And This is How Civil Wars Begin....

**Averageman** · 12-31-18, 12:39

Originally Posted by ralph

That was always the goal...The E.U. wants a "United States" of Europe so to speak, with Germany of course running the show and the plan was for everyone to go quietly along..However, some countries, (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, ) and a few others are throwing a wrench into the works by not going along, and not allowing millions of "refugees" into their country to literally rape and pillage at will, with little or no consequences for their actions..(kudos to them) If anything, I think the E.U.will fall apart.. The E.U. is a cancer, it kills everything it touches. But, the problem is, the majority of european voters are low I.Q. voters, and will vote for free shit each and every time, despite the mounting pile of evidence that shows that this form of socialism isn't working. So, they got the goverment they deserved. When people get sick and tired of being sick and tired, only then will things change...

Honestly, how is that any different than what's going on here? Europeans have just been better indoctrinated over time and have now become dependent upon Socialism.
So what's going to happen if we have an issue and the EU steps up to lend a strong Socialist hand with strings attached?
Half the population will welcome them.

**Averageman** · 12-31-18, 14:00

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...b-rule/568351/
You might want to read this tripe, it's an amazing piece of revisionist history.
A small piece of it here.
Is there any hope of resurrecting Madison’s vision of majority rule based on reason rather than passion? Unless the Supreme Court reinterprets the First Amendment, allowing the government to require sites like Twitter and Facebook to suppress polarizing speech that falls short of intentional incitement to violence—an ill-advised and, at the moment, thankfully unlikely prospect—any efforts to encourage deliberation on those platforms will have to come from the platforms themselves. For the moment, they have adopted an unsatisfying mash-up of American and European approaches to free speech: Mark Zuckerberg provoked controversy recently when he said Facebook wouldn’t remove posts denying the existence of the Holocaust, because determining the intent of the poster was impossible, but would continue to ban hate speech that the First Amendment protects.

**ralph** · 12-31-18, 15:12

Originally Posted by Averageman

Honestly, how is that any different than what's going on here? Europeans have just been better indoctrinated over time and have now become dependent upon Socialism.
So what's going to happen if we have an issue and the EU steps up to lend a strong Socialist hand with strings attached?
Half the population will welcome them.

It is'nt, and, you're quite correct..Socialism will finally take over when people like most here on this board and others like it cease to be a majority, which could happen very soon, as soon as 2020, IF that happens, we'll have two choices..A go along with them, including giving up your rights, or B, Get the guns out and start killing these fu#$ers..One or the other, The Dems have made it quite clear what their intentions are should they ever get a Dem congress and a Dem president.. If they want to turn this country into a socialist communist shithole, they should at least be made to fight and die for it..

**26 Inf** · 01-01-19, 19:26

I read this article today on the Real Clear Politics site. I found it to be interesting, although for most of us, it might be a little long. The author uses examples from both the left and the right to point out his points, one of which is:

We may be further down a path toward widespread violence than we realize.

I've kind of summarized the start, hoping to set the hook, I think it is a good read: (link at the bottom)

The Real Roots of American Rage

The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives—and what we can do about it.

I. An Angry Little Town

Soon after the snows of 1977 began to thaw, the residents of Greenfield, Massachusetts, received a strange questionnaire in the mail. “Try to recall the number of times you became annoyed and/or angry during the past week,” the survey instructed. “Describe the most angry of these experiences.”

Greenfield, population 18,000, was an unusual place to plumb these depths. It was a middle-class town with a prosperous tool-and-die factory, where churches outnumbered bars two to one. Citizens were private and humble, and—except for a few recent letters to the editor lamenting that the high-school hockey team had been robbed in the playoffs—the town showed little evidence of widespread resentment. In fact, this very placidity was why Greenfield had been chosen for the study.

The author of the questionnaire was James Averill, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Averill was a gentle soul, the kind of man who had once returned to a grocery store to apologize to a cashier after becoming annoyed over miscounted change. But he was convinced that his academic colleagues misunderstood anger. He had attended many conferences where researchers had described it as a base instinct, a vestige from our savage past that served no useful purpose in contemporary life. “Everyone basically thought anger was something that mature people and societies ought to suppress,” Averill told me. “There was this attitude that if you were an angry person, you ought to be a bit embarrassed.” In journal articles and at symposia, academics described anger as a problem to be solved, an instinct with little social benefit. “But that didn’t really make any sense to me,” he said.

Despite his genial disposition, Averill had been known to mutter angrily when a driver cut him off. He felt bursts of indignation on a regular basis, as did everyone else he knew. And though he rarely acted on these impulses, he suspected that anger wouldn’t be lurking in his psyche unless it served some important purpose. “When something’s bad for us, we usually get rid of it through evolution or social codes. But anger has been a part of humanity for as long as we’ve been alive,” he said. “It’s in the Bible and novels and plays. It’s one of the most common emotions people say they feel.”

(Through the study, Averill found) that Anger is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion.

In the vast majority of cases (from the Greenfield Study) expressing anger resulted in all parties becoming more willing to listen, more inclined to speak honestly, more accommodating of each other’s complaints.

People reported that they tended to be much happier after yelling at an offending party. They felt relieved, more optimistic about the future, more energized. “The ratio of beneficial to harmful consequences was about 3 to 1 for angry persons,” Averill wrote.

Even the targets of those outbursts agreed that the shouting and recriminations had helped. They served as signals for the wrongdoers to listen more carefully and change their ways. More than two-thirds of the recipients of anger “said they came to realize their own faults,” Averill wrote. Their “relationship with the angry person was reportedly strengthened more often than it was weakened, and the targets more often gained rather than lost respect for the angry person.”

Then, in early 2016, Averill was watching newscasts about the presidential primaries. The election season had barely started, and the Republican field was still crowded. Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, giving the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, took a subtle jab at one of her party’s candidates—a clownish figure the establishment hoped to marginalize.

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation,” Haley told voters. “Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That’s just not true.”

Soon afterward, reporters swarmed Donald Trump to ask how he felt about such a public renunciation. “Well, I think she’s right, I am angry,” Trump told CNN. “I’m angry, and a lot of other people are angry, too, at how incompetently our country is being run.” Trump continued: “As far as I am concerned, anger is okay. Anger and energy is what this country needs.”

As Averill watched, he felt a shock of recognition. Everyone believed Trump would be out of the race soon. But Averill wasn’t so sure. “He understands anger,” he thought to himself, “and it’s going to make voters feel wonderful.”

II. Righteous Rage

Moral outrage must be closely managed, or it can do more harm than good.

III. The New Anger Merchants

One reason America is so angry is that anger works.

Corporatized outrage is fundamentally manipulative and tends to further the interests of the already rich and powerful. Rarely is it a force for social good.

IV. The Revenge Impulse

It seems like our current madness should be reaching its apex, but the sources of our anger run deeper than the present political moment.

V. A Better Use for our Fury

As America reaches the midpoint of a presidential administration that has driven nearly everyone into a rage of one kind or another, we are at a crossroads: Will we continue, blindly furious? Or will we see our rage as a disease that must be cured? The goal shouldn’t be to eradicate anger. We couldn’t if we tried, and as James Averill’s study showed, we need our anger. We need it to air our grievances with our friends, family, and colleagues. We also need the moral outrage that motivates citizens to push for a more just society. Neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on justice; likewise, injustice can come from either side. But, in particular, people who have historically been denied the right to express their anger—the women of the #MeToo movement, the activists of Black Lives Matter—shouldn’t be expected to give up the fight now.

Still, we can’t maintain this fever pitch, or we will risk forfeiting the gains that good anger can bring.

When we scrutinize the sources of our anger, we should see clearly that our rage is often being stoked not for our benefit but for someone else’s. If we can stop and see the anger merchants’ self-serving motives, we can perhaps start to loosen their grip on us.

Yet we can’t pin the blame entirely on the anger profiteers. At the heart of much of our discontent is a very real sense that our government systems are broken.

Many of the nation’s most contentious issues are driven by a feeling that our institutions have failed us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-anger/576424/

**Doc Safari** · 01-01-19, 20:09

Remember when your mommy told you violence never solves anything? She was simply not a very good student of history to say that.

**AKDoug** · 01-01-19, 20:55

Originally Posted by Doc Safari

Remember when your mommy told you violence never solves anything? She was simply not a very good student of history to say that.

My mom just said to choose my fights wisely.

**Circle_10** · 01-01-19, 21:18

Originally Posted by Doc Safari

Remember when your mommy told you violence never solves anything? She was simply not a very good student of history to say that.

History clearly contradicts such pacifist sentiment, as does the natural world.
I spent my childhood watching hour after hour of nature documentaries and while still quite young had formed the opinion that violence does in fact solve a whole hell of a lot.

**NWPilgrim** · 01-01-19, 22:19

The article/study about anger seems to be based on an underlying assumption the aggressor and target are both fairly normal, balanced people who ultimately want to live well (work things out). The anger we see in Antifa, BLM and other anger media/political movements fundamentally do NOT want to work out a grievance, they want to destroy and hurt. Unless their funding source can be disrupted then violence may well be needed to put a stop to all this hate/rage (not anger).

I think we passed the tipping point of being able to self-right this nation boat. We are watching a train wreck in ultra slomo. Worth to still try but must prioritize helping family and friends be prepared mentally and materially for bad long term social storm.

**26 Inf** · 01-01-19, 22:51

Originally Posted by NWPilgrim

The article/study about anger seems to be based on an underlying assumption the aggressor and target are both fairly normal, balanced people who ultimately want to live well (work things out). The anger we see in Antifa, BLM and other anger media/political movements fundamentally do NOT want to work out a grievance, they want to destroy and hurt. Unless their funding source can be disrupted then violence may well be needed to put a stop to all this hate/rage (not anger).

Good point.

I think we passed the tipping point of being able to self-right this nation boat. We are watching a train wreck in ultra slomo. Worth to still try but must prioritize helping family and friends be prepared mentally and materially for bad long term social storm.

Boy I hope you are wrong!