http://www.americandaily.com/article/9036
The author notes the speed with which law and order has fallen apart:
and he thinks it is something systemic in US society:Two days. 48 hours. 2,880 minutes. This was all the time it took for the fabric of 6000 years of civilization to unravel in New Orleans. Streets which just last week were lined with the fans of Blues clubs and theaters are now patrolled by gangs of what in any other country would be called terrorists looking for their next innocent victim or store front to pillage. Rapes and gang wars in the Superdome, gun fire at rescue helicopters, and the efforts to search and rescue trapped survivors of hurricane Katrina have been abandoned in a near hopeless effort to restore some semblance of public order. Think of it. In just two days time, authorities have been forced to desert innocent people to almost certain death because New Orleans has become unsafe for rescue operations. Two days.
he thinks that people have come to feel that what the majority of people in the world count as luxuries are in fact rights, so when they are taken away they feel justified in fighting to get them back.This disaster has exposed something putrid in our society. For this to happen so quickly indicates that there is something fundamentally flawed in our culture that should not be brushed under the rug by political correctness or blamed on any simple politician or political party. What is happening in New Orleans can and will happen again unless we take sober steps to first understand why these events have occurred, and then act to prevent them.
and his penultimate paragraph:In a culture where all the comforts of life have been provided to people as entitlements, their sudden absence has unleashed a violent backlash against the society these people feel has let them down. In other words, if some people do not get what they feel they are entitled to get, then something unfair must have happened, so now they have the right to go out and take it.
I'm not sure he's got it quite right at the end here, as he thinks it is only the section of the population that depends on the "nanny state" which will behave like this. I wonder if actually a lot of people would behave like this if they were stuck in the situation - if you and your family are starving and your lives are threatened, maybe you also would pick up a gun and use it?The nanny state has created a class of people in America not only unable to take care of their own needs, but incapable to existing within normal society. In your neighborhood, laws and peaceful coexistence are not maintained by government or the police, but by the people themselves. You obey the law and live a civil existence because you understand that this is the only way you will have a good life. You feel that way because you have worked hard and are unwilling to jeopardize everything you have earned by acting foolishly. But those who have always been given everything and told that everything they do wrong is a result of their being a victim, there is no similar prohibition.
Anyway, the main thing it made me think about is this:
The disaster in New Orleans is very serious, but compared to what might happen with Peak Oil it is minor. Allright, Peak Oil effects may creep up slowly rather than come overnight like this one, but if law and order can break down in flooded New Orleans in 2 days, how much longer would it take to happen with a more gradually developing situation, or a "long emergency", to borrow Kunstler's phrase.
It seems to me that there is a critical point - when a large segment of the population of a city/region/etc. decides that it is no longer in their personal best interests to uphold the rule of law, and that in fact they can do better by behaving as they see fit. If this point is reached due to any of the effects of Peak Oil in the coming years, the US is in for serious trouble.
The other question is, could it happen here too...?
