Terrible Social Turmoil

Many of us have had conversations about what is going to happen in America when the "free" foodstamps, welfare and social programs checkbook goes dry. Of course people with no job, no food and no shelter are not going to sit still for very long. So what will they do?

I'm guessing it will be civil unrest (terrible social turmoil?)....which means riots and looting....which almost ALWAYS leads to the more heinous crimes of raping and killing. If you don't believe it....look back at what happened when the flood hit New Orleans. Shoot, just look back to Black Friday and see the people stomping on each other trying to save $20 at Walmart!

Of course you aren't surprised that "Dennis Downer" is saying such things....that's all I ever deliver is the bad news...right?

So how about when such things start getting published in Newsweek? Does that make one sit up and pay attention?

Why It’s Time to Worry
Can the United States go the way of Germany in the past—a great society undone by terrible social turmoil?

On a trip to Berlin in the spring of 2009, I visited the German Historical Museum, intending to stay an hour or so. I spent much of the next two days there. The museum is laid out chronologically, from the time of the Romans through the Cold War. As I wandered through rooms of gorgeous art and fascinating artifacts, I felt like a passenger on a doomed voyage. Germany has been, throughout its long history, a magnificent vessel that repeatedly capsizes. The museum presents great intellectual and cultural achievements—undone or sullied by terrible social convulsions, one after another. It’s as if Germany were a ship with tall masts and great sails but no keel to keep it upright in a storm.

America’s social harmony has depended at least to some degree on economic growth. It is easier to get along when everyone, more or less, is getting ahead. But when the pie is shrinking, social groups are more likely to turn on each other. America has always been a remarkably classless society—obsessed by status and money, perhaps, but fluid enough so there was never an identifiable social class that was able to keep the rest out. But as the perception grows that the rich are intent on getting richer and the rest be damned, the folks outside the gated community are growing restless.

See it here; http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/04/the-deepest-dangers-facing-the-united-states.html

The author doesn't go on to predict in detail what happens when, "the folks outside the gated community are growing restless,"....but he probably couldn't risk saying such things in a national magazine. But we can sure connect the dots...and we can look at the history of all the other great civilizations that grew hungry and followed their stomachs into a mess. Didn't Germany accept Hitler because he promised them food and found the Jews to blame all their troubles on?

Of course they did. Could that happen here? Of course it could.