by smallpoxgirl » Sun 25 May 2008, 04:04:40
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'H')ow do you see it unfolding, SPG? A single triggering event, multiple, or just a slow boil gradually gathering steam and a social explosion?
I don't think we're near that point just yet. Once Africa and parts of Asia have seen a 50% population decline due to starvation, start looking for it here. Desperation breeds rash action. People here aren't desperate. Far from it. Once the homeless camps start building numbers, and enough people have put their kids to bed hungry enough times, I think it's going to explode. The actual inciting even will be something insignificant. The ferocity with which it spreads will seem very sudden and inexplicable to a lot of people....like 911 did. Those have been paying attention will be thinking "Man, I can't believe it took that long to happen." Once it comes down to a fight for survival...for the resources people need to live...I think the American melting pot will explode into a hundred different factions. Urban vs. Rural. Owner vs. worker. In LA and the southeast US, it will be very racial in character.
How does the list play out? In the midst of the chaos, it's irrelevant. Look at New Orleans. The NOPD weren't out trying to round up suspected dissidents. The NOPD were too busy looting Wal Mart. The chaos though, will almost certainly be blamed on some group. Conservative rural folks where things are more peaceful, will be looking to round up people who seem to be part of the blamed group because they will see it as helping keep their area safe and peaceful.
Before things get quite so bad, the government will almost certainly blame some group for engineering the hardship, and those people are likely to be rounded up and offered to the consumers as a human sacrifice. Oil speculators seem to be the present scape goat, but it will probably soon turn more towards ethnic and religious lines, Arab, Muslim, etc. We saw a bit of it after 911 with Guantanamo, but as inconvenience turns to true hardship, the consumers will grow restless. Their thirst for blood will grow, and they will need to be appeased with greater regularity. It's quite conceivable that any variety of dissident groups could be used offered up: environmental "radicals", anarchists, communists, religious minorities, etc.