Bob Livingston Alerts™
While some malicious people might be kept in check by social mores and the looming threat of legal punishment, you will find that as a cultural system begins to break down due to political clashes and economic decline the real evil tends to slither out of the woodwork. It happens slowly at first, then all at once.
In the U.S., I would say we are in the middle stages of such a collapse with many sociopaths and psychopaths beginning to feel that they might be able to act out their worst impulses without consequences. They are beginning to test the waters to see what they can get away with.
In the past 10 years, we have seen a dramatic uptick in mass violence and theft. With the advent of social media, it is now easier than ever for spontaneously planned riots to form with little warning. In most cases, these events result in simple property destruction, but more and more there has been an underlying and aggressive impulse, especially in urban areas. There will come a time very soon when the goal is not just to steal or vandalize, but to use the chaos as an opportunity to harm people.
It is actually at this crucial time when a deterrent response is most important. Making examples out of criminals who seek to rob or murder people sets a standard that innocent citizens are not going to comply passively. This tends to frighten away other perpetrators, at least for a while. If no one acts to eliminate the first wave of criminal actions during a social breakdown, then thousands of other criminals will also move to take advantage. The first wave becomes an avalanche.
The root psychology is hard to explain but look at it this way; Imagine a toddler kept in check by his parents in the pristine halls of a delicate museum. The toddler might throw a fit, screaming and shouting because he wants to touch the many fragile items around him, but at least his parents are there to hold him back. He has not yet learned the responsibility and maturity necessary to have access to these treasures. Now imagine removing the parents entirely and telling the toddler there are no rules anymore.
The rush of joy he feels is exhilarating; it is the rush of sudden and unearned power. No one is around to stop him; therefore, he is going to test his own limits. He sees the ordered environment around him, and he becomes incensed. How dare this place restrict him with boundaries and structure? His first inclination is to destroy anything that he can get his hands on.
Now understand that there is a portion of any given adult population that has these same tendencies. They want to take or destroy what they cannot have. They are only waiting for the opportunity to do so without repercussions.
At this phase of a breakdown when criminality dominoes, law enforcement generally folds and retreats, leaving the public with no first line of defense. Gangs and looters organize quickly and start to take territory rather than just taking people's possessions. Organized crime at the local level leads to large-scale death and minimal opposition. People are so isolated and busy trying to scrape together a meager economic lifeline that they are not motivated to fight back.
The point of no return comes when regular people are afraid to leave their homes. This cannot be allowed to happen. Organization at the neighborhood level and an aggressive posture must be enacted or the most vicious attacks will be visited on the population. The psychopaths will have to be removed and the gangs erased.
In an even more dangerous scenario, the psychopaths we have to deal with during a collapse are within the very government that is supposed to protect our liberties. This is a situation in which the criminals are given a license to use violence against the citizenry through the illusion of law. But laws are irrelevant if they violate the boundaries of moral compass and conscience. The laws no longer matter when they are exploited as a means to protect criminality.
I wish I could say that America is not there yet, but we are encountering the symptoms daily. Consider the extreme double standards in place between the treatment of leftist protesters and conservative protesters. Look at the government and media response to the BLM riots versus their response to the Jan. 6 event.
Leftists get treated like crusading social heroes for burning down neighborhoods, violently attacking conservatives, threatening government officials, attacking police precincts and government buildings, injuring thousands of police officers, and contributing to the deaths of dozens of bystanders. Conservatives at the Capitol damage some doors and windows, wrestle with cops, and then get let into the building where they walk in and walk out peacefully within a couple of hours. No one dies at their hands. All of them came unarmed. Yet, some of them get put in prison for years, others are put in prison for decades.
The double standard is absurd, but then again, it's meant to be. Why? Because the psychopaths among the political left were being rewarded and encouraged. Conservatives are supposed to feel defeated, making them unwilling to fight back any longer. These are the kinds of conditions that fuel unstable and corrupt people. These are the conditions that lead to total upheaval. To truth and knowledge, Brandon Smith
