Living in an Imperial World: 12 Steps to TEOTWAWKI

This picture, taken in 1932, shows the fires set by the US Army in the campsite near the Capitol established by American veterans as they peacefully petitioned Congress for advance payment on the promised "bonus" arising from their World War I military service.

The saga of the "Bonus Expeditionary Force" (a play on "American Expeditionary Force", the official designation of the American forces in France during WWI), is a terrible piece of American history which should be taught to every schoolchild, along with the tale of Manzanar and the other concentration camps established a decade later to imprison American citizens without indictment or trial.

Failure to remember these outrages simply guarantees their recurrence.

"Relevance?", you ask - even though you are undoubtedly aware of the current FedGov's unprecedented expansion of electronic and other surveillance, ostensibly to "keep the Homeland safe."

Why do you think that surveillance has been established, and why does it grow more intrusive every single year?

Why do you think billions of your tax dollars have been provided to state and local authorities to create "domestic standing armies" of paramilitary, armed-to-the-gills special weapons police teams?

Why do you think the Marines are training for "urban patrol exercises" in American cities?

Why not ask your friends and relatives in the service about joint training exercises currently being held between the .mil folks and the DHS minions?

Why do you think that civil rights groups such as the Free State Wyoming movement and - yes, Virginia - even the WRSA have been identified by .gov apparatchiks as "potential threats"?

Why is the most powerful military and economic machine ever in the history of mankind so damned afraid?

Here's a strong candidate for why.

This article from the Financial Times lays out one noted economist's perspective on the sequential crunches that will, if they cannot be stopped, yield the "mother of all meltdowns."

Just as General MacArthur, along with his aides Eisenhower and Patton, were ordered to disperse the Bonus Army in 1932, so too is it entirely likely that the .gov will use every tool - including the .mil - at its disposal to ensure a compliant and submissive populace in the coming economic maelstrom.

Just as a failing Republican President, faced with an economic calamity, loosed the Army on American citizens to ensure order, so too a decade later did a Democratic President order the transport and imprisonment in concentration camps of American citizens deemed potential security risks.

Don't ever let anyone tell you "it can't happen here."

It already has - more than once.

If you think that the powers-that-be who created the coming financial debacle aren't going to want unchallenged control of its aftermath, you have some hard lessons coming.

Tempus fugit.