As dismal a prediction of the future as I have seen is presented here. For a country that has never seen wide-scale rioting and civil unrest, it may be difficult to imagine it happening here in your town, even on the very street where you live. It doesn’t have to be class warfare. It may be your neighbor or former friend desperate for food for his family. Or it may be welfare dependents who no longer receive their welfare.
Regardless, it is a very real possibility as the economic realities force governments at all levels to cut back drastically. Yes, these are the times when we most need our social safety nets, but we have squandered the resources on less important things. Now there is not enough to go around and lives are about to change.
The real possibility of civil unrest is discussed in this article where it is stated: As the Army War College stated, the Pentagon is preparing for “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” and “widespread civil violence” due to “purposeful domestic resistance.”
The dire economic straits of the population is captured here:
As social safety net programs have been drained of reserves, many US citizens have also been burning through their personal savings. Over the past few years the percentage of Americans living paycheck to paycheck has dramatically increased. In 2007, 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. In 2008, the percentage increased to 49 percent. In 2009, the number skyrocketed up to 61 percent. The most recent number for 2010 has exploded to a shocking 77 percent. This means in our nation of 310 million citizens, 239 million Americans are one setback away from economic ruin and millions more are in danger of having to rely on government assistance for survival.
The article quotes a number of insiders as to what may happen including former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski:
I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America….
It is really anyone’s guess as to how bad the social unrest could become. An important point is that we are in a vastly different condition than we were in the 1930s. Then, people were savers. There was a moral code that doesn’t exist anymore. Millions of people did not consider themselves “entitled” to live at others expense. Neither the Federal government nor most of the citizens of the country were hopelessly in debt.
As we approach the coming economic and social collapse, we are arguably in much worse shape now than we were then. Senator Christopher Bond, vice Chair of the Intelligence Committee, described “the primary focus of the intelligence community” as the economic crisis. The Army War College has warned that the economic crisis might necessitate:
… use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”
Should things truly get bad, we are looking at martial law at a minimum. There is no way to avoid the economic catastrophe and its potential grows bigger by the day as government continues to spend resources it does not have. Should the worst happen, the only thing worse than being a citizen caught in the middle might be a politician on the run.
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