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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Riot Rationalization Misses the Mark

    Riot Rationalization Misses the Mark

    8/12/2011
    Jonah Goldberg

    Riots are fascinating things. How lawless greed, cruelty and violence suddenly set fire to the minds of men is one of the most mysterious, almost magical (though not in the positive sense) manifestations of human behavior.

    And because they are a manifestation of human behavior, riots are as old as human nature. They were a common affair in cities before ancient Rome was new. This should invite humility in anyone purporting to know why riots happen.

    Already, on both sides of the Atlantic, lots of people are sure they know why England is burning.

    "The economic stagnation and cuts being imposed by the Tory government inevitably create social division," explained former London Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone. Livingstone is joined by an intellectual mob of liberal members of Parliament -- particularly members of the Labor Party, which ran the country for more than a decade (the social incubation period of most of the rioters) -- and left-wing pundits both there and here who insist that the new Tory government's budget cuts have led to widespread violence, even though most of the relevant cuts haven't even gone into effect.

    Of course, they always manage to say "there's no excuse" for violence. But there's always a "but" that leads a long parade of excuses.

    Invariably, these rationalizations amount to a license to spend ever more on the social programs that have, at the least, helped to produce the sort of "youths" who will burn homes and cars and beat people to death should the programs be even moderately curtailed. Indeed, according to liberal logic, the mere threat of reforming such programs is enough to cause wholesale violence.

    In other words, the cuts don't justify the violence, but the threat of violence justifies avoiding cuts. It's a clever rhetorical trick, but policy-wise it's both appeasement of and appealing to thuggery, pure and simple.

    This helps to clarify how economic inequality has come to replace poverty as the most cited "root cause" of social unrest. Poverty, while a more slippery concept than you might think, is still a definable thing. If you lack adequate housing, food and clothing, you're very poor. Western democracies don't have much of a problem, comparatively speaking, with that kind of poverty.

    But we do have income inequality. Inequality is a statistical artifact, an aesthetic offense. Its chief advantage as a bogeyman is that it will always exist and thus always justify programs to reduce it.

    On the right, there are a host of explanations that hinge on theories of cultural decay, lapsed or nonexistent parenting, and the corrosive effects of a government that saps the vitality from civil society.

    I'm much more sympathetic to this suite of theories. The last time I was in London, the tabloids were making a huge fuss over some lower-class parents staging quasi-gladiatorial fights with their toddlers so they could put the videos on YouTube. That's not a good sign, I thought at the time.

    The problem, of course, is that even if conservatives are right, there's precious little government can do to fill the holes in such souls.

    Moreover, I think we put way too much effort into intellectualizing or romanticizing mob violence. Whatever the root causes of such behavior, the simple and unavoidable truth is that looters loot because they can. As one looter explained on a British radio show: "The government aren't in control -- because if they was, we wouldn't be able to do it, could we?"

    This is the shame of Britain right now. Four days of murder and mayhem demonstrated that the police have become an incompetent social worker program. As goons of all ethnicities destroyed the livelihoods of hardworking storeowners of all ethnicities (sorely in need of gun rights), as they targeted shops not for their political symbolism but for their inventory of the latest sneakers and video games, police held a delicate seminar on the propriety of water cannons.

    Meanwhile, as the mobs' useful idiots organized conferences trying to imbue the wanton bloodshed and avarice with political nobility, the savages were announcing on their BlackBerrys which shopping district to swarm for "pure terror and havoc & free stuff."

    Mustn't forget the free stuff.

    There's an adage that the "plural of anecdote is data." Maybe so. But what we know for sure is that the plural of criminal is criminals. And the people tearing apart English society are simply criminals, whose villainy is not diluted by their numbers, but magnified by them.

    If Britain lacks prisons to hold them, build more prisons. Call it a jobs program if it helps.

    http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgol ... s_the_mark
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    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    5 Reasons Why American Riots Will Be the Worst in the World

    by Silver Shield

    I wrote an article called 5 Places NOT To Be When The Dollar Collapses. In it I wrote that societies that benefited the most from the dollar would be the worst places to be when it fell apart. While the dollar has not even collapsed yet, the strain in these areas is becoming more apparent. England is number 3 on the list has had 4 days of violent riots as people start to lose it. Israel is number 1 on that list has had massive protests. There is revolution in the air all over the world except in the US.

    America is still in deep denial which is still the first stage of the Awakening. This denial will be wiped away when the dollar collapses. For now the economy is still functioning with food and fuel available. Americans still have the illusion of wealth and normalcy. They still are stuck in the false left right paradigm and think some other sock puppet will turn things around.

    When the dollar collapses, all American illusions will collapse with it. Deep denial will turn into deep anger. The violence I expect in the other 3 areas on the list and all urban areas in the US, will make all other global riots pale in comparison. America is deeply infused with arrogance, denial, narcissism, drugs and violence. There is no other society that I know of that has the degree of intensity and combination of these factors.

    "We're Number 1! We're Number 1!"

    1. Arrogance – All of our lives we have been fed the lie that somehow we are better than everyone else. We believe this so much that we feel it is morally acceptable to stick our noses in everyone's business. We have 777+ military bases all over the world. Our currency is the world's reserve currency. We control most international organizations like the UN, IMF and World Bank. We control the world's shipping lanes. Our media is the most popular and sought after propaganda in the world. Our corporations harvest the resources that our empire provides. This has lead to an American way of life that is not negotiable. We print debt and consume. This way of life was only possible by the very real and hard sacrifices made by Americans long dead. America today is nothing more than a spoiled brat blowing through the last of their inheritance. The only thing the US is number 1 in is spreading debt and death.

    This American arrogance will be turned on to other Americans as the dollar collapses. We will no longer be able to maintain the global empire of force without a functioning currency. All of our troops will be forced to come home and we will no longer be able to import 25% of the world's oil. This sudden shift will turn arrogant Americans on each other as they seek to enforce their inflated sense of self worth on to others. They will think that somehow the world somehow owes them something and they believe that lesser people should make that sacrifice for them. After all, the American way of life is not negotiable… at least that's what Dick Cheney said.

    "Everything is fine today, that is our illusion." ~ Voltaire

    2. Denial – For those that aren't arrogant, they are in denial that somehow they are okay because they are good people. They believe that the America will recover and that the American Dream is still alive. They believe this because they either lack the ability to logically see through the lies or they believe that the people ruling them have the same morals as they do. You cannot spread freedom with war. A nation cannot enforce their will on another nation anymore than you can enforce your will upon another. There will always be blow back. Of course that is the plan of your rulers. They do not share the same values as you do. They seek to create chaos and division so that they can garner more power and profits.

    "You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality." ~ Ayn Rand

    The dollar collapse will end the ability of the average American to deny their active or passive participation in the dominance of the world by spreading debt and death. When people's entire life's savings are wiped away, they will wonder what their life has been all about. All of the missed times with their family and connections with others has been stained by the pursuit of material gains. Only when everything is taken from them, will they start to see the real importance of life. Many will not be able to come to terms with this coming reality. Those that are aware and prepared stand a great chance of making it through this paradigm shift and thrive.

    3. Narcissism – The amount of narcissism in America is epidemic. The fascination with celebrities and their clothes consumes so many women. Men are addicted to worshiping sports figures. We have this fear of competition and view others as enemies. This leads to shallow and transitory relationships. Americans consume their way into debt as they try to create an outer facade to hide a void in their vapid lives.

    The Baby Boomer generation is known as the "Me" generation. Their obsessive pursuit for material possessions was matched by their embrace of debt. The dollar collapse is going to hit the Baby Boomers the hardest as they are forced to come to term with the trail of pain they have left in their wake. Broken families and debt are just the tip of the iceberg. The war and debt machine they enabled and unleashed upon the world is a much harder reality they will have to deal with. The real problem is the sad fact that many of them will be too old to have a second chance on life.

    4. Drugs – Millions of Americans turn to drugs to fill the void of true purpose in their lives. Instead of dealing with a past a hurt or seeking a higher purpose in their lives by helping others and using their natural talents to make a better world, people turn to drugs. The worst kind of drugs are the ones that people believe are making them better. The powerful psychotropic drugs like Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) or more commonly known as anti-depressants. These drugs are extremely powerful and can cause psychotic breaks that lead to violence. Go to http://ssristories.com/ to see the list of nearly 4,300 cases of crime related to these drugs. These stories include everything from the Virginia Tech shooting to the mom that drowned her 5 kids in the bathtub. I would say that these drugs are much more dangerous than guns, because they cause the people to break from reality and cause the violence.

    I don’t have time to go into the mass medication of America and the real reason why Marijuana is illegal, but I do want to warn everyone of one thing. Nearly 10% of the country or 27 million Americans are on these drugs. Knowing that there is only a one month supply in the system and the kind of psychotic breaks that will happen if people come off these drugs too fast, this is definitely not a good thing. When the dollar collapses, we not only have to worry about the 7 to 10 day supply of food and fuel in the system, we really need to worry about the 1 in 10 Americans who are not going to be medicated while their world paradigm collapses. I can see it now, humanitarian airlifts dropping Zoloft and Lexapro from the sky…

    5. Violence – Violence has been apart of our American culture since the beginning of our country. We have the most armed population and the highest crime rates in the world. The violence we will see in some parts of America could become as bad as the Reign of Terror from the French Revolution. I wrote the 2 Coming American Revolutions. One Revolution will embrace founding fathers vision of Life , Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The other Revolution will be some collectivist vision of coercion and fear. Some parts of this country will confront the new post-dollar paradigm by embracing freedom and honest money. Others will try to hold onto power by becoming more tyrannical and finding enemies within their neighbors.

    We are surrounded by violence and have been desensitized anti social behavior. Our movies and video games show the killing of others but rarely the consequences of those actions. Even other anti social behavior has been normalized. I even realized my favorite show of all time Seinfeld was all about normalizing anti social behavior. The series finale was based on a man getting mugged and all 4 main characters not only not helping the man, but actually making fun of the man as he is violently robbed. This lack of empathy is at the root of our problems. So here we now have a society that not only cares only about themselves and their materialistic needs, we also have a society that no longer cares about other's feelings.

    The American riots will be the worst the word has seen because of the amount of will be of arrogance, denial, narcissism, drugs and violence in our society. These factors are systemic and infect every level of society. I do fear that our nation is sick enough to unleash a series of false flag events to spread our violence even further. This violent Anger phase in the 5 Stages of the Awakening will not last long and not happen in every part of America. There will be a few months of violence that will shake the faith in mankind. Those that live by the sword, will die by the sword. After the most violent are either killed, brought to justice or burnt out, we will enter in a societal depression as we try to come to terms with what has happened. This period could last for years as we struggle with the loss of wealth and life.

    I am hopeful that this collapse will actually be the beginning of something really great for mankind. A new paradigm not based on debt and death is a very real outcome of this collapse. With the collapse of the dollar, those that were lured into a senseless narcissistic consumer lifestyle will be forced to come to the understanding that instant gratification is not why we are put on this earth. Those that were ill prepared for the collapse will start to ask questions, then they will seek answers, then they will want blood. The Elite that created, perpetuated and profited off of this paradigm will be running for cover as the world wakes up to what they have done. It will be nice to have consumerism, militarism and narcissism flushed away. (Read Resonate IV)

    This collapse will not result in a One World Order. The Elite that are trying desperately make this happen will no longer be able to operate in secrecy. Their minions will lack any legitimacy with the people they rule. After all who is going to trust a President who says he did not see this coming when you and I can see it coming from miles away. The result after a very violent Anger phase is going to be massive decentralization of power not more centralization of power. Local communities, cities counties and states will assert more power over the daily activities of our lives. Some will will slip into tyranny to make order out of chaos. Others will attract the best and brightest by embracing freedom and honest money. The end result is a life where we can reach our highest and best self. How we get there is a rough road, but one I feel is easily traveled if you are aware and prepared.
    Wake Some People Up!

    Reprinted with permission from Don't Tread On Me.

    http://lewrockwell.com/orig12/shield2.1.1.html
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