In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along. For decades, a "false prosperity" that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.
Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.
Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.
Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse. When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things.
The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear....
#1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety. An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are "scared for their lives"....
“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.
#2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house....
A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help.
He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle.
#3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold.
#4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country. Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com....
AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of "get the old geezer."
Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn't enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.
#5 All over the United States, police are brutalizing Occupy Wall Street protesters and spraying pepper spray directly in their faces. Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming "more stable" in America. You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here.
#6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone.
#7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution. According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters "would support violence to advance their agenda".
#8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod. The following is how a local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident....
It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him.
One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register.
That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women.
You can see video of this violent confrontation right here.
#9 These days, many Americans are so "on edge" that just about anything will make them snap. For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly.
#10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently. He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.
#11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off.
#12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time. For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler.
#13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States. For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year....
In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen -- nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
"That kind of increase is really shocking,'' said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. "The fact that it's on the upturn doesn't surprise me at all, but that's pretty alarming.''
#14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet. The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News....
Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet.
#15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression. At this point, more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants.
#16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell. I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog....
In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month. So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.
#17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation. In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground.
#18 Most Americans don't realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article....
While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn't. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.
Authorities say today's thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it's then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.
#19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away. For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.
#20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009. Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America.
#21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them. Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members.
#22 Be careful who you befriend online. They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual. The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com....
Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man--who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online--told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.
Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways.
As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming.
Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse. For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously....
-"18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating"
-"12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing"
It won't happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse.
Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved. Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment. Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent. As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly. Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.
What in the world is happening to America?
If you have a thought on this topic, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving a comment below....
It must be , in order to expose the wolves in sheeps clothing, this decline that you talk about is not a new phonomonon. These days (the reaping of what has been sown)are not coming without warning. Doing what´s right is hard especially in riotous time, the mob is a strong current to try to swim against . The flood has been released, it is now just a matter of the masses of sleepers to wake up.I would like just one thing from thoses reading this,don´t be surprised . Everone of the wrongdoers will receive judgement like the nouremberger trials. Facists had no Idea that they would be held accountable for there sins against humanity so will all be judged sooner or later . Don´t be surprised ! Not at what is coming! Maybe , you can find the rock to stablize your footing in a world going mad.The world has to choose , people have to make a decision , a choice, select a path , and the generous, the believers,the honest and faithfull, the ones who are looking for a new kingdom will suffer like never before at the hands of those being swept away with the majority . grabbing at you to keep themselves afloat in this deludge,like drowning is a act of desperation so it will be . Only the miracle of God can keep you from desperation and fear. and the trail that is coming will refine everyone to there pure state ! It has to come , society can´t continue with bad apples in the barrel. Don´t be surprised! When it comes,the time to be purified ,what will you be? plus or minus , neg. or pos.help or hinderance good or bad friend or foe , If the kingdom were of this world the servers of others would fight. Again I ask , Please ,Don´t be suprised! Greater love hath no man than he gives up what is his (especially his own life ) to further his neighbors life and future good. ¨Don´t be surprised when men revile you and hate you and despitfully use you ¨The whole world groans in birth pains , waiting for the pure children to be born ! Don´t be suprised!!!!!
The only hope for the world is Jesus.
AMEN! “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (ACTS 4:12)
YES! His return, specifically. The King of all Kings will be back here to rule and reign over all the earth, then we will see and know how it could have been all along if we had done it all His way from the start!
How much of that crime is done by blacks or other minorities? I would say that the majority of it is. This is just common (UN-PC) sense. So there is a racial aspect to this. Seeing as how blacks commit the majority of violent crime in America. Also, blacks are more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than vice versa. Ofcourse the media covers up all of this.
Black neighborhoods are full of crime. And ofcourse they transport that crime to white areas. Especially when they move into white areas.
How racist of you. But then again, I bet you probably one of those white people that supported the Penn State Coach who raped little boys. Old white men who rape boys and yet, they are supported by the college system. This problem is beyond race. You are doing exactly what the elite want you do.
OH, btw. stay away from Germany. The recently discovered Nazi-death squad was probably financed and organized by the internal secret service BfV (“Protector of the Constitution”).
Foreigners are still not welcome in Germany.
The moral fabric that holds democracy together is being shredded. The “If it feels good do it” and “The end justifies the means” mentality leads to every man doing what is right in his own eyes. This leads to chaos. When you take moral standards like the Ten Commandments, prayer and God out of schools and society, it leaves man with no higher accountability or order. Since we have walked away from accountability to God and the order He would like to bless us with, how’s that working for us? If we’re honest, we have to say (as described above) not well. Now if God chooses to shed the blood of His Son to pierce through all this garbage and restore us to our former glory, we have hope. He cares enough to do that. He knows we need it – and is willing to pay the price to restore us to Himself. But we have free will so it is up to us to respond to His overture of love for us. If we do, we engage the fulfilling, purposeful life He created us for, which contributes to society rather than tears it apart.
I just had this conversation with my wife. We are all guilty of a total lack of perspective of who we are and why we are here. Since homo erectus almost 3 million years ago until about less than 200 years ago, most of mankind lived alone or in small cooperative groups, working the land and animals to meet our basic needs and free from others having authority, credit, contracts or governance over us. THIS IS WHO WE ARE. This is what is in us and this is what our purpose is. To survive and be free.
Somewhere along the way our ingenuity tripped us up. Simple machinery and later electricity created convenience for us. A gas stove, good knives, or a blender greatly improved the efficiency of a homesteader trying to manage the task of feeding their family from their own livestock and crops. But somewhere along the lines we became enslaved by these conveniences. We got addicted to the novelty of them and the free time they created for us. And before long many of us became enslaved to them.
Look at your life. If you are not enslaved to convenience then what are you. You live in a house, connected to a power grid, full of appliances furniture and clothes none of which you produced for yourself. Instead you get up every day and go to a mundane job that crushes your humanity, just to make payments on these things and collect more. This has made almost 50% of you obese. A significant share of you are upside down in your mortgage or owe more than you have saved. And few of you have the skills to tend to your own survival outside of this system.
And this is the problem. We have lost our purpose. We have become addicted to being addicted to useless INconveniences. A convection oven does not SAVE you time if you have to work 40 hours a week to pay for it. We have become trapped in a cycle of enslaving ourselves just to feed our addiction to things that prevent us from producing for our own needs. And producing for our own needs is the purpose built into us by 3 million years of history.
Now in good times, when money is flowing freely, there is the appearance that this is ‘living the good life’. Worthless crap comes easy, we live fast and loose within this consumption system, and success is measured by how little you ever HAVE to do for yourself (billionaires don’t have to work). But when in times like these, when the system falls victim to its built in flaws, the extent to which we are enslaved becomes more clear to us and we rebel against it. Yet most don’t even understand why they are mad, or who they are angry at because they are void of this historical perspective and have known no other way. And the result is random acts of violence against anyone or anything. Somewhere inside you your body and mind know their purpose. The more you deny it to them, the more they will rebel against you.
There is nothing wrong with societies by definition. There is nothing wrong with cooperation amongst like peoples. But when participation requires submission to the financial, governmental, and contractual enslavement that we all live under, it will eventually implode from the reactive force of the human sense of purpose that it suppresses. Decadence and overindulgence have been behind every historical societal collapse in history, and no campaign slogan, or bullshit newspaper headline will change that.
Shed your dependence on these enslaving addictions. Learn to do and provide for yourself. Shun simple convenience for the opportunity to indulge your human purpose. Step off the path to acquiring them at the expense of your humanity. Or risk being one of these purposeless perpetrators of violence or their victim. The past will not be rewritten. When the present is past, this will still be our human purpose, the only story will be whether we embraced it or how tragically we denied it.
Deuce…..excellent comment! I agree, but could not have explained it as you so brilliantly did.
To all of those who are making racist comments. How about stop defending the Penn State coach. Do you really defend a child rapist like that? I suprised that this has not been talked about yet, but you attack minorites but not the elite. You know, like Henry Kissinger, David Rockfeller, Dick Chenny (who talks about being on the dark side) I wonder why is that.
Jeremy, short sighted really? wow.
Just because it is the majority – does not make a difference. You know what “pack mentality” is right?
I did not say the other alternative is wrong.
THEY SAY THAT (that the other is wrong).
Don’t they.
Good old Georges Clemenceau had it right when he quipped close to a century ago: “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between”.
And Jeremy – that was a “stupid” comment from you about my comment but I should have known better to post online.
-I never denied that it had some “positive effect” from it. You totally missed the point! The point was that everyone being a christian would NOT save the world and I am sick of reading how it will, because that is what you are all taught from birth. People do what they want, if they are Christians or NOT.
Well America, this is what you inflicted on South Africa with your meddling. What goes out comes around. How do you like being on the receiving end for once? You guys are the global bullies along with your pal England. You have bullied the rest of the world for so long that you think yourselves invincible. Well now you see what happens when your economy gets messed with, the way you messed with ours when you used sanctions as an excuse to keep us from stopping you from going off the gold standard, to which you were contractually bound. Now imagine that we talked the rest of the world into putting you under global sanctions as well? Where would you be then seeing as most of your produced goods come from sweat shops in Asia or from other factories abroad.
America YOU forced South Africa into accepting a terrorist organisation as our leadership. We have had raging poverty, rampant corruption, unstoppable crime epidemics and worse since then. You express shock and horror at people behaving like thugs towards the elderly? We have thugs chopping our elderly to bits on almost a daily basis here, or robbing them of what little they have, or raping them. That is our daily reality thanks to your meddling. When you meddled with Rhodesia it resulted in the same thing. You are only getting what you deserve and it is not nearly as bad as it is in the countries you meddled with. So quit whining about how terrible it is and deal with it. We have had to.
[...] George S. sent this: 22 Signs That The Thin Veneer of Civilization That We All Take for Granted is Starting to Disappear [...]
Believers in the Bible are saddened, but not shocked, sobered, but not surprised, by these and other indicators of the real evil that lies in the heart of man. We’ve left our moorings in a transcendent God and eternal truth and are now adrift. It was absolutely predictable. The writer is correct: the hard times only reveal what is already there. The solution is not a return to good times; this would only mask the underlying problem and it would allow the moral rot to progress unchecked. The hard times, hard as they may be, may be necessary for us to make the needed change in our moral direction. I hope it’s still possible.
I think 3 millions people needs dead to change America. It is 1% .
i live near that city where the buses don’t run. we are in a crisis in detroit. there is total calaspe and now there is talk that the city will go broke by june 2012! we need to get down on hour knees and pray!
At some point in time, without a major rebirth, we sill be seeing in American what is now happening in Africa and the middle east, gangs of marauders, raiding communities taking what they can and then fleeing. There will be so many the police will be unable to handle it all.
An armed citizenry will be the only defense.
There is no shame in this country…………no remorse, no respect for self or others. This is a godless/lawless country. When America kicked God out of the country, HE removed HIS protection, HIS blessings from America……….now satan has almost full run and really needs little help in destroying America. Americans are doing a very good job of it.
The book to read is The Passing of the Modern Age by John Lukacs. I think it was written in the 1960s and the author describes the decline of civilization and the descent into barbarism, which he foresaw coming if the process wasn’t reversed. What are gangs but barbaric tribes? Rome was overrun by the barbarians, but the situation is different now because the barbarians have been breed by civilization itself. Something I sometimes ponder is what Mr. Lukacs predicted could happen: as the chaos spreads and the state’s power declines the gangs (“the barbaric tribes”) will take control over areas. A new aristocracy will thus be formed…
so great to see that the god botherers only solution is wait and see…
should the god botherers not be out helping those really in need ?
should the god botherers not be selling ludicrous temples to their own importance to use said money to help those worse off ?
should not the god botherers show example and dress as did their saviour, not regale themselves in silks and finery ?
should not the god botherers go back to being what their beloved forefathers did…that is produce food, teach and heal ?
or are the god botherers just as guilty as the rest, not wanting to raise a finger, thinking that this is divine providence, so sit back, watch and wait…
seems then that the god botherers are as guilty as anyone else of being totally ineffective and just plain lazy
god botherers…just another self interest group
imho
I know this not funnee, however, firebombing a Taco Bell because you did not have enough meat….. J-EEE-PERS!!!
Regarding # 11, That’s the Saigon whore that bit my nose off!!!
This is such disgusting fearmongering. ***************** I’m so sick and tired of this site saying the entire world will collapse every day but it never does. Do you want to sell us some more stuff after you scare the daylights out of us? This isn’t journalism this is just propaganda.
There is a world of difference between saying that a collapse will happen “tomorrow” and saying that we are in the process of collapsing.
If you have a specific fact or point that you wish to dispute, please bring it up. I am not afraid of criticism and debate. We should all be seeking to find the truth.
Michael
There are many reasons this is happening, one of which is cultural marxism which was started back in 1923. As a way to undermine the social fabric so a comminist socalistic government could be installed without a shot ever being fired. If you remove the name America, and look at the communist manafesto we see much of it is alreading installed. All the central planning you could ever want. Central banks, Lenin said once a central bank is installed 90% of my work it done. Once our sense of patriotism, family values and faith undermined and the state seen as the solution, well they did good job on us. The Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll were sponsored by these people, feminist movement the same. See Gary Allens book, NONE DARE CALL IT A CONSPIRACY. OR Dave McGuires Book, the Day the Dollar Died. Check out Dishonest Money by Joe Plummer. See the movie Cultural Marxism by James Jaeger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M
and Invisible Empire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIH4jUIK5zs
[...] Americans simply do not seem to care what happens to those around them any longer. As I discussed in another recent article, some of the things that we are now seeing young people do are almost unbelievable. For example, [...]
Are you guys kidding me? I could scour the news from any year in the past 250 years and find 22, 222, or even 2,222 similar examples of crime, economic worries, riots, and poverty. Guess what? Civilization still moved on. Give me a break.