Posted on 09/04/2012 5:37:03 AM PDT by Travis McGee
Bump
bump later
I sure hope so. My most fervent hope is that in two decades time I will be considered a foolish crank from early in the century, forgotten by history and laughed at roundly by the few who remember me at all.
A collapse of some sort is coming. I don’t think we can quite pin it down to what year, or decade even, because I suspect that once the democrats take power for good, due to changing demogrphics, they will raise taxes to incredible levels to keep the population under control with “free stuff’.
In time, the “free stuff” will run out....this time fo real, and that’s when the end will come for the republic. My guess: 20 or 30 years....perhaps a little longer.
See 511. When it happens, it will be breathtaking in its swiftness.
I don’t think the collapse will happen that fast everywhere. The collapse of the cities will provide plenty of warning to most other areas. The cities with their unique problems will go without food before the suburban and rural belts. It might be Zombie Apocalypse in the cities, but only Argentina elsewhere. Nobody can predict outcomes with certainty amidst such chaos and disorder. A total food supply everywhere the first month is only one projection. But in any case, it will hit the places with a 2 day supply of food in the pantry a few weeks before it hits the places with a 2 week supply. That difference will be vital. But in any case, I’d recommend NOT being near a big city, for when it hits it will hit there first and worst.
I’m thinking more like 2 years, MAX.
Shorter with Obama, longer with Romney.
I don’t know Travis. I know it’s coming. When it really starts there will be no way to stop it, and that’s what is going to shock the public. It will be fast & deadly. And the republic as we have known it will never be put back together again.
I noted that, and it's important. In modern America, our inner city poverty is not limited to blacks but includes large parts of the Hispanic community.
Bracken described the issues of tri-racial rather than bi-racial cities, with important parallels to the collapse of Yugoslavia and Beirut. He also drew parallels to Northern Ireland where both sides are white but are divided primarily by religion rather than race. He also pointed out the very important differences between urban, suburban, and rural residents, and between rich and poor income levels, which transcend racial lines.
I do not see Bracken attacking blacks or other minorities. There is a big difference between attacking a racial group for its alleged deficiencies and saying that if the economy falls apart, pre-existing racial tensions are likely to explode. Bracken is doing the latter, not the former.
The bottom line is that regardless of whether we think Bracken is right or wrong, our economy cannot sustain the current welfare state much longer, and we need to figure out what will happen when (not if, but when) it falls apart.
I have a longer post. After spending a lot of time reading this thread (and reading prior discussions of Bracken's books for a long time) I'm still debating whether to hit “send.”
Regardless of whether I hit “send” or not, when I say Bracken has a point about what could happen in a worst-case scenario — and I believe he does — I won't tolerate an accusation that I'm racist. I have an interracial marriage and have lived in inner-city communities, both black and Hispanic. That dog won't hunt with me.
Let's just say I share a lot more of Louis Foxwell’s optimism about the possibility of repairing the collapse of the black family, and hopefully preventing the impending collapse of the Hispanic family, much of which is due to federal welfare policies.
The question is what will happen if we run out of time and the welfare system falls apart along with a general economic collapse. Something like what happened with the Weimar Republic is unlikely today, but not impossible if we don't turn things around soon. Germany had no significant black population, but demagogues sure figured out how to exploit ethnic tensions against a different group of people. That specific example, which has little to do with the American racial experience and almost certainly will not be repeated here, does show us that pre-existing racial and ethnic tensions can be and often are exploited in times of keen competition for scarce jobs. Bracken is not doing that -- I think he'd love to see more black residents get jobs -- but it's pretty obvious that some inner-city thugs make a point of trying to stoke resentment against the perceived evils of "rich white people."
We ignore history at our peril.
If we can not get the government out of the compassion business we will be destroyed. Destruction comes primarily in the form of resentment about receiving compassionate assistance as an entitlement. No one should ever have a right to another person’s property or wealth. Most especially the government has absolutely no business providing any level of support to anyone other than military personnell. Corruption, depravity, destruction of family and community ensue from government welfare entitlement.
What will happen when food stamps stop? The private sector with its service agencies, churches and generous citizens will provide genuine help that does not perpetuate dependency.
After reading every one of nearly 600 posts, that is probably the most important one in this entire thread.
We don't primarily have a racial problem in our inner cities. We have a morals problem. The same immoral behaviors that are wrecking the black family are leading to major problems in Hispanic families as well and damaging poor white families.
People who have plenty of money may be able to afford to live immoral lives. People who are financially “on the edge” can't afford the consequences of broken homes. The lifestyle of a white upper-middle-class double-income professional couple won't be hurt as badly by the bad behaviors that lead to broken homes, but that's just because they have more of a financial margin for error.
Give it a generation or two more and watch what happens to white families if trends continue the way they're going now. Broken homes still tend to lead to broken kids, even if the mom and dad have enough money to buy lots of toys for the kids.
30 posted on Tue Sep 04 2012 08:15:16 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by reasonisfaith: “I think it’s important to remember things don’t happen in real life like they do in the movies.” (Post 33) “Hollywood movies completely ignore the influence of God. But the Spirit of God lives in us. This is why the real world, and the way real people behave, is so different from the behavior of characters in movies about disaster and apocalypse.”
You are both right. When the “SHTF,” things happen which nobody had expected.
And Matt, thank you for this post:
42 posted on Tue Sep 04 2012 08:37:47 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Travis McGee: “Watch the outstanding documentary on the Rodney King riots linked on Youtube on the original WRSA posting. This is part 2/5, and the Koreans get plenty of coverage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgaRtTURdY&feature=youtu.be “
Reality is far more complicated than what any of us can expect in advance because most of us don't know how we will react in crisis because we've never been tested. (To his credit, Matt Bracken is an exception due to his training. I'm not talking about him, but rather about how the ordinary civilian will respond.)
Some of those responses will be worse than ever could have been imagined; others will be better.
We have examples in the recent past, both in the New Orleans hurricane and the Los Angeles riots, of how people have responded better than expected in situations of urban breakdown. Some of them have been surprising.
As sf4dubya points out, few were more surprising than the response of Korean store owners in Los Angeles, many of whom had moved into inner-city minority areas and opened stores in places where they saw economic opportunity while others saw no chance.
If anyone thinks I'm overestimating the role of Koreans, as Kartographer posted at 137 on Tue Sep 04 2012 10:42:57 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): “There aren’t that many inter-city food stores now. Most large chains pulled out years ago.”
Koreans probably aren't going to be a major factor in a New Madrid earthquake scenario in St. Louis or Memphis, but were in urban disturbances in Los Angeles, and will be in any similar disturbances in New York, Chicago, or other inner-city communities with a significant presence of Korean store owners.
Inner-city Korean stores often sell two primary products, food and alcohol, and in both cases at a steep price. That makes them targets of minority anger. It also makes Korean businesses likely to be targeted by those who want to get things be breaking windows instead of paying.
Major cultural differences in social interaction don't help. At the risk of stereotyping, let's just say Koreans too often think blacks and Hispanics are rude boors who talk too much, too loudly, and about too many immoral subjects, while Hispanics and blacks often view Koreans as bigoted cheapskates who don't like to socialize with others.
In any case, the Korean stereotype of being quiet and reserved led to the Korean response of fighting back rather than fleeing not being at all expected. Fighting back didn't fit the stereotype of Asians that existed in the American mindset before the riots. While those who have spent time dealing with ROK combat troops might have been able to anticipate how the quiet and patient Koreans would respond when forced into a corner, back then most Americans didn't understand what “kimchi temper” means, and most still don't.
How can we explain it?
Generally these Korean store owners were people who actually lived in the same areas as their businesses, sometimes in the upper floors of two-story storefronts which were originally built a hundred or more years ago for a shopkeeper to live above his business. Many people are willing to let their business burn to the ground and collect the insurance or just accept the loss, but people are much less willing to give up when their wife and kids are cowering in the bathroom upstairs while a mob tries to break in the front door of the business. Furthermore, when someone has moved to the other side of the ocean and invested their entire life savings into a business which may not have insurance, there is a strong motive to defend it even if their family doesn't live in the building. Investing sweat and tears into a business may mean more than dollars when it comes to deciding whether to risk one’s life by going up on the rooftop to start shooting at rioters in the street below.
On the other hand, just living in a neighborhood doesn't necessarily mean having the skills to defend it or expecting that a defense will be needed. Owners of retail businesses are used to dealing with shoplifters and the risk of an armed robbery. Bracken points out — correctly — that “gentrified” neighborhoods of upper-class and upper-middle-class people who have moved into poor communities and rehabbed beautiful but run-down older neighborhoods will become targets.
Virtually every Korean man living in South Korea has served in the military and therefore has at least some familiarity with firearms. While South Korea does not have a Second Amendment, Koreans who move to the United States and live in inner-city learn quickly why they need a firearm for self-defense. That cannot be said of most people who move into relatively safe “gentrified” neighborhoods.
None of this means I'm naive about what will happen to those Korean business owners in a long-term scenario of inner-city rioting. After the Rodney King riots, the Korean storekeepers only had to hold out for a few days and the police were able to get control of the situation relatively quickly. While Koreans have lots of family ties, unlike traditional Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant communities, modern Korean immigrants don't usually live in ethnic neighborhoods. That's especially true of inner-city Korean business owners who don't live anywhere close to each other’s businesses; they have isolated stores in dangerous neighborhoods with no easy way to get out.
In a major urban upheaval, many of those storekeepers will be among the worst casualties with families being burned alive on the upper floors of their stores and cell camera videos showing up on the internet of Korean women being dragged out of buildings and raped in the streets.
Of course, due to the close-knit nature of Korean families, we can expect a reaction of extreme anger by wealthy Korean suburban relatives of the people whose burning businesses and violated wives and daughters get videotaped and show up on the internet. We can expect that lots of Korean money will get poured into an angry response to widespread inner-city rioting. However, that kind of furious Korean counter-reaction will show up in the political realm days and weeks after the riots, not in armed response at the time of the riots.
Visions of the owners of Daewoo and Hyundai and LG paying for guns and heavy weapons to attack inner-city thugs in American cities are fantasy, though seeing suburban Los Angeles Korean businessmen spend a lot of money on ammunition and food for those who can help trapped Koreans may not be. We won't see anything like Mogadishu-style efforts to help trapped business owners, but as Matt pointed out, the police will respond to those with money and power, and I would not be at all surprised if wealthy Koreans demand help for inner-city relatives under siege, and pay lots of money to vigilantes if the police can't help. (Remember, while Koreans may show external respect for law enforcement, the assumption in Korea is that police are corrupt or at least corruptible, since money talks in Korea in ways it doesn't in America.)
Apart from direct tactical action to save relatives, seeing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of Korean money poured into punishing the rioters after the fact, or helping Korean refugees if society breaks down completely, are very realistic scenarios. I have Korean relatives who are still furious at the Communists six decades after some of their relatives were dragged north by retreating North Korean soldiers. A post-riot political system will have to deal with some seriously pissed-off Koreans with a lot of money and a lot of willingness to punish enemies.
Again, this may sound strange to those who do not realize how many inner-city businesses are Korean-owned. Combine the dynamic of small inner-city stores owned by recent Korean immigrants with the fact that many have wealthy extended families who immigrated earlier, and there's a recipe for major, major post-riot problems for whoever in government gets blamed for not stopping the riots.
Similar things could probably be said about the Indian and Pakistani immigrant communities; I don't know enough about their inner-city businesses to comment.
Bottom line is reconstructing the post-riot political situation will be no picnic.
Matt, thanks for posting this. We can debate how likely or unlikely a major urban breakdown may be, and many will dismiss your premise. They can't (or at least they shouldn't) dismiss your point of what would happen ***IF*** a major urban breakdown does happen, regardless of what caused it.
The differing experiences of SCalGal and buffaloguy in disasters show an important part of the problem. When flooding happened in the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, or when a tornado struck Joplin, buffaloguy is right that most Midwestern rural and small-town people remained calm and helped each other. However, New Orleans was a wake-up call — that simply isn't going to happen in some of our major urban areas.
I think most Americans who have spent generations living in a First World urban environment have no idea how quickly our own emergency response teams believe things would fall apart in case of a major disaster. Rioting and breakdown of law and order in our cities is expected when the government cannot provide necessary services.
For the moment, let's change Matt's premise to something that has nothing to do with politics so people are less willing to dismiss it.
I may know more than a little bit about plans for a New Madrid Fault earthquake scenario. (Hint: My community is a pre-designated staging area for disaster response.) The worst earthquake ever to hit the United States was not in California but rather in southeast Missouri two centuries ago. Geologists believe we've had two other massive quakes that were as bad or worse around the years 900 and 1400, and unfortunately, because small quakes are rare, we don't even have a very good idea where the fault lines are located.
If another New Madrid quake were to happen today, millions of people in multiple urban areas would be affected. St. Louis, Memphis, and several other second-level urban areas would be destroyed by the initial quake, aftershocks, and subsequent flooding. Seven million people would be homeless. Virtually every bridge crossing the central part of the Mississippi River and the southern part of the Missouri River would be destroyed. Many gas and oil pipelines would be severed, leading not only to local infernos such as what happened with the fires that destroyed San Francisco but also fuel shortages and supply problems all over the Midwest. All Mississippi River barge traffic north of Arkansas would be halted, at least temporarily. We would see urban chaos in St. Louis and Memphis and probably several other areas that would make the New Orleans hurricane response look like a picnic, and economic chaos would last for years in the region and for months on a national level.
Here is some secondary source media coverage and primary source original info on what disaster planners think is a moderate scenario. A moderate quake would be bad enough — a quake like what happened in 1811/1812, or those around the years 1400 or 900, would be far worse. Planning for worst-case scenarios is far more difficult and would involve a need for National Guard and likely federal military response rather than a primarily civilian response.
http://www.lex18.com/news/study-paints-grim-new-madrid-quake-scenario1
https://www.eeri.org/projects/earthquake-scenarios/new-madrid-earthquake-scenarios/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2011/20110516.php
Those who want to dismiss Matt Bracken's scenario of what would cause urban chaos cannot dismiss the fact that in a major disaster, no matter what causes it, much of what Bracken warns would happen is going to happen and there's nothing anyone will be able to do about it for several days and possibly for several weeks. If a major disaster hits multiple cities at the same time or spreads to several major cities over a short period of time, the response time will extend from weeks into months, and could escalate to the point that the government loses the ability to bring things under control for a much longer period than that.
Bottom line: He's not talking fantasy. He's talking the reality of what happens when urban infrastructure breaks down. The only question is how long it will take to get help, and things get worse the longer things go on.
338 posted on Wed Sep 05 2012 17:21:49 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Louis Foxwell: “Your facts are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the racist notion that the ghetto will rise up in violence when the gravy train stops. That is outrageously false.” (Post 325): “I am appalled that Freepers can be lulled into this mind set. This is the stock and trade of the democrat party. Theirs is the culture of fear that uses black violence to sell welfare. Welfare is the greatest single enemy of the black culture. It denies the common humanity if its recipients. It denigrates and slanders. It perpetuates itself and demands absolute obedience to its benefactors.”
A full-scale nationwide race war would surprise me greatly. That kind of theorizing belongs on Stormfront, not conservative websites.
I don't see Matt Bracken doing that, but worrying about what would happen with a major urban breakdown is a legitimate concern, and in America's inner city, race will be a major factor in any breakdown.
Louis Foxwell, you've been on Free Republic for a long time. We agree on the tremendous damage that welfare has done to the black community. I agree that a slow dismantling of the welfare state (i.e., welfare to workfare) can and has worked when it has been tried. The question is whether our economy has gotten so bad that the end of the welfare state will be a quick collapse rather than a planned phase-out, and what would happen in the event of a quick collapse.
Economic collapses have happened before which have made pre-existing bigotry much worse. Look at the Great Depression in the United States and how competition for scarce jobs exacerbated ethnic and racial problems. Look at the Weimar Republic in Germany and how Jews were made scapegoats. It is not unrealistic to ask what will happen if we can't get our own economy under control.
I hope you're right that a rapid collapse of the welfare state won't lead to violence; I hope even more that we never need to find out because we're able to have a slow transition process.
There is some evidence you are right and some that you're wrong.
I'm white. My wife is Korean. I've lived in inner-city communities, both black and Hispanic. I've served in what was once a white church in an inner-city neighborhood that successfully made the transition to become predominantly black, reflecting the makeup of the community. Matt Bracken is absolutely right about skin color becoming an identifier of a potential target and I know firsthand what it means to be identified as a target because of my skin color.
However, let's not paint urban minorities as evil. Especially, let's not underestimate the ability of responsible leaders within urban minority communities to organize their own groups trying to stop violence.
Let's look to history.
In Mayor Daley's Chicago during the riots of the 1960s, neighborhoods generally didn't burn if the Democratic Party's precinct captains reflected the ethnicity of their neighborhoods. Following Martin Luther King's assassination, minority leaders in those neighborhoods went house-to-house saying, “Why burn what we have? That makes no sense.” On the other hand, changing neighborhoods where the precinct captains were older white men hanging onto power by delivering minority voters exploded into race riots because the community structures that Daley relied on to deliver votes fell apart when terrified white residents fled mixed neighborhoods.
Matt will probably say that lack of food is a more powerful motivator of bad behavior than an explosion of rioting because of the shooting of Martin Luther King, and he's right. It will be harder for minority leaders to control the behavior of wild teenage gangs than it was in the 1960s because our nation has gotten worse in many ways over the last half-century.
However, the power of an angry white-haired grandmother in the minority community, or an older man who is a respected community leader (often but not always due to church leadership), is far from being irrelevant.
Such people can't prevent “wilding” by young gangs, but they can respond to outbreaks once they start, and some of those responses can be effective in ways that people outside the community cannot be.
However, having major social consequences in our urban areas if our government welfare system falls apart would not surprise me at all. That is especially true if a collapse of the welfare system comes following a major economic shock caused by a natural disaster beyond the government's ability to promptly repair.
Today, that's not going to happen. Our economy can take a major blow, get up, and start hobbling around. It won't be pretty but the bills will still be paid.
Five or ten years from now, I'm not so sure.
It’s a reply to a post on an internet forum, not an essay contest.
lol.
I think we all agree on a lot more than we disagree.
After the SHTF we are going to learn libertarianism the abrupt way. lol
This country, heck the whole WORLD, is driving headlong into a fiscal, governmental, and social disaster. It is as if those at the top know exactly what they are doing. We can see the cliff coming but we still trust them to swerve even though they are smiling like madmen intent on self-destruction.
I am already calling it the Great Fall. It won’t be Weimar (it might resemble it at one point) or the Great Depression but it’s going to be much much worse. That is my fear and I think it is only a few years away.
Thank you for pushing that “post” button. Very good points, and very interesting.
No question at all. Look at the worst white slums/”housing estates” in the UK to see this in progress. The best single indicator of social disfunction is the % of unmarried mothers. Daniel Moynihan had it right 40 years ago. Few listened to his warnings.
bookmark
You bring society’s moral corruption down to the level of the individual where it properly belongs. Society is not immoral. People are immoral.
When immorality becomes wide spread people protect their own vice ridden lives by ganging up on those who want to clean up the mess. We see this best with abortion and homosexuality.
Pornography, theft and promiscuity are precious hidden sins for countless people. The demand for personal choice as justification for killing babies and sexual deviance covers up an agenda of individual licentiousness.
These are the motivators for insisting that no laws should infringe upon abortion, government confiscation of wealth or sexual deviance. These are the motivators for gangs and thugs who will kill and destroy.
Are there far too many who will destroy to gain some personal satisfaction? Of course. There are many more who will protect themselves, their families and their communities from thuggery.
If we are to prevail we must do so ourselves. We can not rely on government to solve any of our problems. That is not the role of government.
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