The nation is a tinderbox. There’s bloodshed in Baton Rouge, in Dallas, in Minneapolis, and in hundreds of neighborhoods where network news reporters never go. African Americans keep dying – through gunfire, and in the many unseen ways people die when they’re impoverished, malnourished, when they’re deprived of safe homes and communities, of economic opportunity and adequate health care.

And there’s a new lower-class white despair, too, traced in rising death rates from alcohol, drugs, and suicide. Inequality and class injustice, mixed with ancient strains of racism and hypernationalism, make a dangerous combination. These whites have seen their middle-class lives collapse. They’re exiles from the world of their upbringing, and some of them are looking for someone to hate.

Racism and fear, wrapped around each other like the double helix of some dark DNA. Republicans have been eager to respond, with coded race messages designed to distract struggling whites from their own financial exploitation. Trump’s innovation is to strip away the code and deliver the message straight.-Richard Eskow

Living in a city is shite.

It's better to go to the country, mountains, seas, oceans, woods, deserts, if it has to be, plains.

Even if one is poor.

But living in a city as underpriviledged, poor, with gangs, hard neighbourhoods, without work or only harassment at work? Oh man. Never ever!

I bet if I lived in such a hostile and cramped environment for half a year I would want to shoot out with someone, no matter who. For me life is worth living through contact with dear people and nature. As far as I am concerned and how I have become, I think if I was forced to live in a city I would probably commit suicide.

Some LQ readers might like these two articles:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/07/...ng-like-serfs/

http://nypost.com/2016/07/21/black-t...lping-patient/

But also, bear in mind that the media paints this picture of "middle-class <white|black> hopelessness." Because it sells newspapers.

Billy Joel wrote a thought-provoking song about that, The Angry Young Man, who will: "go to his grave as an angry old man."

Yes, we are nearing the end of a thirty-year long "grand social experiment" ... an experiment that failed, all around the world. That has left many people angry because they have been robbed. They are only now beginning to re-assert their privileges, as citizens of a country, to re-shape "their home-land" into what they want it to be. They're doing this in the face of wholesale corruption among "professional politicians" who are drunk on the usual suspects: money, and power.

But, in the next several years, I think that you will see this. Like it or not, the UK has just given Brussels its traveling papers. Like it or not, America will elect Donald Trump.

Americans will finally realize that it is not okay for "a four-year college degree at a state school to cost half-a-million dollars," as it does right now. Silicon Valley is about to get terribly exposed as having paid billions of dollars in bribes to be allowed to bring in millions of people from far-away lands ... but not to "stay here" ... if they claim to have a college education from wherever they came from. (If you're in the USA right now on an H-1B or L-1 non-immigrant visa, you might want to be looking at airline tickets ...)

Americans will decide once again that the "fine, well-equipped hospitals" that "Ike" Eisenhower spoke of, are places that anyone should be able to enter, not "unprofitable" places that should be closed. They'll throw out industry-sponsored laws that turn the US Government into a bill-collector, and bring in a United States National Health Service.

... and no one can stop them from doing it.

And, believe it or not, none of this is "without historical precedent!" Quite the opposite. Study the history of industrial relations in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries and you'll see that in the past thirty years we've all been thrust back there.

But, will we all be content to stay there? And, will we just "start shooting one another up, in our impotent frustration?" No, and No.

Because the people of any country, when they are finally determined so to be, are quite capable of peacefully achieving permanent change. And this moment begins when those people, surrounded by other people who are hissing, "but this is the way it mus-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-ssst be," say: "No, it isn't."

Speaking of Historical Trends there are numbers of historians who are seeing vast changes locked into paradigm shifts such as from Hunter/Gatherer to Agricultural and from Agricultural to Industrial/Manufacturing and now again, from Industrial to Information. There is always unrest and upheaval in the transition periods followed by a period of smoothly increasing progress often called "Golden Eras". The unrest may take several generations since those locked in old ways that no longer work are often those in power but it does extend down into the lowest classes who imagine they can run a farm just like Grandad did or work in a factory like days of old. Even such outdated concepts as racism will far more likely result in abandonment as The Global Village become the norm. Whether or not that transformation will be punctuated by "race wars" remains to be seen but it certainly isn't "cast in stone".

One author/historian who was particularly influential in this "system view" was Alvin Toffler who just died this last month (June 2016) and famously authored Future Shock, Third Wave, and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century just to name a few, is well worth anyone's time to read even today as his ideas have withstood at least one level of "test of time" and have exerted great influence on such movers and shakers as Bill Gates, AOL founder Steve Case, G.H Bush, Carl Sagan, Newt Gingrich, Ted Turner, numerous groundbreaking artists and musicians as well as China's Zhao Ziyang, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and South Korea's Kim Dae Jung. One can see that "Liberal" and "Conservative" are hardly barriers or definitions of who finds Toffler's concepts and viewpoint as visionary.

Fascinating man. Excellent reads that expand thinking about progress and the human condition that definitely apply to this thread.

Wouldn't be just peachy if the heavens allowed are our most brilliant open source LQ members to run things instead of our politicians!!

Folks chiming in from other countries really have no idea about the problems in the US. To get the record clear, more white people have been killed by police. The real issue is that we can not under any circumstance have any group gunning down police. Anyone who thinks that is it OK for blacks to do this is welcome to offer all the blacks a nice new house in their country. Just to the south of the US is Mexico where lawlessness is rampant. If there is an honest police there it would be a miracle.
The blacks in the US won't even help the police when people of color act against their own. This is simply a group that in general doesn't believe in law or order. Not to say the cops in the US are great, they are the ones who have offered their time and life to protect the law. If the US wanted perfect police they might have to pay them a whole lot more. Pretty sure not one person here would take the job for what they pay.

The black Dallas police chief said it best. We are hiring. He wanted anyone interested to be part of the solution.

I grew up in Detroit. Cops were being shot left and right in the 60's. They took precautions to defend against this and I haven't seen it in action since. You put bullet resistant panels in the doors of the cars, bullet resistant glass and put two cops in the car. At each door they hold shotguns on any subject(s) and have them all face down and cuffed before anything else goes on. Only one guy is near the citizen and the backup car is 50 feet behind with two more guys.

How bad could it get?
If everyone in the US were to loose their mind then I'd think a factor of survival of the fittest would be the result. The best trained and the best armed and the most numerical would tend to prevail. Not always.

I hope that you didn't actually mean that.

Because, there's really no such thing as "a black," any more than there is "a white." ("A black what?" A crow? A box?)

There are only people. Remember that.

Jeffro - Collectivism sucks.

EDIT: No, I'm not responding after all.

Double post

One of humanities many traits is to pick a myth, opinion, etc. and then only acknowledge things that can possibly justify the myth, opinion, etc.!! If your mind, your eyes and your ears are completely closed then any discussion about anything is totally futile!! When you get old you tend to abandon open discussions with people that are unable to listen to anyone, or anything, but themselves!! Everyone has a right to their opinions!!

You can not possibly make this stuff up:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b00c9876cecb95

Um, are you really not aware of the difference between percentage and absolute numbers? Here's the first article I turned up in Google: Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no.

In keeping with the pessimism: Lets move this further, recent attacks in Munich - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36873180

Also before that, the attacks in Nice, and axe attacks in back in Germany.


How much longer until the people pretty much say , f-it, all migrants gtfo? I wouldn't see why not. Good will only goes so far, but if this keeps up I am surprised that in Europe (particularly France and now Germany) that the right and possibly far-right have not gained some ground because of this.

In France I don't see why at this point Front Nationale aren't poised to gain , and in the same Germany. Ever the pessimist I am, it is only a matter a time before a major backlash happens against migrants in Europe, and I won't be the least bit surprised. I could be wrong , but .....There is still a possibility that I could be right. Time will tell.