Why so angry?
Does it matter?
Our systems have bullied people and the media/internet/political outlets (including bloggers like me) seems to have whipped up and played into this anger.
Gerald Celente has a great line that goes something like: "When people lose everything, they lose it". Real or imagined insults and injuries matters not. The 1960's Civil Rights movement was the blowoff of pent up anger. To read the comments on my site and the sites of other bloggers it would seem to me that we could be approaching that kind of level of anger now.
Anger is a spectrum of emotion. People have an intense sense of fairness. When that sense is violated they act. When that sense is reached by a critical mass of people, those actions can be volatile.
I read with interest James Howard Kuntsler's stuff among others in the Peak Oil Blogsphere, and I am somewhat disappointed at the condescending position taken in regards to religious, working class, gun totting, nose picking folks residing in fly-over-land (non-coastal elites). These people are angry for a reason, whether rightly or wrongly is up for debate... but I think it is suicidal for our society to continue to ignore this anger. There are millions and millions of these folks.
After WWI the allies brutally repressed and gouged Germany resulting in an anger that cost the lives of 60 million or so people in WWII.
"When people lose everything, they lose it". Indeed.
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You mean a sitting president told Americans to act prudently and make "sacrifices" for their children's future? That they should accept some responsibility? Somebody alert the media! Well, somebody did.
Am I the only normal person left?
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Social Security payments versus receipts went negative. Well, we all knew it was going to happen... only our government was saying it wouldn't happen for another 15 years or so...
"Opps! Our Bad" said the government.
I can just see the hordes of rioting seniors now...
Medicare is in FAR WORSE SHAPE than Social Security.
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Those two social program baskets cases (not Medicare and Social Security... the OTHER 2), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rescued from the edge of darkness last years, are about to go Chernobyl. This would be amusing if it wasn't so frightening...
The crazies do the wildest things, like S.S., Medicare, Fannie & Freddie, and then excoriate the free market for not working! What a scream!
Only now we have 10's and 10's of millions of taught-to-be-helpless people just as the wheels are coming off.
We are beyond solutions for these past mistakes. G-d is going to have to sort all of this out.
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Given the above, what would be the outcome of some other external shock?