I have been somewhat puzzled by some of the responses. There seems to be an idea that I am advocating guns. I am not. Nor have I ever been a gun owner, not do I intend to ever buy one. I am not the one that needs to be persuaded. Stated reasons for gun control should be addressed to the estimated 60 million gun owners in America.

************************************************** ************************************************** *****************

Originally Posted by Bad Dog

I think 6 mm or greater calibers are likely to appear, with characteristics like the M-1/14 Garand family, but of lesser weight and bulk.

They already exist and are in use.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

And just to rattle the anti-gun crowd a bit more, my hubby and are shopping around for a Browning 1911-22 Compact Rimfire Pistol 10 round plus 1 capacity. Very nice weapon. Much more practical for daily carry. Oh, just to rattle you all some more, I am allowed, just like everyone else at my company, to be armed at work.

Why the .22 for EDC?

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Why the .22 for EDC?

Because water lagoons I have to check are rarely in good areas of town. Usually remote and have snakes of reptilian and human variety in those areas.

While a machete will work well on snakes, the holstering gets a but tricky and tends to unnerve law enforcement more than the ccw legal pistol. Also I prefer to not get that close to water moccasins. They can lunge a good ways. Shooting from distance is safer for me.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

Because water lagoons I have to check are rarely in good areas of town. Usually remote and have snakes of reptilian and human variety in those areas.

While a machete will work well on snakes, the holstering gets a but tricky and tends to unnerve law enforcement more than the ccw legal pistol. Also I prefer to not get that close to water moccasins. They can lunge a good ways. Shooting from distance is safer for me.

Ah varminting. I might suggest the .22 magnum (.22 WMR) instead. Firearms and ammunition are almost as cheap and delivers better ballistics against the 2 legged varmints (while still destroying common critters).

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Ah varminting. I might suggest the .22 magnum (.22 WMR) instead. Firearms and ammunition are almost as cheap and delivers better ballistics against the 2 legged varmints (while still destroying common critters).

One of our septic hauler drivers got bit last summer by a huge 7.5 foot 4 " diameter around water moccasin. Poor guy laid there for well over 2 hours before he was found. By the time they got him to the hospital, he ended up losing his leg from the knee down because of that bite. He managed to bash the snake over the head with the hose connector, which is why we know what type bit him and how big it was.

So anyone saying I don't need a gun at work is insane. So we are all encouraged to be armed when traipsing about in the wild near the lagoons.

Snakes are very common, so are alligators. The game wardens try to do a decent job of discouraging them, but not always successful.

Last year alone in my state, there were 34 reported water moccasin bites among operators.

thanks for the link.

I had hoped that someone would have discussed the proposed degradation of academic freedom in Kansas. When academic freedom goes, all other freedom vanishes quickly. Political entities with little freedom are as a rule violent places, whether state terror or underground terror.

So academic freedom means that college professors could discuss the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc. Right-wingers might think that some damnatio memoriae -- making some historical personalities unfit even to be named except in the crudest terms (as in Karl Marx is the Prophet of Satan) is a suitable way to destroy ideas -- but as the general rule, the right way to deal with bad ideas is to offer better.

The idea in Kansas is of course to make education compatible with the political and economic agenda of the Koch syndicate and allied interests who want government of the moneyed elites, by the moneyed elites and for the moneyed elites. If one gets that, then Marx, Engels, and Lenin become more attractive.

A constrained mind 'free' to bear arms is no expression of freedom. Such was possible in the Soviet Union.

Here is the Southwest, land surveyors often use something called "snake chaps." Many snakebites occur on the lower extremities. They are fairly easily slipped on and off before and after heading off into the boonies. Can be hot during the summer, which of course is the time out here when we see snakes. But beats getting bit...

Reaching down with one's hands is a hazard of course. Occasioally, rattlers don't have their rattles and so cannot be trusted to always give a warning.

I don't have any experience at all with the poisonous water snakes, and don't really want to.

The dirty little secret about rattlesnakes is that they don't want to meet you. They see the rest of the animal world as either mates, meals, things that can crush them, and things that can eat them. The rattlesnake is in much more danger from you -- or for that matter your dog or cat -- than it is to you.

I've taken lots of walks with a dog in Texas -- Dallas metro area -- and I have never seen a live rattler while on one of those walks. That's not to say that I wanted to meet one. My heavy bipedal gate is a fair warning -- avoid at all costs. Rattlers of course use infrared sensors to seek out prey and avoid dangerous creatures (like us). Rattlers are surprisingly delicate creatures except for their fangs.

It is amazing -- a large percentage of snakebite are bitten on the face or hands. Another large percentage (many the same people) are intoxicated. Confronting a rattler is of course an incredibly stupid thing to do, and little entices stupidity as does drunkenness.

If rattlers were out to get us the people most vulnerable would be those who have occupational exposure to rattlers -- ranchers, farmers, construction workers, utility workers, canvassers... Hikers and campers rarely get bitten. Rattlers have good cause to avoid a Boy Scout troop. When I worked on the Census in Texas I got no warning about snakes -- but I did get warnings about dogs. Of course I would back off if I ever saw a rattler -- I'm not stupid.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I've taken lots of walks with a dog in Texas -- Dallas metro area -- and I have never seen a live rattler while on one of those walks.

I too have never seen a live rattler in a metropolitan area. We know they are there, but few are seen.

On the other hand, out in the boonies, I've seen many dozens of live rattlers. If one comes at them wrong they are not hard to surprise. And surprising them is not the thing to do - they get scared and try to protect themselves.

Rattlesnake bites, from my EMT 911 perspective, are almost always young boys, usually less than 17 y/o, or (and you're right) drunk. And yeah, drunk snake bites are usually on the hands or arms when the subject tries to f*** with the snake.

Otherwise, regular, adult, non-drunks are usually bit on the lower extremities after surprising a snake.

And ... if I were Dannilyn, I would get snake chaps for work.

Yes -- of course I stayed away from swamps and rocky outcrops. Danilynn may have no choice except to get and wear snake chaps. I thought that cowboy boots were designed in part to make snakebites unlikely.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

One of our septic hauler drivers got bit last summer by a huge 7.5 foot 4 " diameter around water moccasin.

That would make it one and a half feet longer than the longest cottonmouth ever measured.

Poor guy laid there for well over 2 hours before he was found. By the time they got him to the hospital, he ended up losing his leg from the knee down because of that bite. He managed to bash the snake over the head with the hose connector, which is why we know what type bit him and how big it was.

So anyone saying I don't need a gun at work is insane. So we are all encouraged to be armed when traipsing about in the wild near the lagoons.

Snakes are very common, so are alligators. The game wardens try to do a decent job of discouraging them, but not always successful.

Last year alone in my state, there were 34 reported water moccasin bites among operators.

thanks for the link.

we also call them cotton mouths so not sure if they are one and the same type snake as I have always heard the 2 terms used interchangeably here. As for the snake, there used to be a section on the Water association page of killed snakes. let me see if that is still there and I will send you links to it. It was an entirely creepy section.

Be glad that your average IT guy isn't armed- yet. Killing a process could take on a whole new meaning...

Or convenience store clerks, waitstaff, retail workers taking out annoying customers.

Imagine Wal-Mart, during the holidays.

Guns for everyone -- in the end that implies guns in the hands of drunks, lunatics, addicts, and angry people.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

There are theories (warning: book-length read).

I didn't manage to get through Justin's book-length read. It is not politics neutral. Then again, I'm not sure it is possible to meaningfully discuss domestic spirals of violence in a politically neutral way. I won't claim the rest of this note accurately reflects Justin's linked article. Still, a few ideas might best not be buried behind the link.

The first part of the link dwells on a spree shooter loading himself up with guns and taking a violent tour of his place of work. Many casualties. The author has an idea that the Reagan administration deliberately weakened worker and union rights and influence. The result was a high stress high risk work place. A case was made that one might not call the spree shooting insanity or mental disorder, that it might be considered a proper or at least expected response to long term callous abuse by management.

The phrase 'going postal' was mentioned. Post office workers were among the first to repetitively go on workplace shooting sprees. Is stress or abusive working conditions more prevalent in post offices than other places of business? Is there a copycat effect? If one postal worker goes on a shooting spree, does that encourage or enable other postal workers to follow the initial example?

Why students? An awful lot of shooting sprees are initiated by students. Is student a high stress profession? Are students less mature? As students frequently go postal, are there just more copycat examples? Are there just so many students that there are more stressed individuals to get triggered?

A true 4T spiral of violence in the tradition of John Brown or Boston's Sons of Liberty would have at core legitimate grievances. Is the Reagan and heirs push against labor rights such a case? I would say not yet. People who shoot up their places of work are reported in the (corporate owned) press as lone nuts not as oppressed victims. Spree killers are considered vile by the general public, not as heroes or martyrs. There are few propagandists or rabble rousers presenting spree killers as heroes and exhorting others to follow their examples.

Is our society more stressful than it once was? If it is futile to attempt to improve worker's rights through democratic due process, court action, unions or other due process, at what point does violence become instinctive or inevitable?

When thinking about middle east violence, I have come to think that a young male might expect honorable work, food, shelter, medical care, a chance at a mate and in general a responsible place in society. If such is unavailable to large numbers of young males, should unrest, violence and revolution be a surprise? Given the power of the few over the many in America today, given that the power of labor is much weakened, should a return to the violence of the years the when unions were gaining power be a surprise?

Some of the spree shooters are no doubt nuts with mental problems. Society can be cruel to nuts with mental problems. Nuts with mental problems can be cruel to society. This is one problem, not an easy problem. Is the answer to defund state mental health hospitals, and throw the former inhabitants onto the streets?

Society can be cruel to the poor. The few rich, given the opportunity, will often bleed every ounce of sweat out of their workers as they can. Some workers are going to snap. Sometimes it might be hard to tell an oppressed worker from a crazed nut.

Do we have a spiral growing, a spiral where increasingly stressed workers will turn to individual violence, and could this spiral turn into a revolution?

I'm not seeing it yet. Incidents remain isolated, and no one is willing to admit that the rebels might have a cause.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I didn't manage to get through Justin's book-length read. It is not politics neutral. Then again, I'm not sure it is possible to meaningfully discuss domestic spirals of violence in a politically neutral way. I won't claim the rest of this note accurately reflects Justin's linked article. Still, a few ideas might best not be buried behind the link.

The first part of the link dwells on a spree shooter loading himself up with guns and taking a violent tour of his place of work. Many casualties. The author has an idea that the Reagan administration deliberately weakened worker and union rights and influence. The result was a high stress high risk work place. A case was made that one might not call the spree shooting insanity or mental disorder, that it might be considered a proper or at least expected response to long term callous abuse by management.

The phrase 'going postal' was mentioned. Post office workers were among the first to repetitively go on workplace shooting sprees. Is stress or abusive working conditions more prevalent in post offices than other places of business? Is there a copycat effect? If one postal worker goes on a shooting spree, does that encourage or enable other postal workers to follow the initial example?

Why students? An awful lot of shooting sprees are initiated by students. Is student a high stress profession? Are students less mature? As students frequently go postal, are there just more copycat examples? Are there just so many students that there are more stressed individuals to get triggered?

A true 4T spiral of violence in the tradition of John Brown or Boston's Sons of Liberty would have at core legitimate grievances. Is the Reagan and heirs push against labor rights such a case? I would say not yet. People who shoot up their places of work are reported in the (corporate owned) press as lone nuts not as oppressed victims. Spree killers are considered vile by the general public, not as heroes or martyrs. There are few propagandists or rabble rousers presenting spree killers as heroes and exhorting others to follow their examples.

Is our society more stressful than it once was? If it is futile to attempt to improve worker's rights through democratic due process, court action, unions or other due process, at what point does violence become instinctive or inevitable?

When thinking about middle east violence, I have come to think that a young male might expect honorable work, food, shelter, medical care, a chance at a mate and in general a responsible place in society. If such is unavailable to large numbers of young males, should unrest, violence and revolution be a surprise? Given the power of the few over the many in America today, given that the power of labor is much weakened, should a return to the violence of the years the when unions were gaining power be a surprise?

Some of the spree shooters are no doubt nuts with mental problems. Society can be cruel to nuts with mental problems. Nuts with mental problems can be cruel to society. This is one problem, not an easy problem. Is the answer to defund state mental health hospitals, and throw the former inhabitants onto the streets?

Society can be cruel to the poor. The few rich, given the opportunity, will often bleed every ounce of sweat out of their workers as they can. Some workers are going to snap. Sometimes it might be hard to tell an oppressed worker from a crazed nut.

Do we have a spiral growing, a spiral where increasingly stressed workers will turn to individual violence, and could this spiral turn into a revolution?

I'm not seeing it yet. Incidents remain isolated, and no one is willing to admit that the rebels might have a cause.

Am wondering how many on this board feel as though we ain't seen nothing yet, and that a revolution is brewing?

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Am wondering how many on this board feel as though we ain't seen nothing yet, and that a revolution is brewing?

You are not alone.

The economy is in a death spiral. Too many believe you can keep taking and taxing to prosperity. The sad reality is that the new healthcare crap is doing more to accelerate this than any want to believe.

Look around any city in any state. Go to what were formerly solid blue collar neighborhoods, and look at the fading house paint. The just barely starting to show signs of lack of funds to do house repairs, go look around some apartment complexes. Take note of the very few new cars in those areas.

Now go a few more blocks into what were the not middle class but not poverty areas. In your city you know where they are. This where the signs of lack of money is going to be most evident. Boarded over businesses, empty houses, possibly burned out or gutted businesses.

Now if you get really brave go through the poor areas, often referred to as ghetto, hood, or slum. Whatever you want to call it, get brave and go. I'd suggest in broad daylight not at police shift change and look around.

I can tell you what you are going to see, former inhabitants of the last area you came from. There will be more crime, graffiti, unemployed folks, homeless folks and the thugs intent on no good things.

NDAA was signed into law for a reason. NSA spying was upheld by a federal judge this week as legal. 4th amendment be damned, I suppose.

CT has folks registering their guns, starting to look like 1930 Austria on that one. Just how many criminals you think were in that line doing that? My guess is none, just the law abiding citizens. So now they have a groovy little list of WHO has the guns and WHERE the guns are, so that in a couple of months or a year they can come take them.

What is it going to take to wake people up? But it's ok, because it's only the 2nd and 4th under attack right now. Oh wait, I forgot parts of the 1st have been under attack for awhile. Some executive orders have eliminated free speech already for certain areas around certain people and a few folks in the senate are calling for more restrictions on the press and what constitutes a journalist, if that one happens a good portion of us on this forum could be facing charges and fines for just stating opinions.

In NM you have cops ANALLY probing people after a traffic stop, in CA you have police shooting kids with toy guns, in DC you had a whole gang of folks with badges and guns executing an UNARMED mother with her child in the car while this happened. And for this last act, our governing body of legislators gave them a standing ovation of applause. And this one just defies my ability to describe in safe for work language. You really have to read this one out of Wisconsin to appreciate the severity of it: http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/c...173312411.html

We live in a police state, most folks just haven't awoken to this yet. Look around, stop being the frog in the water being slowly heated to a boil with you in it.

Executive orders are piling up faster by the year. Our military higher ups are being purged at an alarming rate of speed under the current POTUS and no one seems to question anything the mainstream media says.

Oh and in case you think I'm just off on a tangent, there are former members of the military calling for an "American Spring", Here is the link, see Dec 28th post: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Ji...90503827632449

There are, best as I can gather from reading alternative news media and social networks, no less than 15 of these types of events planned starting in January of 2014. One went so far as to warn people that they wanted it peaceful but to expect the powers that be to incite and carry out violence to the point of death and incarceration during it.

I'd also suggest reading up on an organization called oathkeepers. It's comprised of former military, current military, Law enforcement and first responders. You know the generally respected not thought of as wing-nuts and crazies.

So yes, I'd say a revolution/war is brewing. I'd also say our government has been preparing for it if not trying to incite this for whatever reason.

2014 is gonna be a wild ride.

Originally Posted by B Butler

The first part of the link dwells on a spree shooter loading himself up with guns and taking a violent tour of his place of work. Many casualties. The author has an idea that the Reagan administration deliberately weakened worker and union rights and influence. The result was a high stress high risk work place. A case was made that one might not call the spree shooting insanity or mental disorder, that it might be considered a proper or at least expected response to long term callous abuse by management.

Some people handle stress well, even thriving upon it. But maybe stress related to achievement (one is in a race to achieve a desired quest) is desirable -- and stress solely to rush production or to do more with fewer workers is debilitating. If one sees oneself going from a well-paying, if stressful job to unemployment, poverty, and disgrace in the absence of other means of achieving self-esteem a very angry person might take it out on others. People in a workplace are often sitting ducks because they dare not leave their work stations or because they congregate in break rooms.

The phrase 'going postal' was mentioned. Post office workers were among the first to repetitively go on workplace shooting sprees. Is stress or abusive working conditions more prevalent in post offices than other places of business? Is there a copycat effect? If one postal worker goes on a shooting spree, does that encourage or enable other postal workers to follow the initial example?

Lots of military veterans who couldn't get other jobs?

Why students? An awful lot of shooting sprees are initiated by students. Is student a high stress profession? Are students less mature? As students frequently go postal, are there just more copycat examples? Are there just so many students that there are more stressed individuals to get triggered?

College education has gone from a fun place to spend four years in which one would otherwise do minimum-wage work so that one is prepared for the economic fast track to a high-risk gamble. The college environment isn't what it was in the 1970s. One can get into tens of thousands of dollars in debt in student loans and have the prospect of having to pay off those loans with work at or near the minimum wage. Going out in a blaze of glory has much precedent if one sees oneself as a failure despite doing everything right.

A true 4T spiral of violence in the tradition of John Brown or Boston's Sons of Liberty would have at core legitimate grievances. Is the Reagan and heirs push against labor rights such a case? I would say not yet. People who shoot up their places of work are reported in the (corporate owned) press as lone nuts not as oppressed victims. Spree killers are considered vile by the general public, not as heroes or martyrs. There are few propagandists or rabble rousers presenting spree killers as heroes and exhorting others to follow their examples.

Most of the rabble-rousers now serve Corporate America today. Most of the workplace killers, family-annihilators, and spree-killers have simply snapped.

Is our society more stressful than it once was? If it is futile to attempt to improve worker's rights through democratic due process, court action, unions or other due process, at what point does violence become instinctive or inevitable?

When thinking about middle east violence, I have come to think that a young male might expect honorable work, food, shelter, medical care, a chance at a mate and in general a responsible place in society. If such is unavailable to large numbers of young males, should unrest, violence and revolution be a surprise? Given the power of the few over the many in America today, given that the power of labor is much weakened, should a return to the violence of the years the when unions were gaining power be a surprise?

We have taken a harsh experiment in mass psychology, and we now see the results. People who see themselves abused and exploited strike back when they see themselves with no stake in the system. A combination of secular materialism and All-For-the-Few economics with the complete absence of radical movements virtually assures that much senseless violence best described as personal revenge on the biggest scale possible is the usual form of mass violence.

At least in the Middle East the terrorists have a coherent enemy or two in Israel and the United States.

Some of the spree shooters are no doubt nuts with mental problems. Society can be cruel to nuts with mental problems. Nuts with mental problems can be cruel to society. This is one problem, not an easy problem. Is the answer to defund state mental health hospitals, and throw the former inhabitants onto the streets?

That was the Reagan answer -- and it may have released some people of marginal competence who found their way to marginal success (they held a marginal job and lived in a slum and were glad that they at least had some choice in what they ate) -- but many of the mentally ill proved how dangerous they were. Those of low intelligence at best found their way to sheltered workshops, but some became stupid accomplices who did something easy but illegal in a horrible crime. The dim-witted need some guidance, and out society does not make it available.

Society can be cruel to the poor. The few rich, given the opportunity, will often bleed every ounce of sweat out of their workers as they can. Some workers are going to snap. Sometimes it might be hard to tell an oppressed worker from a crazed nut.

Can crazed nuts also be exploited? Of course!

Do we have a spiral growing, a spiral where increasingly stressed workers will turn to individual violence, and could this spiral turn into a revolution?

I'm not seeing it yet. Incidents remain isolated, and no one is willing to admit that the rebels might have a cause.

If there is any spiral of violence guided by the Right it will be mass hangings and shootings as lethal injection is no longer available. There is no revolution available other than the Tea Party that is best described as cats-paws for people who want a New Feudalism.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Guns for everyone -- in the end that implies guns in the hands of drunks, lunatics, addicts, and angry people.

You mean, kind of like it is now?

Originally Posted by B Butler

Society can be cruel to the poor. The few rich, given the opportunity, will often bleed every ounce of sweat out of their workers as they can. Some workers are going to snap. Sometimes it might be hard to tell an oppressed worker from a crazed nut.

Do we have a spiral growing, a spiral where increasingly stressed workers will turn to individual violence, and could this spiral turn into a revolution?

For some time now, I have been thinking back on my childhood in the 1950's. My dad was a depot agent on the Union Pacific Railroad. The organization of the railroad was divided in two: There was the "Roadmaster" and the "Trainmaster." The Roadmaster was the overall boss of the road itself, the track, the right-of-way, the ballast, the bridges, the physical infrastructure of the road.

The Trainmaster was the overall boss of the rolling stock, the depots, the processes by which trains were kept from head-on collisions, etc. My dad's boss was the Trainmaster. There were guys like my dad all up and down the line, working to keep track of the trains. Every few miles there would be a depot with 24/7/365 coverage.

In addition, every ten or fifteen miles (and this out in the boonies!) would be a "Section Gang." This consisted of 5, 10, even more manual laborers who worked under the direction of the "Section Forman," who ultimately reported to the Roadmaster.

What I ruminate on is that ALL THESE JOBS ARE JUST GONE!! They don't exist anymore. The same can be said for many other industries. When I was a kid, there were many my age, who at sixteen, would simply quit school and go to work on a section gang. And the same thing happened in, for example, the Pittsburgh, PA area ... kids would go to work in the steel mills at menial jobs that still paid enough to produce a living.

As automation and technology keeps its relentless march up the line, we will see more and more jobs simply vanish into thin air. As a society, we now face the problem. We seemingly don't recognize it for what it is. What the heck are folks supposed to do with themselves if there is less and less with which to occupy themselves productively?

This started out as a problem for the relatively uneducated, the folks who hated school probably because they weren't any good at it, but who wanted a decent life for themselves. In those days there was something for them to do ... they could go pick up a shovel and work on the railroad, or in the steel mill, or on one of Henry Ford's assembly lines. Lots of work out there for anyone who "wanted to work."

Well now it's getting to those of us who do intellectual jobs. CPAs no longer sit, Bob Cracthit-like, making entries into books and hand-totaling columns. We now have multi-million dollar accounting systems that can be operated from corporate headquarters. I worked in a corporate regional finance office until 2006. Last month, the whole finance group at this regional office (a region producing $150 million revenue per year) was laid off. All finance functions are now handled, mostly on an automated basis, from headquarters in NJ.

X-rays, MRIs, even videos of patient exams are sent from tiny New Mexico hospitals via technology to specialists in urban centers so that patients can be treated by non-specialist emergency room doctors, who would otherwise be way in over their heads.

My cogitation leads me to think that, as societies, we must begin to view work and the status that it confers differently. If there is little work left to be done that someone will pay us for, what will we do with ourselves?

Well ... how about War. That's always been fun.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Some people handle stress well, even thriving upon it. But maybe stress related to achievement (one is in a race to achieve a desired quest) is desirable -- and stress solely to rush production or to do more with fewer workers is debilitating. If one sees oneself going from a well-paying, if stressful job to unemployment, poverty, and disgrace in the absence of other means of achieving self-esteem a very angry person might take it out on others. People in a workplace are often sitting ducks because they dare not leave their work stations or because they congregate in break rooms.



Lots of military veterans who couldn't get other jobs?



College education has gone from a fun place to spend four years in which one would otherwise do minimum-wage work so that one is prepared for the economic fast track to a high-risk gamble. The college environment isn't what it was in the 1970s. One can get into tens of thousands of dollars in debt in student loans and have the prospect of having to pay off those loans with work at or near the minimum wage. Going out in a blaze of glory has much precedent if one sees oneself as a failure despite doing everything right.



Most of the rabble-rousers now serve Corporate America today. Most of the workplace killers, family-annihilators, and spree-killers have simply snapped.



We have taken a harsh experiment in mass psychology, and we now see the results. People who see themselves abused and exploited strike back when they see themselves with no stake in the system. A combination of secular materialism and All-For-the-Few economics with the complete absence of radical movements virtually assures that much senseless violence best described as personal revenge on the biggest scale possible is the usual form of mass violence.

At least in the Middle East the terrorists have a coherent enemy or two in Israel and the United States.



That was the Reagan answer -- and it may have released some people of marginal competence who found their way to marginal success (they held a marginal job and lived in a slum and were glad that they at least had some choice in what they ate) -- but many of the mentally ill proved how dangerous they were. Those of low intelligence at best found their way to sheltered workshops, but some became stupid accomplices who did something easy but illegal in a horrible crime. The dim-witted need some guidance, and out society does not make it available.



Can crazed nuts also be exploited? Of course!




If there is any spiral of violence guided by the Right it will be mass hangings and shootings as lethal injection is no longer available. There is no revolution available other than the Tea Party that is best described as cats-paws for people who want a New Feudalism.

I wish I could say you are exaggerating and being overdramatic and pessimistic. Ten years ago I might have. Right now I feel there is very little hope for this country and an increasing number of hardworking citizens are working harder and longer for a very low quality of life, and the more dependent they become on safety nets to supplement their meager earnings, the more they are being taken away. It's like the right wing thugs are kicking you when you're already down and then laughing about it and saying you deserved to be down in the first place. Ten years ago I would have said a violent uprising would be unnecessary not to mention extremely dangerous. Now? I sometimes think that's what things are coming to, and may be the only way "the little people" can be heard. But i wonder why so many people continue to vote against their own interests and the few attempts to mobilize on the left have failed.

Ever see The Hunger Games? Sometimes I think the far right wants a society like that. No wonder that film and the books have struck a chord with so many people. Art imitates life indeed.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

We live in a police state, most folks just haven't awoken to this yet. Look around, stop being the frog in the water being slowly heated to a boil with you in it.

Executive orders are piling up faster by the year. Our military higher ups are being purged at an alarming rate of speed under the current POTUS and no one seems to question anything the mainstream media says.

Oh and in case you think I'm just off on a tangent, there are former members of the military calling for an "American Spring", Here is the link, see Dec 28th post: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Ji...90503827632449

There are, best as I can gather from reading alternative news media and social networks, no less than 15 of these types of events planned starting in January of 2014. One went so far as to warn people that they wanted it peaceful but to expect the powers that be to incite and carry out violence to the point of death and incarceration during it.

I'd also suggest reading up on an organization called oathkeepers. It's comprised of former military, current military, Law enforcement and first responders. You know the generally respected not thought of as wing-nuts and crazies.

So yes, I'd say a revolution/war is brewing. I'd also say our government has been preparing for it if not trying to incite this for whatever reason.

2014 is gonna be a wild ride.

The step up from lone nuts not pushing publicity to organized groups who are thinking in terms of publicity would be a significant jump in the Spiral of Violence.

An escalating spiral is supported by two sides each thinking that demonstrating their strength will force the other to back down. Both the government and the protestors would be thinking that demonstrating their strength a little bit more will lead to victory.

A few decades back, the Ruby Ridge / Waco / OKC spiral was broken by the government backing down, deescalating the use of force. The general population also scorned the violence by both sides. Even most of the more militant militia members rejected the idea of bombing day care centers.

The Occupy movement was forced down by successful use of force. The protestors were demoralized by highly questionable law enforcement techniques. The right to assemble was denied. This might encourage the government to try to deal with the next protest movement in the same way.

Cutting the pensions and benefits of former military, a joint action by both parties, might not have been the best of all possible moves by the government.

The video camera might be an underutilized weapon. If one believes the protestors, the police openly violate the law when suppressing protests, and the taking or destroying of cameras is a big part of it. At this point, cameras are cheap enough that such tactics could be made futile. Every protestor might come bearing a camera. If nothing else it is destruction of evidence, another legal wedge to be played with.

Anyway, it is entirely plausible that the twin spirals of rhetoric and violence might be escalated. I'll be waiting to see if Danilynn's predicted protests develop.