"America is a bomb waiting to explode"

By Sam Gerrans
18 Oct, 2015

The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic.

Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.

Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.

To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.

But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise.

But add the right detonator and you’re just one click away from complete devastation.

We can see how fragile the U.S. is now by considering just four tendencies.

1. Destruction of farms and reliable food source:
The average American is a long way from food when the shops are closed.

2. Weak economic system:
The American economic system is little more than froth.

3. Americans increasingly on mind-altering drugs:
According to the Scientific American, use of antidepressants among the US population was up 400 percent in the late 2000s over the 1990s. Many of these drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

4. Morals in decline:
During the objective hardship of the 1930s, there was surprisingly little crime. People were brought up with a conception of morals and right and wrong. Frugality and prudence were prized virtues. Communities were generally fairly cohesive.

Nowhere to run
In the past, people were in rural communities. They could grow food. They had real communities. They also had self-control and a conception of morality.
Today, if the supply lines go down, you are stuck in a house you can’t heat surrounded by millions of FDA-approved drug addicts who are going psycho because they have run out of juice and people who would murder their own grandmother to get a cut-price iPhone.

(Excerpt)

Read more:
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/318986-america-bomb-society-crisis/

The author argues that the right national shock could ignite the bomb he has described. I believe Mr. Gerrans is correct in his Op-Ed. Before you respond to this post, stop and look around you and ask yourself how would you be able to survive if there was a nation-wide disaster like the electrical grid were to go down, not for a night or two but months across the nation. Or, for example Ebola were to be introduced into America at several points.
Imagine cities without electricity, water, heat, food or sanitation and the possibility of contracting a virulent communicable disease without the possibility of help.
The author explains that today, the fields which feed us are largely in other countries, and the ones which are in our own are mainly owned by large corporations. The small individual farmer has nearly become extinct.
He is not predicting exactly this scenario for the US or for any other country. What he is saying simply that all the ingredients are there for complete breakdown and large-scale deaths given the right initiating incident.
IMO, Mr. Gerrans is right on the money. The next terrorist attack will be colossal and devastating nationally. It will not be simply diving planes into buildings or blowing a bridge. I'm not a Survivalist or Doomsayer, I have read this piece and have to agree with Gerrans.

I am saying that volatility is baked into the cake – even into the cake of what today looks and feels normal

 

America is past the point of no return.

 

Lol. How sad. Go invent something.

- - - Updated - - -

Will you be better or worse if America self destructs?

 

Planet of the Apes.

 

I used to care. I no longer do. I finally figured out you can't fix stupid, so instead of trying to fix it, I just put it on ignore.

I'm old and have no heirs. I couldn't care less what happens to progressives and their urchins. And if conservatives aren't strong enough to make America great again, I can't help them.

Greatness sometimes fails. Greatness sometimes falls. Too bad, so sad. One day, America will be nothing but a sideline in a history book.

- - - Updated - - -

Yep. That scene used to bring tears to my eyes. Now I just shake my head and walk away.

 

The OP quotes Russia Today -- Putin's propaganda outlet.

The quoted article is hilariously deranged. Apparently, American went wrong when we stopped being a largely agrarian society and began taking anti-depressants.

He would forego all the benefits of an advanced industrial society because, if civilization collapses, it'll be hard to feed our population.

News flash: if civilization collapses, we have other problems.

Then Grumpy Old Guy chimes in with a screed about kids these days. Classic.

Meanwhile, I have two teenage daughters and think their future is brighter than mine was at their age. I am deeply impressed by the current generation of high school and college students. Compared to my own, they are smarter, more world-aware, more engaged and more ambitious. I can hardly wait for them to graduate and start changing the world.

 

Such bushwa, I've heard this since I was a child and my parents had heard it then too. Yes, society is vulnerable to sudden disasters, that's why they're called such, and also why we have mechanisms in place to cope with them. Even so, disasters DO involve widespread suffering and even death. You could also be killed by a home invader as you sit at your computer, or you could just have a heart attack and die right now, heaven forbid. As much as anyone might try to prevent it , "in the midst of life, we are in death" That's called the Human Condition or just The Way Life Is. Deal with it or be paralysed by it. It doesnt' care. .

 

Hyperbole.

 

Since you claim it's hyperbole, unless you can respond with cogent counterpoint your one word answer is meaningless.

 

Im glad im getting old at this point. Its so sad to see us going down the tubes

 

...and which country will be willing to take American refugees?

 

America is due for a revolution.....

Here’s the good news: The chaos and upheaval we see all around us have historical precedents and yet America survived. The bad news: Everything likely will get worse before it gets better again. That’s my chief takeaway from “Shattered Consensus,” a meticulously argued analysis of the growing disorder. Author James Piereson persuasively makes the case there is an inevitable “revolution” coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its differences.

To my knowledge, no current book makes more sense about the great unraveling we see in each day’s headlines. Piereson captures and explains the alienation arising from the sense that something important in American life is ending, but that nothing better has emerged to replace it.

The impact is not restricted by our borders. Growing global conflict is related to America’s failure to agree on how we should govern ourselves and relate to the world.....snip~

http://nypost.com/2015/10/17/history-is-repeating-itself-america-is-due-for-a-revolution/


Seems others are seeing things just the same, huh?

 

This article is overly pessimistic. We've always had problems as a nation; just look at our history and see.

The greatest problem I've witnessed in my 55+ years of living as a an American, is POLITICAL intransigence (extremists) standing in the way of preventing, resolving or mitigating problems. Even so, not 'everything' has gotten worse... many things are improved from things as they were even 20 years ago.

The thing we need MOST as a nation, is a strong will to deal with the problems we realize are there.

 

Seems your advanced industrial society is no longer in America. Rather it's become a service society. We don't manufacture steel, aluminum. Automobiles are created overseas and assembled in America. We no longer are cultivating or producing the food necessary to sustain our population, while the government continues to gobble up the arable land. When was the last time anyone in your family planted, cultivated, harvested, canned, or preserved any kind of food. If the power goes out can you keep your family warm for extended periods of time in the winter. Will the government be capable of furnishing food and heat if for example the states of the North East from the Hudson River to Maine remained without power from December to May, or longer?

 

We're due an attitude change. To include:

Not hyping our "greatness" at the expense of distracting from what needs improving.

Accepting that "racism" and "disenfranchisement" of our citizens is totally unacceptable.

Realizing and correcting the failed notion that a few hyper-wealthy citizens, cannot substitute for a society where people are rewarded with making a living, if they are working 35-50 hours a week.

Being FULLY honest about the cost of making weapons a perpetual industry AND constantly waging war, the world over.

Figuring out ways of preserving the life-sustaining qualities of the Earth's environment... instead of treating the planet as though MONEY matters more that IT per se.


If we fail as a society, then we likely intended for that to happen. People working together toward common and mutually beneficial goals (cooperation) will lead to improvements and problem solving most cannot fathom today.

 

There is one slight problem with most of that. They are called Democrats.....They don't wake up thinking about solving problems for the Country. They wake up thinking how to destroy the Republican Party and how to keep this nation divided by playing with the Gender card as well catering to the Special people. The LGBT crowd.

Its the only way they have a chance at winning. As they have proved....just having ideas. Doesn't make then good.....nor Right!

 

That response is bias-filled nonsense. You aren't serious, even if you believe you are.

Regards.

 

I agree, but I don't know that it will take the form of armed insurrection. The American people are not happy with those in Washington, DC. A 14% approval rating should be embarrassing enough to prod Congress to do something, but it does nothing.

Ben Franklin was a wise man. It's been 239 years since we had one.

 

Yes it is serious. I live Right in one of the alleged bastions of strength of the Democrats Elite Core. Even here it is play blacks against the Latins. Which one rarely hears about those racial issues causing them to be out shooting each other. Other than the default gangbanging over drugs excuse.

 

I don't think it will be anything like an armed revolution against government. More like Conservatives and Liberals going at each other in more severity than just their insults at one another. Catching all others up into the mix.

 

Yeah, I saw this piece earlier and I thought it was inaccurate at best. The author complains about the reduced number of farms compared to the Great Depression era, yet it's not that we have less farmland, but rather that farms have consolidated more land under one roof, so to speak. Yeah, ownership has changed, and perhaps what they grow has also changed, but the arable land is still there if we need it. But would we need it? I don't see any economic issues bringing food trade to a halt, so no, I don't think we will need most of our farmland for subsistence in the event of some economic catastrophe. In fact, I'm not sure how feasible an economic catastrophe is at this point, because there is so much central power and control over the whole thing. If our currency needs to be revalued or reissued, then that is what will happen and people will accept it.

Civilisation will never collapse. Not fully, anyway. It's not something the vast majority of us want; if something happens, most of us will be working to maintain order and restore what we had, I feel. I see any such disaster being met with a wave of patriotism and positive energy...

 

LOL. America produces more steel than Russia, and basically any country in the world outside of China, Japan and India.
https://www.worldsteel.org/statistics/crude-steel-production.html

Not sure what you mean here. Most cars purchased in America are built here, regardless of manufacturer. Determining parts content is tougher, but most cars sold in America are at least 50 percent American parts.

And the design work? A surprising amount of it is done here in the States. Toyota, Mazda and Honda all have design studios in the United States, and of course the main American car companies do most of their design work here.

More made up nonsense. While the U.S. is a net food importer -- we import about $1.28 of food for every $1 we export -- we are self-sufficient in food production:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_self-sufficiency_rates_by_country

LOL! What are you babbling about?

I have a large vegetable garden in my backyard, but that's irrelevant. Look up "economic specialization." It's what allows advanced civilizations to exist.

As I've already said, saying "things will be bad if civilization collapses" is taking the Captain Obvious routine to the next level. A civilizational collapse would be bad. That's no reason to forego the benefits of advanced civilization.

 

Hate to tell you this
But we are always
past the point of no return
Time marches on,
and it is along a one way street

We all pick our path forward from NOW
no do overs, no mulligans,

I think most countries in the world
And most countries through out history
Would be delighted to take our position right now as their starting point

Imo, our biggest problem is ourselves
We seem to think the most important thing we can do for the future
is to tear eachother apart
That is not the path to a bright future

 

Do the Russians pay you to post this stuff?

I've noticed a certain fondness for Russian propoganda amongst the far right wing lately.

 

You might be right, but there is a large number of independents that are also dissatisfied with the way things have been going politically, and they aren't really involving themselves in partisan bickering. They do vote though, and hold sway in the court of public opinion. I don't see the Independents choosing one political side or the other, but rather pushing ideas that are acceptable from either side. I may be biased, but IMO, independents hold the key to bipartisan problem solving and bipartisan pragmatic solutions are needed. The political party that welcomes the independent voter will be the one that wins, since neither Ds nor Rs can win without them. I also don't see independents ready to insult and argue like Rs and Ds. Independents actually want to get things done and are frustrated with Congressional inaction. Maybe that is the coming revolution- the independent, shunning political parties. More and more young people are not choosing a political party. They may be on to something.