I exaggerated by using Humungous for effect. My concern is that the US may wind up where Argentina was in 2002, with looting, rioting, high crime, food shortages, and a currency crash. In that event, I can easily see most urban areas resembling Detroit or Philadelphia, with vacant vandalized buildings, high murder and robbery rates, and an overall shitty way of life.Pablo Sanchez wrote:Count Chocula wrote: If and when our current economic model fails, the inner cities will be ruled by people who look like your avatar. At that point, the stage will be set for a totalitarian Pied Piper to pick up the pieces and rope in those who will pay any price to stop the fighting, looting and scarcity. I'm hoping it never gets that far, but...it might. I'm still hoping that the adults will get to run the show, instead of the mouth-breathing thieving liars we've been saddled with for decades.Honestly, your statement here smacks of historical ignorance. People, especially on the internet, talk a good game about Social Collapse but it's just bullshit. In most countries society is actually pretty rugged and can survive a beating, and this has been demonstrated time and again. It is extraordinarily unlikely, for example, that the current economic problems will get even close to the kind of ugly situation that Britain survived in the postwar era (rationing continued into 1954, for those of you who didn't know). Certainly, in an economic meltdown some countries on less secure footing are going to be in trouble--Mexico is already fraying around the edges, just for one--but America is a pretty tough bird.Richard Hofstadter wrote:
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.
In my experience, having grown up and lived in both urban and rural areas, Americans would NOT cope well with scarcity, poverty and high crime...especially when most Americans would believe that they had nothing to do with the conditions. Get a few million unemployed, frustrated, angry people riled up or fearful, and you have all the ingredients needed for rioting. Suburban areas might fare better as far as crime goes, but I wouldn't bet on it - and I live in a suburb. Police agencies are already concerned about riots; and not only in the USA:
Britons are generally far more polite and restrained than Americans. If England is worried about riots, I can easily deduce that Federal, state and local governments are concerned in the US.The Guardian UK wrote:Britain faces summer of rage - police
Middle--class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets
Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.
He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.
Do I think it's "game over" for the US? Hell no; things were worse in 1982:
I'm concerned, however, that some smooth-talking, promise-filled demagogue will come onto the scene and Americans will be so desperate for improvements they'll follow whoever is most persuasive, not necessarily who is best, and we'll wind up with a kinder, gentler version of Mussolini, along with a new crop of Congressional ripoff artists. The worst thing that could happen to the US in my opinion is a degree of discomfort, possibly suffering, that will make people turn off their critical faculties and follow their emotions.
I can't believe you're pissed off about the behavior of the government and not ready to burn Wall Street to the fucking ground. If you think that simple Keynesian deficit spending in the worst economic contraction since 1929 is irresponsible and unjustified, why aren't you lambasting the free-marketeers who consistently blocked regulation of credit swaps and derivatives? Why aren't you stomping on Reagan's grave, since his blind anti-government ideology has dominated the American political scene over last thirty years? Why don't you direct your hatred toward the bankers and Wall Street managers, who in their blind optimism seized on unstable models and made unrealistic assumptions about the progression of housing prices? What about Alan Greenspan, whose unprecedented monetary expansion drove the housing bubble? Or the baby boomers, whose entitlement, anti-government, spendthrift culture have gotten into this mess in the first goddamned place? You are surrounded by a cesspool of irresponsibility, and you are directing your anger at the people who are acting responsibly and trying to pick up the pieces.
