BREAKING POINT

STORMS A BREWING

BREAKING POINT
By Murph

It appears that more citizens in a relatively short time frame are finding their breaking points. Joe Stack is the most recent in the news. It leads me to wonder how many more have reached a breaking point and done something extreme, but it didn’t make the news.

We also seem to be anticipating some big event to come at us with much speculation as to what that event might be. Personally, I want that ‘big event’ to get here so we can figure out what our next direction should be. At least a bit more transparency in events would be a relief from the lies and denial I see surrounding our lives.

I’d like to talk about this a bit and would be interested in other peoples’ take on it.

In my life, I have observed that “breaking points” are very individualistic. Whether a person commits some very “anti social” act out of frustration, fear, or just plain old ego trip is not predictable. It appears from what I have read that Joseph Stack had been putting up with what he considered a real imposition with the IRS for a very long time. His breaking point was not easily reached. Interestingly, we just watched a movie, “Law Abiding Citizen,” that portrayed a man snapping as the result of a horrid miscarriage of justice. “Falling Down,” with Michael Douglas is another one. Life imitating art or art imitating life? It seems the movies often reflect the memes people are living with or carrying around in their heads.

Go to a watering hole for the commoners and you will see breaking points that are almost instantaneous and over what many of us might consider trivial, aided by alcohol of course.

I suppose the civilized restriction on taking action on a breaking point has some value, hopefully suppressing the trivial. Those that never seem to reach the point of fighting back, even under extreme duress, are labeled wimps etc. Thus leading to things like the high school bully who can’t seem to stop the abuse or agitation until the wimp does take action. Remember Columbine? This is usually accompanied by a lot of “collateral damage.” “Going postal” is a phrase we use to describe when a person has had enough and vents his rage and goes down in a hail of bullets.

Also notice how the popular news media treats such cases, consensus being that they had to have severe personality disorders to go to such extremes, in other words, they were crazy, in need of help. The are “loners,” “disgruntled employees,” “fanatics,” “cultists,” or the ever more popular, “terrorists.” Not citizens. Never citizens. In conjunction, notice how when the PTB engage in violent acts that it is always justified, but if citizens do, its vilified.

I also wonder how many instances involve the breaking points of the elites. Shakespeare and the Greek Tragedy examined some of these. Since the winners write their own histories, they are called “Freedom Fighters,” “Founding Fathers,” and “patriots,” or “heroes.” Gods, even.

I suspect that we have little control over the personal breaking point that is one aspect of each individual personality. I do think that we have control over what action we take. The question is - is it justified to deliberately take it out on someone who is innocent of your misery?

This brings up another question in my mind. What do you do when your breaking point has been reached and you have zero access to the ones responsible? If your breaking point is when your house is repossessed, and you have no access to the CEO of the mortgage company or the bank, who do you confront or take action against? Those under the decision making elite of the company are just minions doing their jobs. Does “just doing your job” release you from responsibility? The Nuremburg trials said, “ no it doesn’t.” In the instance of Stack, are the people that died in his extreme action to be held responsible for their working for an odious government bureaucracy? How about insurance companies? Banks? Stock brokers?

At this blog and permeating web writing is the concept of the “sheeple”, the wimps who will do anything to keep their status quo and not question or challenge those in power. I suspect that for most of these people, they just haven’t had their breaking point exceeded. I wonder what they will do when that point is reached. I further suspect that this year we are going to have an answer to that, and I think that is what the elites are afraid of - what will the herd actually do? Personally, I think they might be counting on it, just to show us the superior firepower they have.

While I am on this subject of the mass population not having reached their breaking point, take a look at Matt Taibbi’s new article in Rolling Stone, March 4 issue. His article outlines how we have been scammed out of another bunch of billions of dollars by the banks, Goldman Sachs being the leader. When is the population’s tolerance for this going to reach the limit? If/when that point is reached, what will be the actions and consequences?

For myself, I don’t yet feel like my line in the sand has been breached. Of course, I am living under peculiar circumstances in relation to most people in this country. I’m not paying taxes to the federal government, don’t have a mortgage, don’t owe a bunch of money, and am living in a very supportive relatively small community in the Northwest and trying our best to live sustainably. That represents-what?- about 10% of the people in this country? Maybe even less.

It seems like this is being deliberately orchestrated, pushing folks to the breaking point. I suppose when that point is reached where a sizable amount of the people go on the rampage, then the elites will turn lose their dogs, the jackbooted thugs disguised as FEMA teams, national guard, police and FBI terrorist searchers. For that is what they will be labeled, “terrorists”. Of course, it is possible that the inevitable declaring of martial law and the militarization of society may just back fire big time. The stage has been set and all that’s needed is the spark, the final indignity against people who have nothing left to lose, and a forced takeover of everything that is not controlled now. And, like our revolutionary war, only a minority of people will scream “I’ve had enough and I ain’t gonna take it anymore” and mean it. In a plutocracy, the state has to marginalize, delegitimize and suppress forceful dissent for its own benefit to perpetuate its policies of raping and looting.

Outcomes of any large direct action are always up for grabs. There are never any clear winners but rather negotiated compromises and settlements. Remember the French revolution? One more ascension of the power hungry and control freaks pictured with his hand in his vest. I ponder how this will play out this time around for I most surely think we shall see some really big changes coming, if not government incompetence, then some huge world wide calamity that will make Haiti appear inconsequential. I have to chuckle at what I will not see, what the tribal story tellers have to say about it all, or what a historian far in the future will say about this period of history. If I were to live long enough to be a historian or story teller, my version would be very different from what I hear in stories today.

Speaking on ‘breaking points’ on the macro level, take a read of this analysis; http://edwinvieira.com/edwin207.htm He has a rather immense contempt for those that are deliberately voiding our constitution and lays out how revolutions and suppression are dealt with. You might want to check out Joe Bageant’s latest piece as well.

Sunday morning and listened to some of the blather on TV news and commentaries. Between the “Obama is going to drive our country into a socialist nightmare” and the “Obama is doing what needs to be done and a fine job of it” talking heads, I feel vaguely sick at my stomach. Is it remnants of the flue or an emotional rejection of what I am hearing? Then there is the “think positive” crowd with their ever annoying mantra that they use to rationalize everything. It all serves the man.

One of the big personal questions for each of us is going to be: when the SHTF and masses of people reach a flash point and rebel, what are we personally going to do? Avoid the conflicts as best we can, participate, deny the consequences, lend support to what side, or what? For me, I have reached the age where active rebellion would be futile, I ain’t got the mojo anymore. That’s why we have chosen a path of resistance to the greater commodity culture, and prefer acts of generosity. What about you?

Of course, as Freeacre cautions, if your answer is “right here and right now, Mother****er!” it would be prudent for you and for us not to blab it on the blogsite. No need to attract the drones to the campfire…