Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete
"Harrisburg chapter of NAACP urges martial law
The Harrisburg Chapter of the NAACP is calling on Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell to suspend some civil liberties and impose martial law in the city to halt the wave of recent lawlessness. ............."
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/ind..._naacp_ur.html |
PA has a lot of problems like this; the last time I checked my state had the Murder Capital of the state (and I think the country, for awhile) in Philadelphia, with a black mayor and a mostly black police force that had zero public trust from the mostly black population. Of course, the entire thing gets a constant slant in the news that audibly whispers "racismmmmm".
Harrisburg is honestly not even that bad. I've lived in Philly, Harrisburg, and my hometown is Allentown and out of the three Harrisburg has the fewest problems, but they are more public since it's the state capital. Philly has more murders, and the ones in Allentown are much more shocking; daylight shootings done in plain sight in downtown, and there was an article out recently in the local newspaper that said less than half of the homicides in the past three years have been solved. Daylight shootings in plain sight. Wow.
IMHO, PA is becoming the new Jersey. No offense to people from Jersey, just comparing our lovely casinos, and much less lovely strip clubs and crime rates to yours. Plus, people from NYC come here now. Weee!
To get back to the topic of the thread, I definitely can see some sort of insurrection coming and martial law being the response. As the many excellent posts in here have said, we currently have a government taking the easy road to a radical shift in public opinion about the place of the government in society. Factors include:
A stagnating, slowly crippling economy coupled with massively increased gov't spending and several long running, expensive programs that are visibly going in the tank.
A dire lack of solid public primary education (including math and sciences, vocabulary and logic-comprehension, and national history awareness), combined with increasingly unaffordable higher learning.
A public arena which no longer places high emphasis on strong moral and ethical values based in the individual, and instead promotes a general slackness and tendency to blame things on "society".
An increasingly angry and vocal minority who can clearly see what is happening, and what is going wrong, and who are becoming desperate for a real solution.
What this looks like to me is that things are going to keep snowballing. It is rarely one catastrophic event, but rather many smaller events: Social Security and Medicare running dry prompting outcry both from those who lost benefits and those who will never receive them but nevertheless paid for them, massive unemployment and a shrinking internal job market with more and more companies moving OCONUS or simply failing because they are so top-heavy, high crime and an increasing lethargy in law enforcement with nowhere to put convicted criminals, and finally more and more public figures who are nothing but firebrands with no solutions and no agenda but their own gratifacation to set off this explosive pile.
We aren't anywhere near this point yet, but really....that doesn't look too far fetched. And martial law is just one step beyond that.
Alex