not in America ...
Fresh on my mind as I begin writing this post is a story about local pastors across America being invited by FEMA for an "orientation" - participating in "discussions" centered around controlling the "cowboy mentality" which will crop up painfully and perilously when FEMA decides it is time to take over farms in a local area, whether due to natural disaster, outbreak of disease, or some other "unforeseen" and perhaps contrived event ...
Is that story truth or yet another flaming fiction ?
... for which FEMA already has decided which roads to close as it begins taking forceful possession of area farms, of equipment and crops, stores of grain and seed and fuel, livestock and facilities - commandeering all local resources for redistribution to those in need - victims, survivors, obedient citizens, conquerors ... whoever qualifies among whoever is left. Point of distribution is almost always predetermined to be the local Walmart store - there being nothing else big enough for marshalling forces, vehicles, supplies, and accomodating distribution ...
Every day, seems like every hour even, there is some new "insurgent" attack we must refocus all our attention toward ... or if not, there is some left-over "celebrity" news - Lay and Skilling expressing surprise ten years later that anyone might actually even think anything they did could have been wrong ...
An apparently kidnapped six-year-old girl turns up in the company of a married couple turning themselves in because they are being hunted for the rape-torture murder of a 41-year-old woman they videotaped in their home bedroom. Religion seems to hold little sway for convincing anyone that "hell awaits" when so many are not able to imagine there being any worse existence than the one in which they presently find themselves.
... or we learn what is more likely to be truth about something that happened months or even years ago - or is it ? ... while atrocities rivalling anything that happened in a "world war" go relatively unnoticed by many Americans who are caught in a mostly nationalistic backlash to an invasion of immigrants who entered the United States outside the laws established by the United States - something which has been happening for decades, but is suddenly recognized as a crisis.
A tipping point.
At least fifty percent of Americans do not believe they know the truth about what happened September 11 - something with which I agree, yet see that "oversight" as just one more distraction to us as a "national" population keeping us from doing anything effectively about anything significant - wasting our time and energy arguing over who has the better theory while truth eludes all of us.
The city of El Centro in a decade has become more like Tijuana as we used to know it than like a suburb of San Diego as we might think of it. Property values remain high somehow in spite of homes in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods having become mini-rancheros where 40 or more people live in tents as well as occupying the house itself. Hundreds of thousands of latino immigrants, perhaps mostly from Mexico, but not all - there being also present in El Centro tens of thousands of Iraqis who fled Gulf War I living in what is now known as "Little Babylon."
El Centro is another American city in which the established police department no longer serves functions it was set up for - protecting life and property now being lower in priority than preparing for some coming "civil-unrest" which can be ignited by no more than a spark in such a tinder-dry society - for which FEMA is dutifully mobilizing.
El Centro as a small town with population around 20,000 was severely damaged by a earthquake which lasted just 30 seconds on May 18, 1940. Near as El Centro is to San Andreas and other faults in the area, that could happen again at any time. Just three days ago a 5.4 quake was recorded at Guadalupe Victoria, Baja California, part of a series or swarm of 25 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.9 to 5.4 over a period of 26 hours.
Last year hurricanes brought major destruction and a period of "civil-unrest" to a large area of our country, giving us just a glimpse of what our future may hold, not to mention a practice session for FEMA - yet we each must fend for self and family every day - no time to contemplate full ramifications of all these seemingly unrelated crises as they converge to affect more and more of us at the same time.
Even in war, most Americans alive today have known relative peace of which the majority of humans who ever lived have not even had much opportunity to think of, let alone experience ... but how much longer, I wonder. Most Americans alive today have never been to war, never been in a war zone, know nothing of war.
None of the great changes in history have come easily. As one person who does not like the "furniture rearranged" I understand why people resist change. Also begun to understand something of the difficulty - even the impossibility for some - to admit that anything can or will "become different" ... that systems of organization taken so much for granted may no longer be viable. Yet that is exactly where we are at this point in human history.
While Americans who have accumulated anything tend to wall themselves into some secluded fantasy paradise away from the "mean streets" of cities which no longer provide jobs to workers whose only claim to skill resided in the minds of their union bosses, others of us are a sort of "free range" American, most of whom will likely be rounded up, or killed if we resist. Will I see you again ... ?
I hope so, but maybe not in America ...
Is that story truth or yet another flaming fiction ?
... for which FEMA already has decided which roads to close as it begins taking forceful possession of area farms, of equipment and crops, stores of grain and seed and fuel, livestock and facilities - commandeering all local resources for redistribution to those in need - victims, survivors, obedient citizens, conquerors ... whoever qualifies among whoever is left. Point of distribution is almost always predetermined to be the local Walmart store - there being nothing else big enough for marshalling forces, vehicles, supplies, and accomodating distribution ...
Every day, seems like every hour even, there is some new "insurgent" attack we must refocus all our attention toward ... or if not, there is some left-over "celebrity" news - Lay and Skilling expressing surprise ten years later that anyone might actually even think anything they did could have been wrong ...
An apparently kidnapped six-year-old girl turns up in the company of a married couple turning themselves in because they are being hunted for the rape-torture murder of a 41-year-old woman they videotaped in their home bedroom. Religion seems to hold little sway for convincing anyone that "hell awaits" when so many are not able to imagine there being any worse existence than the one in which they presently find themselves.
... or we learn what is more likely to be truth about something that happened months or even years ago - or is it ? ... while atrocities rivalling anything that happened in a "world war" go relatively unnoticed by many Americans who are caught in a mostly nationalistic backlash to an invasion of immigrants who entered the United States outside the laws established by the United States - something which has been happening for decades, but is suddenly recognized as a crisis.
A tipping point.
At least fifty percent of Americans do not believe they know the truth about what happened September 11 - something with which I agree, yet see that "oversight" as just one more distraction to us as a "national" population keeping us from doing anything effectively about anything significant - wasting our time and energy arguing over who has the better theory while truth eludes all of us.
The city of El Centro in a decade has become more like Tijuana as we used to know it than like a suburb of San Diego as we might think of it. Property values remain high somehow in spite of homes in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods having become mini-rancheros where 40 or more people live in tents as well as occupying the house itself. Hundreds of thousands of latino immigrants, perhaps mostly from Mexico, but not all - there being also present in El Centro tens of thousands of Iraqis who fled Gulf War I living in what is now known as "Little Babylon."
El Centro is another American city in which the established police department no longer serves functions it was set up for - protecting life and property now being lower in priority than preparing for some coming "civil-unrest" which can be ignited by no more than a spark in such a tinder-dry society - for which FEMA is dutifully mobilizing.
El Centro as a small town with population around 20,000 was severely damaged by a earthquake which lasted just 30 seconds on May 18, 1940. Near as El Centro is to San Andreas and other faults in the area, that could happen again at any time. Just three days ago a 5.4 quake was recorded at Guadalupe Victoria, Baja California, part of a series or swarm of 25 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.9 to 5.4 over a period of 26 hours.
Last year hurricanes brought major destruction and a period of "civil-unrest" to a large area of our country, giving us just a glimpse of what our future may hold, not to mention a practice session for FEMA - yet we each must fend for self and family every day - no time to contemplate full ramifications of all these seemingly unrelated crises as they converge to affect more and more of us at the same time.
Even in war, most Americans alive today have known relative peace of which the majority of humans who ever lived have not even had much opportunity to think of, let alone experience ... but how much longer, I wonder. Most Americans alive today have never been to war, never been in a war zone, know nothing of war.
None of the great changes in history have come easily. As one person who does not like the "furniture rearranged" I understand why people resist change. Also begun to understand something of the difficulty - even the impossibility for some - to admit that anything can or will "become different" ... that systems of organization taken so much for granted may no longer be viable. Yet that is exactly where we are at this point in human history.
While Americans who have accumulated anything tend to wall themselves into some secluded fantasy paradise away from the "mean streets" of cities which no longer provide jobs to workers whose only claim to skill resided in the minds of their union bosses, others of us are a sort of "free range" American, most of whom will likely be rounded up, or killed if we resist. Will I see you again ... ?
I hope so, but maybe not in America ...
posted by JamesB at 11:11 PM
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