Truth to Power

Claire Wolfe on civil unrest

Preparing for civil unrest

By Claire Wolfe

The most remarkable thing about civil unrest is that there hasn’t been more of it.

Politicians are making a hash of this country–and much of the rest of the civilized world. We know it. They know it. They know we know it. But we don’t feel we can do anything much to stop them.

That right there is the pre-condition for civil unrest–when people are frustrated and politicians are nervous.

Worse, that was how things stood before last fall’s crash. Before pols on both left and right launched the biggest mass transfer of wealth in history–transferring our wealth (what we had left of it!) to their friends on Wall Street and in the banking industry. In other words, that’s how things were before things got bad!

Now everybody’s talking about the ongoing catastrophe (even if we are in a momentarily sunny mood). But almost nobody is talking about the logical–maybe even inevitable–consequences of cynical or desperate politicians abusing an already fed-up populace: civil unrest.

I mean people taking to the streets. Or mass resistance. Or crackdowns because the government fears we might do something to upset its apple cart. It’s going to happen. Somewhere. At some time. It’s going to.</em>

And people are silly enough to wonder why I want to move from a large city to a desert. Silly people.


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