Social Decay

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocks God: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe”

49 people were just ruthlessly gunned down at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is using it as an opportunity to mock God.  As you will see below, in response to the mass shootings she posed this question on Twitter: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?”  Conservatives were obviously her intended target, but her statement implies that either God won’t listen to our prayers and stop these terror attacks or that He simply can’t do it because He lacks the power to do so.  Either way, her statement is a direct attack on God and believers all across America are deeply, deeply offended by her statement.

What just happened in New Zealand is yet another example that demonstrates that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing.  Shooter Brenton Tarrant is a horribly deranged man who decided that he would gain worldwide fame by shooting a whole bunch of innocent people in cold blood.  And it turns out that he wasn’t even from New Zealand…

A 28-year-old Australian man who was charged with murder was remanded without plea until his next appearance in court on April 5, while two others remain in police custody. NBC’s Australian subsidiary, Channel 7, say police sources have named one of the suspects as Brenton Tarrant.

The charged individual “traveled sporadically to New Zealand and stayed for varied amount of time,” but was not a resident of Christchurch, Ardern said in a statement.

In this day and age, this sort of thing can literally happen anywhere.  No community is truly “safe”, and we all need to understand that our world has fundamentally changed.

When a great tragedy like this happens, it is not time to jump on social media and try to use it to score political points.

Unfortunately, that is precisely what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left have been doing.  Here is her full statement about “thoughts & prayers” in context…

At 1st I thought of saying, “Imagine being told your house of faith isn’t safe anymore.”

But I couldn’t say “imagine.”

Because of Charleston.
Pittsburgh.
Sutherland Springs.

What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?

If she had simply mocked gun owners, conservatives or her political opponents, that would have been bad enough.

But she didn’t stop there.

She mocked almighty God by implying that our thoughts and prayers are worthless.

There is no room in Congress for someone that would make such a statement, and I am calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to immediately resign.

Others on the left are relentlessly pointing their fingers at conservatives in the aftermath of this attack, but Brenton Tarrant was not a conservative.  In fact, he made this explicitly clear in the manifesto that he left behind…

The terrorist gunman who killed 49 Muslims at a mosque in New Zealand said in his own manifesto that he wanted “no part of” conservatism, describing himself as an “eco-fascist” and expressing admiration for Communist China.

Answering the question “Were/are you a conservative?”, Brenton Tarrant wrote, “No, conservatism is corporatism in disguise, “I want no part of it.”

But you aren’t hearing that on the mainstream news, are you?

In his manifesto, Tarrant also expressed disdain for Donald Trump, and he openly admitted that the “nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.”

That would make him a far left communist more than anything else.  But the mainstream media just keeps using terms such as “right wing extremist” to describe him.

Tarrant also made it abundantly clear in his manifesto that he wants to see “a civil war in the United States”…

At three points in his manifesto, the shooter also states his intention to spark a civil war in the United States by triggering crackdowns on the Second Amendment. In his laundry list of motivations, the shooter spends the most amount of time discussing this goal, which he believes will ultimately lead to a “fracturing” of the U.S. along “cultural and racial lines.”

As he describes it, his attack will “Create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political, and racial divide within the United States.”

Without a doubt, our nation is more divided today than we have ever seen in modern American history, and the stage is set for the mass societal chaos that I depicted in “The Beginning Of The End”.  I am stunned by all of the anger, frustration and hatred that I see throughout our society, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

If we don’t learn how to love one another, we simply are not going to make it as a society.

Loving others does not mean that you always have to agree with them.  We must always contend for the truth, but at the same time we have got to find a way to love those that are opposed to us.

Hatred never leads anywhere good, and Tarrant is a perfect example of that fact.  Sadly, our world is filled with more hate than ever before, and that is going to have very serious consequences for all of us.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The Average Time Until A Great Civilization Collapses Is 336 Years, And The U.S. Is Now 242 Years Old

Every great civilization throughout human history has eventually collapsed, and if we want to have any hope of escaping the same fate, we need to be willing to learn some lessons from the past.  Because many of the same factors that caused the collapse of previous civilizations are weighing very heavily on the United States of America today.  According to the BBC, the average lifespan of a great civilization is 336 years from beginning to end.  But that doesn’t mean that America will make it that long.  Our nation is currently 242 years old, and there are signs of advanced social decay all around us.  If we remain on the road that we are currently on, there are many that believe that complete and utter collapse is not too far away.

Ultimately, what does a “society” consist of?

According to Luke Kemp of the University of Cambridge, societies are “just complex systems composed of people and technology”…

Societies of the past and present are just complex systems composed of people and technology. The theory of “normal accidents” suggests that complex technological systems regularly give way to failure. So collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilisations, regardless of their size and stage.

We may be more technologically advanced now. But this gives little ground to believe that we are immune to the threats that undid our ancestors. Our newfound technological abilities even bring new, unprecedented challenges to the mix.

It is not easy to keep an extremely complex society running, and there have been so many factors that have played a role in collapsing previous civilizations.  War, natural disasters, environmental shifts, social degradation, economic problems and disease are just a few examples.

And as Kemp has pointed out, sometimes societies simply collapse “under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy”…

Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy. Societies are problem-solving collectives that grow in complexity in order to overcome new issues. However, the returns from complexity eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. After this point, collapse will eventually ensue.

Even if America wasn’t deteriorating in so many other areas, would our nation eventually collapse under the weight of our own bureaucracy as well?  We have the biggest government in the history of the world, and when you total up all levels of government we literally have millions of laws, rules and regulations governing our lives today.  It is a horrible system, and it is definitely not what our founders intended.  To me, it makes sense that someday it could ultimately collapse as people simply stop believing in it.

In order for a civilization to function smoothly, there must be something that bonds it together.  When the United States was originally established, we were united by a common set of values, but that is no longer true.

Today, America is more divided than it has been in my entire lifetime, and one of the biggest reasons is because there is no agreement about what our values should be.

Personally, I am a strong advocate for returning to the values that our nation was founded upon, and Mac Slavo echoed this sentiment in one of his recent articles…

We now have the unique advantage of being able to learn from the wreckages of societies past, but instead of doing so and freeing mankind from government, many who are enslaved continue to push for shorter chains, more violence, control, domination, and theft by the ruling class – not just of themselves, but of all others too. Collapse is imminent in our opinion, as those in control will not willingly give up their stranglehold over the tax cattle slaves.

Unfortunately, many in our society want us to go in the exact opposite direction.

As a result, the fabric of our society is literally coming apart at the seams, and this is something that Jim Quinn commented on in one of his recent articles…

Our society is now infinitely more materialistic, narcissistic, and greedy than it was in the 1950s. Moral degeneration has reached new lows, unthinkable during the relatively innocent 1950s. But the common theme is human failings, foibles, and fallacies. Whatever a culture values you get more of. Our culture values achievement, wealth and power, at any cost.

To illustrate his point, Quinn lamented the growing power that “social media influencers” now have in our society…

Rather than make up our own minds about what we like, what we wear, where we eat, or what entertainment we enjoy, we need to be influenced into our decisions by famous people who are famous for being famous. These “influencers” generate their influential power through the number of social media followers they have accumulated by posting pictures of themselves in their underwear, leaked sex tapes, nude selfies, or generally being attractive.

Most of them are low IQ mouth breathers who can’t do basic math or write a comprehensible paragraph. But those 36DD breasts and pouty lips classify them as a grade A influencer. I can’t decide whether these narcissistic icons are more pathetic or the feeble-minded wretches who are actually influenced by these vacuous bimbos. Moral degeneration of society seems to have reached a new low.

We truly are becoming a real-life version of “Idiocracy”, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

But I can think of no better example of the decline of our society than Jussie Smollett.

Here is a guy that seemingly had everything.  He was on a hit show, he had lots of money and he had hordes of devoted fans that loved him.

But he threw it all away because he believed that he was entitled to more, and he was willing to do anything to get it.

Apparently he was not happy that he was making just $65,000 an episode, and so he created one of the most despicable hoaxes in American history in a desperate attempt to get his salary raised.

Piers Morgan has described him as “the most hideous, reprehensible, disgusting, snivelling little liar in America”, and I think that is about right.

But you know what?

He represents the true state of our society better than anyone else that I know.  Just like Smollett, we continue to insist that we are “the good guys”, but in reality our nation has become a cesspool of just about every sort of evil that you can possibly imagine.

If we will change our ways and return to the values that the first Americans embraced, we could turn things around.

But if we continue doing the things that we are currently doing, collapse is inevitable.

And it can happen very quickly.  In 390 AD, the Roman Empire covered nearly 2 million square miles and it seemed unstoppable.

But by 476 AD it was gone.

As many have said, if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.

Please wake up America.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

An Inside Look At The Social Decay That Is Eating Away At America Like An Aggressive Form Of Cancer

The character of a nation is a reflection of the character of millions of individual people, and one of the fastest ways to get a sense of the character of individual people is to visit their homes.  It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and if that is true then a home visit has got to be worth a million.  Sadly, there is a reason why so many Americans that make a living making service calls in other people’s homes absolutely hate their jobs.  Way too often they are confronted with the worst that America has to offer, and many of them end up psychologically scarred for life as a result.  For example, the following is from an article in which Lauren Hough described her time as a cable installer…

I’d walk in prepared for anything. There was sobbing, man or woman, didn’t matter. There were the verbal assaults. There were physical threats. To say they were just threats undermines what it feels like to be in someone else’s home, not knowing the territory, where that hallway leads, what’s behind that door, if they have a gun, if they’ll back you into a wall and scream at you. If they’ll stop there. If they’ll call in a complaint no matter what you do. Sure, we were allowed to leave if we felt threatened. We just weren’t always sure we could. In any case, even if we canceled, someone else would always be sent to the same house later. “Irate. Repeat call.” And we’d lose the points we needed to make our numbers.

America wasn’t always like this.

Once upon a time, Americans generally treated one another with kindness, dignity and respect.

But now social decay is spreading like wildfire, and this country is rapidly becoming unrecognizable.

Just recently, a congressional report discovered that one of the largest drug companies in the entire nation had shipped “more than 3 million prescription opioids” to a single pharmacy in West Virginia…

In just 10 months, the sixth-largest company in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids — nearly 10,000 pills a day on average — to a single pharmacy in a Southern West Virginia town with only 400 residents, according to a congressional report released Wednesday.

McKesson Corp. supplied “massive quantities” of the painkiller hydrocodone to the now-shuttered Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit, even after an employee at the company’s Ohio drug warehouse flagged the suspect pill orders in 2007, the report found. That year, McKesson — ranked 6th in the Fortune 500 — reviewed its customers, including Sav-Rite, and reported to the Drug Enforcement Administration that the purchases were “reasonable,” according to the report.

Of course West Virginia is right at the heart of the horrific opioid crisis that is sweeping the nation.  But what amazes me is that nobody at McKesson Corp. saw anything wrong with pouring millions of highly addictive pills into a very small pharmacy in a town with only 400 residents.

Out on the west coast, drug addicts are shooting up and smoking crack right in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals…

Outside the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in downtown San Francisco, a woman urinates on the sidewalk and smokes a crack pipe.

Inside her purse are about a dozen used heroin needles. She shoots heroin up to 10 times per day, she says.

About 50 yards away, a man injects another woman in the neck with a needle. She puts her thumb in her mouth and blows on it to make her vein more visible. Her right arm is caked with dried blood.

The Ninth Circuit is the country’s largest federal appeals court, and President Trump recently nominated a radical left wing activist to fill a vacancy on it.  And right out in front of the court it literally looks like a third world cesspool.

You may be tempted to think that this is one of the worst neighborhoods in San Francisco, but the truth is that it is actually one of the best…

This San Francisco neighborhood is home to the headquarters of Uber, Twitter and Salesforce. But stroll around here, and you’re also likely to find used drug paraphernalia, trash, and human excrement on the sidewalks, and people lying in various states of consciousness.

During 2018, San Francisco citizens filed more than 20,000 complaints about human feces in the streets.  There are words to describe what San Francisco has become, but I am not able to print them in this space.

We like to think that we are an “example” to the rest of the world, but the truth is that they are all laughing at us.  And I had to laugh too when I recently came across this story…

A man has been arrested after he drove his pickup truck into a courthouse in Mississippi.

News outlets reported that the Gulfport Police Department said in a news release that 28-year-old Keith Cavalier told officers he intentionally crashed into the Harrison County Courthouse early Saturday because it was the best way to let them know his drug paraphernalia had been stolen.

What in the world is happening to us?

Let’s switch gears for a bit.  Instead of talking about drugs, we’ll talk about sex for a moment.

At one time, if a teacher had sex with a student it was a major national scandal.  But now it is happening so frequently that it is usually not considered to be “newsworthy” anymore.  In fact, during the most recent fiscal year the state of Texas alone “opened 429 cases into inappropriate student-educator relationships”…

During fiscal 2017-18, the TEA opened 429 cases into inappropriate student-educator relationships — an approximate 42 percent increase from the prior year, said Doug Phillips, director of educator investigations at TEA, during a Senate Education Committee meeting this week.

“I think we’re just getting a lot more of these reports that maybe would not have been reported in the past,” he said.

But just when you think that nothing could top Texas, Colorado comes along and says “hold my beer”.

After all, nothing says “classy” like a 1,000 person orgy…

A POLYAMOROUS events planner has revealed her quest to organize the world’s largest orgy – inviting 1,000 to the marathon sex party.

Pearl Derrier, 29, from Denver, Colorado, goes to orgies at least once a month as one person can’t fulfill her “every physical and emotional need”.

Her partners, boyfriend Dan Patrick, 35, and “homemaker” girlfriend Tomi Tailey, 30, are also happy for her to have casual liaisons with other people at orgies.

The fabric of our society is literally rotting away right in front of our eyes, but most Americans are still in denial about what is happening.

Just like all other major empires throughout human history, we are decaying from within, and we should be deeply alarmed at what we have become.

In his year in review article, Dave Barry made a great point about the current state of American culture…

What made this year so awful? We could list many factors, including natural disasters, man-made atrocities, the utter depravity of our national political discourse and the loss of Aretha Franklin. Instead we’ll cite one event that, while minor, epitomizes 2018: the debut of “Dr. Pimple Popper.”

This is a cable-TV reality show featuring high-definition slo-mo closeup videos of a California dermatologist performing seriously disgusting procedures on individuals with zits the size of mature cantaloupes. You might ask, “Who on Earth would voluntarily watch that?” The answer, in 2018, was: MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. That is the state of our culture. We can only imagine what new reality shows lie ahead. We would not rule out “Dr. Butt Wiper,” or “People Blow Their Noses Directly Onto The Camera Lens.”

Sadly, I have a feeling that a show called “Dr. Butt Wiper” would rapidly become one of the most popular television shows in America.

We truly are a nation in decline, and things are getting worse with each passing year.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Raw Video Shows Dozens Of People Looting A Dollar Store As Flooding Cuts Wilmington Off From The Rest Of North Carolina

A major emergency brings out the best in some people, but in others it brings out the absolute worst.  Shocking images of “dozens of people” ransacking a Family Dollar store in Wilmington, North Carolina have stunned the nation.  This happened in broad daylight, and many of the looters didn’t even seem to care that a television news crew was filming them.  Sadly, this always seems to happen whenever a major disaster takes place.  Our established social order is so vulnerable, and so many people out there will gladly take advantage of others if they believe that there is an opportunity to get away with it.  If this is how people will behave during a storm, how will they act once things start getting really bad in this country?

At this hour, Florence continues to dump massive amounts of rain on the Mid-Atlantic region, and now the death toll is up to 18.  It is being reported that more than 640,000 people are without power, and the National Hurricane Center says that more “catastrophic flooding” is coming as Florence remains stationary over the Carolinas.

Major roads all over North Carolina and South Carolina have been flooded, and some parts of Interstate 95 have had to be shut down.

The flooding is already so bad that the city of Wilmington has been completely cut off from the rest of North Carolina, and that is where the Family Dollar store was looted.  One reporter was able to capture raw footage of the looting in progress, and you can see that video on YouTube right here.

This is one of the most disturbing things that I have seen in a long time.

How can people behave like that?

According to one news report, many of the looters were carrying things back to a public housing project right across the street…

Footage from local news station WECT shows dozens of people carrying any items they could get their hands on out of the store and back to a public housing community called Houston Moore.

While there were no members of law enforcement on the scene due to management’s request, police enacted a curfew for the area from 5pm Saturday to 6am Sunday.

They also said many of the alleged looters could be identified in WECT’s video. They encouraged locals to report anyone they recognized in the footage.

If it was just one or two people doing the looting, that would be one thing.

But for “dozens of people” to be looting a store in broad daylight is a very frightening indication as to where we are at as a society.

The storm just arrived a couple days ago, so none of these people were hurting for food or water.  They were just immensely greedy, and they decided to loot the store because they thought they could get away with it.

According to one reporter, “you could just see people everywhere”…

WECT reporter Chelsea Donovan, who went to the scene with another journalist to film the looting, said: ‘When we came over the hill on Greenfield Street, you could just see people everywhere.’

In her news coverage Donovan gestures into the store’s front entrance as she says: ‘You can see here inside just a complete mess, people taking duffel bags and trash bags, now noticing we’re here [and] running away from the camera.’

And of course this was not the only instance of criminal activity in the region.

Over in Brunswick County, at least 4 crooks were arrested…

Dashaun Smith, 25, and Brandon Bellamy, 30, are both charged with possession of burglary tools and break and or enter at Tommy’s Mini Mart in Leland. They are each being held under a $20,000 bond.

Devin Harris, 21, and Justice Harris, 18, are both charged with break or enter a motor vehicle. They are being held under a $5,000 bond each.

We have raised an entire generation that has no moral foundation, and when things take a turn for the worse in this country we are going to see chaos like this all over America.

It doesn’t matter how many laws you have if people don’t follow them.  To a very large degree, any free society is heavily dependent on the fact that most people will regulate themselves, and that is one of the reasons why the social decay that we see all around us is so deeply alarming.

Ultimately, we will probably see even more looting before this storm is over, because it is being reported that “the worst flooding is yet to come”…

Florence’s merciless deluge has already killed 18, trapped hundreds and made parts of North and South Carolina impassable — and authorities say the worst flooding is yet to come.

The tropical depression will keep dumping rain over parts of North Carolina for the next few days, with numerous rivers expected to crest at major flood stage.

Flooding already is so bad in North Carolina that the state transportation department is telling people not to travel in the state. Numerous highways, including sections of I-95 and I-40, are closed, and road flooding has virtually cut off the coastal city of Wilmington.

Previously, I have discussed the fact that it is being projected that this storm could potentially dump 10 trillion gallons of water on North Carolina.  The flooding is already “catastrophic”, and you can view some really good before and after photos right here.

The National Hurricane Center says that up to 40 inches of rain will likely fall on southeastern North Carolina and the northeastern tip of South Carolina.  Even though Florence turned out to be not quite as powerful as the experts were anticipating, this is still an extremely, extremely damaging storm.

At times like this, it is so important for communities to come together and support one another.

Unfortunately, some have decided that this is the perfect time for a crime spree, and as an American I am deeply ashamed by what I am seeing.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Thousands Flee Chicago For Safer Areas Of The Country As America’s Third Largest City Becomes A Gang-Infested Wasteland

Did you know that the number of murders increased by almost 60 percent in the city of Chicago last year?  And as you will see below, this year gang violence in the Windy City has risen to a new level of viciousness.  A staggering 9.5 million people live in the Chicago metropolitan area, and it was once known primarily for great pizza, bitter cold and some of the best sports fans on the entire planet.  But now the number one thing that comes to mind for many when they think about the city of Chicago is gang violence.  As it becomes clear that things are not going to turn around any time soon, thousands of residents are leaving the city for safer areas of the nation.  In fact, Cook County lost more people than any other county in America last year by a very wide margin.

When your murder rate goes up by double digits in a single year, you have got a problem.

But when it goes up by close to 60 percent, you have got a catastrophe on your hands…

In 2016, the number of murders in the city jumped nearly 60 percent to over 760, more than New York and Los Angeles combined. There were more than 4,300 shooting victims in the city last year, according to police.

Of course we aren’t supposed to talk about the fact that this is quietly happening in communities all over America.  This is one of the reasons why there is such a disparity in real estate prices these days.  The wealthy are willing to pay a substantial premium to live with other wealthy people in areas that are far away from all the violence.

And the gang violence in Chicago continues to escalate.  For example, check out what happened just yesterday…

Two people were killed and eight others were wounded in an attack at the site of a memorial for a man who was slain earlier Sunday in the Brighton Park neighborhood, police said.

Chicago police First Deputy Superintendent Kevin Navarro told reporters at the Southwest Side scene in the 2600 block of West 46th Place that the attack was “another brazen act of gang violence.”

Navarro said the victims, a mix of men and women, were taking part in a memorial for a man, identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as Daniel Cardova, who had been killed at that location earlier in the day when two people fired rifles from a nearby alleyway.

Would you want to raise your children in an area where this was going on?

Thanks to decades of open borders and unrestrained illegal immigration, gang membership has been absolutely soaring in major cities such as Chicago.  Five years ago the Chicago Crime Commission estimated that there were 150,000 gang members living in the metropolitan area, and by this point that number is certainly far higher.

According to Wikipedia, there are currently only 12,244 police officers in Chicago.  That means that the police are outnumbered by at least a 12 to 1 margin.

And according to an article published by the Chicago Sun-Times, some of these gangs have agreed to start using automatic weapons against the police…

The meeting took place Thursday between higher-ups from the Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlers, according to an alert issued to department members the day after the meeting.

The Four Corner Hustlers “provided guns” and have “a sniper in place” though authorities do not know where, according to the alert. The Four Corner Hustlers also are supplying the other two gangs with automatic weapons, which all three factions also have agreed to use against police, the alert states.

No wonder the police suicide rate in Chicago is 60 percent higher than the national average.

If I was living in the Chicago metropolitan area, I would be making every effort to relocate, and apparently there are lots and lots of people that see things the same way that I do.

In fact, net domestic migration for the Chicago metropolitan area was a staggering -89,000 during 2016…

One particularly stunning figure: net domestic migration, with an estimated 89,000 more people moving from the Chicago area to other portions of the country in the past year than those who moved in.

Liz Schuh, principal policy analyst for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, said the figures are “of concern for the region’s continued economic success.”

“Residents often choose to stay in or migrate to a region because of economic opportunity and quality of life,” she added.

In particular, wealthy people are living the city in droves.  It has been reported that 3,000 millionaires left the city of Chicago in 2015 alone.  Certainly the ridiculously high taxes are one factor why so many wealthy people are leaving, but of course gang violence is also a major reason for the mass exodus.

If violence in our major cities is starting to spiral out of control while the economy is still relatively stable, what are things going to look like when a complete economic meltdown happens?

It is only a matter of time before widespread rioting, looting and civil unrest becomes commonplace in major cities all over the country.  With Donald Trump in the White House, the deep frustration that has been simmering in our inner cities is now reaching a boiling point.  It certainly isn’t going to take much of a spark to set off a tremendous explosion.

In anticipation of what is coming, large numbers of Americans have already been relocating to less populated portions of the country.  And the good news is that there are lots of areas to pick from.  According to Survival Dan, about half of the U.S. population lives in just 146 counties…

Recent U.S. census data indicates that out of the 3000 counties in the United States, fully 50% of the population lives in just 146. If you want to have any chance of surviving a widespread catastrophic event by avoiding the hordes that will be searching for critical resources in its aftermath, then check out the following map to get a visual reference of the areas you want to stay away from.

Of course it can be quite difficult to find a good job in an area that is not heavily populated, and there are a lot of expenses involved in relocating to a totally different part of the country.

And there is certainly a lot to consider when picking out a new place to live, and so you would want to do a lot of research before making such a move.

But my wife and I did step out in faith and made a decision to relocate to a new area nearly six years ago, and it was one of the best decisions that we have ever made.

What Is Going On In Charlotte Is Far More Important Than Brad Pitt And Angelina Jolie’s Divorce

brad-pitt-and-angelina-jolie-photo-by-georges-biardWhile one of America’s largest cities is being ripped in two, most Americans appear to be far more interested in the drama surrounding Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s divorce.  As Charlotte braces for a third night of rioting and violence, the mainstream media is full of headlines such as “Welp, the Jolie-Pitt Divorce Got Real Depressing Real Fast” and “Even the Dalai Lama has something to say about Brangelina’s divorce“.  Yes, the “Brangelina divorce” is an important cultural moment that illustrates our ongoing moral and social decay, but what is going on in Charlotte is far more important.  Trust in our most important institutions is deeply broken, and Americans are increasingly choosing chaos and violence over peaceful discourse.  For a very long time I have been warning that these kinds of riots were coming, and the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted every day is starting to rapidly disappear.

There had been hope that things would settle down after the first couple of nights of chaos in Charlotte, but as I write this article protesters have already massed downtown despite a midnight curfew imposed by Mayor Jennifer Roberts…

Demonstrators chanted “release the tape” while briefly blocking an intersection near Bank of America headquarters in the heart of the city’s business district. They then continued marching as police officers watched. Members of the National Guard carrying rifles were also deployed in front of office buildings to head off another night of violence in this city on edge.

Mayor Jennifer Roberts has signed a curfew order from midnight until 6 a.m., despite Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney saying he saw no need for a curfew.

Personally, I can definitely understand why a curfew was imposed.  Nobody should want to see a repeat of the senseless violence of the past two nights.  At one point on Wednesday night, enraged protesters actually attempted to toss a news photographer into a roaring fire…

Among the many reports of violence from the Charlotte, North Carolina unrest Wednesday night was one particular shocking example: rioters tried to throw a news photographer into a burning fire.

Local CW affiliate WCCB was on the scene and tweeted out images of the fire and their initial report.

If you are protesting for justice, you sure aren’t going to get it by trying to burn people alive.  I don’t know how anyone out there can possibly justify the kinds of things that we have been seeing in Charlotte.

In addition to trying to throw an innocent photographer into a fire, the “protesters” have also engaged in other forms of violence that are extremely alarming.  The following summary originally comes from Paul Joseph Watson…

  • Stealing and looting cash registers from local businesses is not a legitimate form of protest
  • A “protester” shooting another “protester” is not a legitimate form of protest.
  • Physically attacking reporters is not a legitimate form of protest.
  • Throwing rocks off bridges at passing vehicles full of families is not a legitimate form of protest
  • Beating up innocent people in parking lots because they’re white is not a legitimate form of protest.
  • Smashing up apartment windows where black people live to “protest” in favor of ‘Black Lives Matter’ is not a legitimate form of protest.
  • Trashing your own neighborhood is not a legitimate form of protest.
  • Looting the Charlotte Hornets team store so you can steal basketball merchandise is not a legitimate form of protest
  • Attempting to hijack cars and terrify their innocent occupants is not a legitimate form of protest.

These sorts of things are not supposed to happen in Charlotte.

We have already seen major rioting in impoverished cities such as Baltimore, Ferguson, Milwaukee and Baton Rouge.  But Charlotte is supposed to be different.  Over the past decade, Charlotte has been one of the more prosperous major cities in America.  Just check out this excerpt from an NBC News editorial…

Charlotte isn’t a crumbling urban ghetto. Charlotte is the place you move when you want sunshine, and a shiny new house in a sparkling new subdivision. Charlotte is a prosperous city where you not only can get a job in the bustling and very clean Uptown area, but that job affords you wonderful weekend getaways to a cozy cabin in the Appalachian mountains but an hour away, or to the sandy shores of the Atlantic, also an easy drive from the Queen City. Charlotte is a magnet for the young and old alike and it’s growth is the envy of not a few urban mayors.

It matters that Charlotte has been celebrated by U.S. News and World Reports as one of the best places to live in the entire nation. It filled Charlotte’s residents with pride when other media outlets heralded their city as one of the very best places to raise a family in the entire state of North Carolina.

If rioting like this could happen in Charlotte, then it could happen just about anywhere.

Now is a time when we need to forgive, come together and learn to work with one another again.  I really like what Donald Trump had to say about this…

“We all have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and see things through their eyes, and then get to work fixing our very wounded country,” Trump said.

Pointing to the violent protests over a police-involved shooting in Charlotte, N.C., Trump said, “Our country looks bad to the world, especially when we are supposed to be the world’s leader. How can we lead when we can’t even control our own cities?” he asked.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of calls for love and forgiveness.

Instead, most of the discussion is focused on anger, hatred, strife and discord.

A house divided cannot stand, and America is more divided today than I have ever seen it in my entire lifetime.

As I stated yesterday, a lot more chaos and violence are coming.  As a society we have been going down the wrong road for decades, and now we are reaping a very bitter harvest.

Violence Erupts In America’s Heartland As Milwaukee Becomes The Latest U.S. City To Burn

Milwaukee Riot - YouTube ScreenshotThe city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin exploded in violence last night as the wave of chaos and civil unrest that is sweeping across America continues to intensify.  At this point, many of our largest cities have become powder kegs of anger and frustration, and a full-blown riot can be set off with a single bullet.  In this case, an armed suspect was shot and killed by Milwaukee police as he attempted to evade the police, and his death almost instantly set off pandemonium in the heart of the city.  America is being ripped apart, and much more violence is coming.  Decades of social decay and economic decline have fundamentally transformed many of our greatest cities, and tensions that have been simmering for a very long time are now being brought to a boil.  Sadly, it seems quite likely that we will see even more rage, hatred and divisiveness in the months ahead.

The sudden eruption of violence that we witnessed in Milwaukee last night was absolutely stunning.  Within just hours after the shooting of the armed suspect, fires were burning all over the city…

Protesters clashed with officers in the hours after a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed an armed suspect during a foot chase. After an hours-long confrontation with officers, police reported that a gas station was set on fire. Police said firefighters initially could not get close to the blaze because of gunshots.

Later, fires were started at a bank branch, a beauty supply company and an auto parts store as scores of people gathered near the crime scene on the city’s north side, a grim Mayor Tom Barrett said at a news conference Saturday night. He said the unrest was driven by a social media frenzy urging people to gather in the area.

Of course police were one of the primary targets of the violence.  It is being reported that at least one squad car was set ablaze, and another had a brick thrown through a window.

One prominent Milwaukee city official is blaming racial injustice for the violence.  The following comes from CNN…

City Alderman Khalif Rainey said the area has been a “powder keg” for potential violence throughout the summer.

“What happened tonight may not have been right and I am not justifying that but no one can deny the fact that there are problems, racial problems in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that need to be rectified,” Rainey said. “This community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has become the worst place to live for African Americans in the entire country.”

Rainey said Saturday’s violence was a byproduct of inequities, injustice, unemployment and under-education.

“Something has to be done to address these issues,” he said. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired, they are tired of living under this oppression, this is their life.”

Without a doubt, the suffering that is going on in our inner cities is intense.  Our economic infrastructure has been gutted by decades of bad trade deals, and evidence of severe social and moral decay is all around us.

But no matter how bad things are, there is never any excuse for committing random acts of violence.  In addition to setting businesses on fire, it is being reported that rioters were trying to drag people out of their vehicles in order to beat them up.

How in the world does that solve anything?

Meanwhile, police all over the nation continue to be targets of violence.  In a previous article, I told my readers that the number of police officers that have been shot and killed this year has risen by 78 percent compared to last year.

Well, over the past few days some more officers have been added to the list.  For example, the following is an excerpt from a CNN report about an officer that was just shot and killed in south Georgia…

A police officer was shot dead while responding to a call of a suspicious person in south Georgia, authorities said.

The shooting occurred Saturday night after the officer, Tim Smith, got the call in a residential area in Eastman, special agent Scott Whitley of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations said.

While on patrol, Smith encountered the subject and exited his car. That’s when he was fatally shot, Whitley said.

And this is from a Fox News report about an officer that was shot and killed in New Mexico…

Two Ohio fugitives wanted for a murder have been arrested after authorities say one of them fatally shot a New Mexico police officer.

Dona Ana County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Jameson said Saturday that 38-year-old Jesse Hanes is suspected of gunning down Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez during a traffic stop Friday.

In addition, there was another very disturbing incident that just happened a few days ago in Arkansas.  When a suspect started shooting at police officers, one was killed, one was wounded, and a police dog named Kina that got hit and ran away was just found on Saturday…

Police spokeswoman Kristin Faulkenberry told reporters the dog, named Kina, “was up and walking” when searchers found the animal Friday morning near where the shooting unfolded near Hackett, about 115 miles west of Little Rock.

The dog was shot and ran into a wooded area Wednesday when a man identified as Billy Monroe Jones opened fire on officers, killing Sebastian County Deputy Bill Cooper and wounding Hackett Police Chief Darrell Spells.

Earlier today I talked to a friend of mine that works as a police officer, and he admitted that he and his wife do think about all of this violence that is being directed at the police.  I suppose that it would be exceedingly difficult not to.  Those that are serving their communities in this way are going to have a very tough time moving forward.  At this point every single law enforcement officer in the entire nation is a potential target, and they are just going to have to find a way to deal with this new reality.

America is more divided than I have ever seen in my entire lifetime.  Instead of learning how to love one another, hatred is growing by the day.

More chaos is coming, more violence is coming, and more of our cities will burn.

Things didn’t have to turn out this way, but thanks to decades of incredibly foolish decisions we will now reap what we have sown.

Los Angeles Police Urge Residents ‘To Protect Themselves’ As Violent Crime Skyrockets

Crime Headlights - Public DomainAll over America, rates of violent crime are absolutely soaring.  As you will see below, violent crime overall shot up by 20 percent in Los Angeles last year, and the police are telling people that “they need to be able to protect themselves” because the police may not be able to get there in time when they call.  Thanks to deep budget cuts, police departments across the nation are already severely undermanned, and our major cities are now seeing crime rates increase at a pace that we have not seen in ages.  In a previous article, I encouraged my readers to focus on the five basics of preparation – food, water, shelter, energy and self-defense.  Of those five, it is often self-defense that is the most neglected.  When bad people break into your house in the middle of the night intending to do bad things, what are you going to do?  Many of us have not had to think about that for a long time, but now conditions are rapidly changing in America.

If you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe the head of the union for the LAPD.  According to him, people living in L.A. “need to be able to protect themselves” because the police “can’t guarantee we’re going to get there in time to help you”…

“The citizens need to know they need to be able to protect themselves because if they call 911, we can’t guarantee we’re going to get there in time to help you,” says Police Protective League President Jamie McBride.

He told Paige that Thursday morning between 5:30 and 10 a.m., there were just three patrol cars assigned to the West LA division. Two cars to protect more than 200,000 people in a 65 square mile radius.

“West Los Angeles, at the minimum, should have seven patrol units, two-man units working,” McBride said.

Have you ever been to Los Angeles?

I have, and even in the best of times it can be quite a mean place.

And of course these are not the best of times.  In fact, the overall rate of violent crime in the city was up by 20 percent last year…

Crime is up across the board in the nation’s second-largest city.

Statistics released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Police Department show that homicides and rapes are each up 9 percent and that robberies are up 13 percent. Violent crime overall increased by 20 percent.

Perhaps you are tempted to think that L.A. is just an anomaly.

Well, let’s go from the second largest city in the country to the third largest city in the country.

There were 51 homicides in Chicago last month, which was the highest total for the city in at least 16 years.  Sadly, this is just a continuation of a trend that has been going on for quite some time.  The following comes from USA Today…

Chicago routinely records more homicides annually than any other American city, but the grim January violence toll marks a shocking spike in violence in a city that recorded 29 murders for the month of January last year and 20 murders for the month in 2014. In addition to the jump in killings, police department said that it recorded 241 shooting incidents for the month, more than double the 119 incidents recorded last January.

The rise in violence comes after the Chicago Police Department reported 468 murders in 2015, a 12.5% increase from the year before. There were also 2,900 shootings, 13% more than the year prior, according to police department records.

Some of the crimes that I have been seeing in the news lately are almost too horrible for words.  If reading about acts of violence deeply troubles you, then you might want to stop reading this article right now.  I want to share with you something that recently happened in New York City, and it is the kind of stuff that nightmares are made out of…

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday denounced the rape of a woman by five men at a Brooklyn playground, pledging police would work to swiftly apprehend the suspects in “this vicious crime.”

Police said on Saturday the men took turns raping the 18-year-old woman at the playground operated by the New York City Parks Department in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn just after 9 p.m. on Thursday. One man pointed a gun at the father and told him to leave, police said.

After the father left, the men each assaulted the woman, police said. They fled when her father returned a short while later, accompanied by two officers.

One rapist is bad enough, but how do five young men come together and decide that they are going to randomly rape someone?

To do something so despicable your heart has got to be hard as a stone.

What in the world has happened to the morality of our society?

And to me, one of the biggest questions of this entire story is why the father decided to walk away from his daughter.

If I was in the same position, I would have stood my ground.  Maybe those young men would have shot me, but there is no way that I would have ever let them have my daughter.  They would have had to go over my dead body to get to her.

But this is what we are told to do today.  We are told to let the criminals do whatever they want and then call the police.

Unfortunately, now the police are openly telling us that they probably won’t be able to get there in time to do any good.

As the economy slows down, crime rates are going to go even higher.  When unemployment and poverty rise, people get desperate, and desperate people do desperate things.

We all need to start thinking about how we are going to protect ourselves and our families during the hard times that are coming.  Different people have different methods that they prefer, and that is okay.  But we are all going to have to start taking security a lot more seriously.

+ More