Do you believe these sort of scenes are going to be getting played out for real...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

Poll question: Do you believe these sort of scenes are going to be getting played out for real...

...in the U.S. soon?

And secondly, are we the people anywhere near as durable and self-reliant as those who actually went through the Great Depression in their adulthood?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=umoYaS49Dnw

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8wke1RBvcNQ&feature=related

[cynatnite]

1. My grandmother says a person can survive anything if they have to...

She was eight years old when the depression hit.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. Does she talk about her memories of those years?

[Donnachaidh]

17. my grandparents talked about it a LOT.

And both came from poor backgrounds, so perhaps they were better suited to handle it. He was in the Coast Guard, and had a regular paycheck, but they did have to scrimp on everything. I cannot imagine going to a store and buying 50 cents worth of hamburger, or 10 cents for a pack of cigarettes. They were so broke my grandfather had to give up smoking (at 10 cents a pack) to keep FOOD on the table.

I think many in this country are going to be devastated if we do get to the extreme situation our ancestors had to go thru in the Great Depression. You're going to see many suicides, and many families torn apart. And the kids who have been weaned on TV and the drumbeat of *You HAVE to buy this* their entire lives will have the worst of it. All those expensive ipods and iphones won't be worth a thing, if you haven't got the means to pay to use them.

We definitely NEED a wake up call, but like this? Unless we have a president who is fearless enough to implement New Deal policies again, and quickly, there is going to be a horrendous amount of suffering.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

18. I agree entirely with your assessment, Donna.

[tom_paine]

2. Depends on what "soon" means. It still could be as many as 20 years,

though that certainly seems wildly optimistic, especially if McBush is appointed Emperor by Diebold (a handy rubric for the vast infrastructure of Bushie manual and electronic disenfranchisement schemes), which looks likely.

And, as anyone with a drop of conscienec and consciousness has seen, the Imperial Subjects of Amerika are NOTHING like the egalitarian Free Americans who survived the Great Depression and helped defeat Hitler.

As anyone with eyes, a half a drop of conscience and consciousness can see, the current generations of Imperial Subjects of Amerika are mentally similar (if not identical, save for the violence which will likely be unleashed when the first "Yes" comes to pass) to the Germans who vaulted Hitler into power.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

8. I left the interpretation of "soon" open so it's whatever "soon" means to you...

...For me it's within 4 years.

I hope you're wrong about our citizenry's good German character, but I worry that you're quite right.

[Donnachaidh]

19. that's what frightens me the most

"As anyone with eyes, a half a drop of conscience and consciousness can see, the current generations of Imperial Subjects of Amerika are mentally similar (if not identical, save for the violence which will likely be unleashed when the first "Yes" comes to pass) to the Germans who vaulted Hitler into power."

The very rarely mentioned, always denied new American mantra of *Who cares about you? I've got mine*. I live in an area that always crows about *southern hospitality* but that is nowhere to be found, if you are poor, or are in need. Ask the homeless, who are being disappeared by laws written to get them out of the community - here's your hat, there's the door hospitality. Shelters are closed, food kitchens have disappeared - all because someone has built a housing development that dislikes having to *see* poor people in the area.

And it's going to get worse when these glorified homeowners start losing the McMansions they mortgaged their lives for. My DH works in a construction trade - and he's hearing that some people in the area may be setting fire to their homes, in hopes of collecting the insurance money, rather than being foreclosed on.

That's happening NOW. It's going to get worse.

[gateley]

3. Yes and No.

We're beginning to see signs of poverty creeping into the middle class now. Someone here the other day posted they make $6.50 an hour. That was a FAIR wage about 28 years ago.

I feel we adapt and will do what we need to to survive, but we're a different TYPE of people now, I think. I fear instead of coming together to help each other out, more will only be concerned about themselves. Especially since there are so many more people now, and our land isn't producing the amount of food it was back then.

I could be WAY wrong, but that's my opinion, I'm sorry to say.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. Yes, and No was my vote also...

...and speaking for myself, I know I'm not as durable or self-reliant as either set of my grandparents were -- they all lived through the Depression.

[gateley]

15. I don't feel as though I'm very self-reliant at all. nt

[graywarrior]

4. You'd be shocked if you knew what Mr Gray and I lived on last year

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. I know some (maybe a good many more than I realize) are already...

...stretched to subsistence mode and worse.

I wish you and your husband well.

[graywarrior]

7. We live without a lot of "stuff" just in case we need to run.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. That sounds practical and smart...

...and like the kind of thinking/planning we should all be giving some consideration to.

[graywarrior]

11. We lived on less than 20 grand last year

We don't eat meat, so that saves a lot. We don't smoke or drink either.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

13. Good for both of you.

[tomreedtoon]

10. Should have included "Yes, and Some."

I believe there will be a lot of deluded Yuppies, executives, Republicans, dickweeds and fungo bats that will get into real trouble. Many of them may die. Others will end up hurt and bleeding. And some of them will be the "survivalists" who bought a bunch of useless crap that will not serve them at all.

But I think there will be some - people with their heads about them, who are modest about their needs and with some intelligence - who will survive. Some of them may even be kind-hearted enough to share what little they have with the incompetent fungo bats they come across.

And I hope I'm one of the survivors, but how the hell do I know until the emergency happens? My consolation; I've done well in the past when there's been trouble.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

16. I agree that there are going to be some who are...

...well prepared, self-reliant, and plenty durable, but the second question of my poll is asking for a general comparison of two citizen populations. On that basis I think it is answerable, although perhaps not knowable, as Yes or No.

[stillcool]

14. We human beings..

have been surviving all kinds of shit for thousands of years...way before these people..

The story of European civilization really begins on the island of Crete with a civilization that probably thought of itself as Asian (in fact, Crete is closer to Asia than it is to Europe). Around 1700 BC, a highly sophisticated culture grew up around palace centers on Crete: the Minoans. What they thought, what stories they told, how they narrated their history, are all lost to us. All we have left are their palaces, their incredibly developed visual culture, and their records. Mountains of records. For the Minoans produced a singular civilization in antiquity: one oriented around trade and bureaucracy with little or no evidence of a military state. They built perhaps the single most efficient bureaucracy in antiquity. This unique culture, of course, lasted only a few centuries, and European civilization shifts to Europe itself with the foundation of the military city-states on the mainland of Greece. These were a war-like people oriented around a war-chief; while they seemed to have borrowed elements of Minoan civilization, their's was a culture of battle and conquest. We call them the Myceneans after the best-preserved of their cities, and their greatest accomplishment, it would seem, was the destruction of a large commercial center across the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor: Troy. Shortly after this defining event, their civilizations fell into a dark ages, in which Greeks stopped writing and, it seems, abandoned their cities. It was an inauspicious start for the Europeans: while the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians had enjoyed almost two thousand years of continuous civilization, in Europe the experiement began with the brilliance of the Minoan commercial states translated into the brief, war-like city-states of the Myceneans, only to slip back into the tribal groups that had characterized European civilization for almost all of its history. In spite of this, the basic character of European civilization is laid down in this early experiment; even though they slip into obscurity, the Greeks will permanently remember the Myceneans as the defining moment in their history.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

20. To be sure, humanity has been to the school of hard knocks...

...and perhaps there's some comfort to be taken in that knowledge, it will not, however, provide means of sustinence when scarcity of the basics becomes serious.

Many, and I'm afraid even most, of us are not equipped to cope/manage with what's coming.

Time will of course march on, and historical studies/forensics will be performed on the remains of the great attempted American Empire.

[stillcool]

21. I've spent too much time...

being fearful of the future. Being more afraid of life than death. No more of that for me.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

22. Good for you...

...Fear can be debilitating if we let it. The future is not something to fear, but it is something we should be trying to shape, as opposed to laying back and letting it happen or leaving it to others. We owe it to future generations to try and leave them with better, and certainly no worse, than what we've had. We're failing in that regard. Badly.

If we're ever to turn things the first step will be to take a good, hard, and honest look at the true nature of what we're actually dealing with. Does anybody really think a well entrenched criminal regime of despots and thugs such as the one which now has a stranglehold on our country will be displaced at the ballot box?

We must wake up to the reality of what it means to be under despotic fascist rule. There simply are no historical examples of an authoritarian fascist regime being displaced by a citizenry working WITHIN the system -- it's just not the way fascist regimes work and the U.S. will be no exception. The sooner we come to terms with this reality the better. Time is working against us.