When the Music Stops: How America's Cities May Explode in Violence

It is time to leave the urban areas, and to create a self sustaining lifestyle. But, with no resourses the poor are stranded. Many wouldnt have the gas money to get out. Where would they go anyway? We have so many homeless (whole families) living under bridges in my area. And, the cops here just make it as hard as possible on them.
Its sad that our government owns 1/2 of the land in California, but none is available to the poor who need to become self sustaining. Several national parks have closed due to the lack of funds to keep them open. Why cant some of this land be open to the homeless to create gardens? Our forests have become so overgrown and dead downed trees become a wild fire nightmare. The natives kept the forest clean, burned the downed trees for fire wood. Where I live in N California it costs 30,000 just to get a permit to build a house. Then all the rules and regs completely limits a person from using the natural building materials available to the poor. Just try to build an adobe or cob house in California.
Did you know that you are only allowed a total of 30 days a year to 'camp' at the national parks? Sort of like a timeshare. My homeless brother spent time in jail as a felony camper, because he was caught three times camping on government land.

Originally posted by detachedindividual
First, I don't believe for a moment that the media will try to justify the looting. The media is operated by people who have no concept of poverty. They live comfortable lives on high pay, their audience is typically middle class. Why would they even consider that rioting and looting are acceptable in any way? This makes no sense to me.

I think you would be wrong – it happened during the Katrina experience. I remember watching the news and thinking – why are these anchors actually saying its understandable and ”OK” that people would take food and water and clothing that didn’t belong to them because of the circumstances. Theft is theft – regardless of the circumstance.

Here is Ed Shultz (leftie) accusing Glenn Beck of being a racist for calling African Americans “looters” while in his opinion what they were doing is "providing for their families under difficult circumstances."

There are significant racial undertones there. In case you don't remember, right-wing and mainstream media outlets were quick to call African-Americans in the wake of Katrina "looters," while white residents who were taking items from stores were "providing for their families under difficult circumstances."

www.alternet.org...

Here back in 2006 is Allan Colmes saying that he thinks it’s perfectly all right to steal certain items while others are not justified looting.

COLMES: I understand. I don't want to get off track here. I want to talk about the issue of going and taking things in a tragedy like the one we're seeing on our screens right now.
Are you saying — and I think it's all right to go take water or food to feed your family when there's anarchy. But what about taking televisions? What about taking things that you can't even plug them in. Is that the same thing?

Read more: www.foxnews.com...

Now media pundits are mostly leftists evidently so are those in accademia who review their work here is some scholarly analysis of the media coverage what makes a distinction between “good looting” and other looting.

“good” looting: taking items that facilitate survival. Interviews with eyewitnesses right after Katrina found that the preponderance of the looting that primarily took place in the week after the storm was about three-quarters of the looting was for necessities, while the remainder was for non-necessity items (Barsky, Trainor, and Torres, 2006). Some residents of New Orleans did walk out of stores with items that were not useful post- Hurricane, but many of the looted items were meaningful to those “on the ground” in ways that are not readily apparent.
citation.allacademic.com...

Finally in the same article they say that given the socioeconomic status of the “victims” justified looting items not usually associated with survival (food and water). In this reference they are talking about a woman with a cartload of shoes being arrested and how the (cable news - which is code for FOX in leftspeak) media playing it was unjustified and even racist because she needed the shoes. Again – stealing is stealing.

In addition to clear cases where looting was reasonable and expected given the harsh experience of staying in New Orleans during and after Katrina, the looting of luxury items, such as expensive electronics, makes sense in terms of survival as well. Considering that socio-economic status was a primary indicator of whether a resident was able to evacuate (Dyson, 2006), the ability to liquefy luxury items into cash translated into freedom to leave the city. This is not to say that all of the looting that took place post-Katrina was justified in terms of survival, but a much greater amount was justified when viewed through the lenses of the lived experience in New Orleans post-Katrina, in.

citation.allacademic.com...

Excellent article, however it may be a bit over the top.
But I think many of us are prepared (see my name?) for this scenario.

The defeat of Obama in the election may cause rioting.
The continuing of our economy in the same direction will result in "the music stopping" and the musical chair game is more than 1 chair short on this round.

Poor souls that will be left to flounder and die, or act stupidly and die.
Keeping a cool head will be the only surefire solution in a benefit-apocalypse scenario.

My neighborhood has a plan.
My family has a plan.
My friends have a plan.

Get 1 too, it's better to not need it and have it, than to need it and not have it.

Originally posted by Golf66

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
reply to post by silent thunder

 

If you want to see this in real life right now, you might want to go to South Africa. There are flash mobs that do almost empty grocery stores. There is a debris driven culture to stop cars so that drivers and passengers can be robbed, raped and/or killed and their cars stolen. The ANC government and mass media are irrelevant as they have no way to stop or control most of the incidents or the violence. South Africa is experiencing the intermediary steps to wholesale and rampant violence on a national scale and is still either the first or second most violent and crime ridden country in the world.

Cheers - Dave

The American urban core is not far from what I have seen in Africa. The large concentrations of blacks seem to live a very similar lifestyle of gangs and corruption, overpopulation, lack of a family unit, etc… Why? Seems odd with all the leg up programs out there things seem to be getting worse for blacks not better. I think the problem might be nature vs. nurture?

Africans had a chance to adopt a European lifestyle and society and some of the countries that did are perhaps the most successful in the continent’s history. The rest of the nations rejected the Eurocentric model and devolved into rampant tribalism and criminal thuggery. Haiti is the same way in our hemisphere – total failure.

Take S. Africa for instance before 1994 and the ANC won the election with Nelson Mandela as the president, the nation was stable if not entirely accommodating of the black majority. In summary, the tension due to the lack of freedoms pre-1994 has been replaced by tension due to a lack of any guarantee of personal safety.

When the ANC took over; suddenly a surge in unemployment of both blacks and whites hit the country. Desperation and hunger became the order of the day for so many and the only way to survive was to steal. Slowly things got better but it is still not enough to make a definite change. The economy has improved since, but economic disparities persist.

Now crime rates are not just highest among industrialized nations, but nearly the highest overall. Despite official statistics showing a recent decline in crime rates - murder rates have more than tripled in the New South Africa after the ANC. Most of the crime is committed in the big cities. People surround their houses with electric fencing or razor wire and alarms. The security firms are booming, and the educated of all races flee for European nations.

The question has to be asked why? There is a trend in Africa (especially in the Sub Sahara) and then Haiti as well - what is the thing all these nation-states have in common?

Could it possibly be the 800lb gorilla in the room no one wants to acknowledge?

The races on the planet are different not only in physical appearance but in their mental make-up and ability - be it intellect, drive and or ability to succeed as a group.

Whatever you want to call it there is a clear and glaring disparity in the willingness of different races to surrender the individual to the greater good, their sexual habits, spending vs. saving habits and marital commitments along with the role of fatherhood.

There has been some research done in the past on the racial predispositions to certain social norms and mental ability, nature vs. nurture and other kinds of studies but regardless of the caliber of the study the people just won’t hear it for some reason.

TPTB want none of it leaked - most people willingly accept that while there may be real physical differences between races any perceived differences in mental ability must be related to outside factors not genetics.

I remember the Bell Curve and the controversy it generated.

Africa is a nightmare – I have been to Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Djibouti and other places. Basically they are living in a feudal system of thuggery and might makes right.

Take away our leg up programs and crutches and I think our urban core will be right behind them.

^^^ You hit the nail on the head ^^^

It's sad but true.

And yet we ask WHY we need the 2nd Amendment. To protect ourselves from each other. I sure as hell would'nt want to be in the cities if this takes place. And out where I live, they better come in mass numbers, armed to the teeth. Or they will have a rude awakening. They gonna have a rude awakening irregardless.

reply to post by Golf66


But looting during Katrina, where there is a clear and obvious image to the crisis the people are facing, is completely different to people looting because their social welfare has failed.

People could look at the images from Katrina and feel sympathy for those stuck in the middle of it. You could look at that and see the chaos and the cause of the chaos. This was clearly not the fault of the people there.

But when something like a social system fails, there is no clear cause, nothing to point at and say "that's why". Looters will be stealing anything, it won't be all about food. When you see looters stealing TV's (and that WILL happen) people will not have any sympathy for that at all.

As I said, I think it's completely wrong that the media will paint these people as victims. There will not be ten feet of water around them, there will not be calls for aid and emergency services scrambling to help. The images people will be seeing on their TV screens will be nothing like those of Katrina, they'll be reminiscent of the King riots, or the London riots.

There will be a few who understand it, but not many. Only those who have lived in this situation might get it, and generally, the middle classes and their corporate media have NOT lived that life.

Edited to add - a lot of the analysis is also after the fact, not during Katrina. How many people viewed the looting as criminal DURING the event? Numerous police did, because they arrested and in some instances shot at people! So it's great to be able to look back after the event and say "well, no wonder they had to do that!"

It doesn't change the fact that plenty were condemning the looting at the time, not seeing that it was a survival thing. I think people are looking back on that and rewriting history just a little to suit their argument.