facilities which house or are slated to house immigrants.

[>100K immigrants are expected to arrive there in 2015.   Sweden's current total population is estimated to be 9.8M]  

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Sweden has long had a reputation for being hospitable to asylum seekers, apparently up 'till now.  It seems there is a backlash growing against the sizable Middle Eastern community of refugees that have made their way to Sweden in recent years.  There are even a number of areas (55) where police, fire, and EMT service is not readily available due to Muslim "gangs" who are terrorizing their neighborhoods.  The gangs run things there, not the civil authorities.
  

The Swedish EMT union (?) has even declared that they would not respond to calls to those areas unless they were provided "military grade" equipment and protection.  [NOTE:  That was in 2014.  I'm not sure if that situation still persists today.]

Here is the real world we face:  Refugees are welcomed in, given all the advantages of their host countries social welfare system, yet are not being assimilated into the mainstream of society. They remain isolated and often unemployed, leading to social unrest.  This is common in much of Europe, and has led to the rise of many nationalistic, anti-immigrant political parties.
  

Just opening your doors out of the kindness of your heart, then walking away while patting yourself on the back is just asking for trouble.  Without having a long term top-to-bottom plan to assimilate new immigrants, including having at least a reasonable hope of jobs available for them when they get here, is just moving problems from one place to another.  

In a perverse way, this kind-yet-not-well-thought-out gesture is actually playing right into the hands of terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.  Masses of poor, isolated, and unemployed youth are fertile recruiting grounds for evil doers.  It's happening every day!

"Yeah, but that's over there, and we're here.  No problem, right?  Right?"

It's a crazy, dangerous "damned if we do, damned if we don't" world we live in.  Just sayin'.

S

It's already starting

Civil unrest.  Like many, I've predicted that next spring we could be seeing massive protests all across the country.  Protests by the unemployed, the underemployed, the currently-employed-but-worried-about-tomorrow.  Protests by those cynics who think our government is broken, and our elected civil servants corrupt.  From the Tea Partyers to the Union members, there are a lot of them, and I think they have some very valid complaints.


But my timing was off.  It's starting now.  The relatively small number of rowdies who are protesting Wall Street and the banks have now spread to other cities and financial districts, and they're gaining respectability.  (There was a march here today on the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas.)  Now there's word that protesters are mobilizing on college campuses (anything to get out of class  ;) upset about increases in tuition and cuts in classes, all while their administrators are pulling down very handsome paychecks.


And of course the Greeks are rioting.  They're now saying a Greek government default is inevitable, and if so, Italy and Spain and Portugal might be close behind.  Will a financial earthquake in Europe lead to a tsunami here?


Frankly, in a perverse way, I welcome all this.  I'm hoping that by next year, an ELECTION YEAR, there will be a mass exodus of incumbent politicians of both parties wanting to get out of Dodge before the crowd gets really rough.  Think of it as the "Ultimate Spring Cleaning".


This could be historic!  


S