Are we on the brink of a civil war in The United States?

For more than a decade now, things in America have been getting tense. People do not trust their elected officials. Scandals seem to be swept under the rug. People suspect election frauds. Some say that Presidential elections have been rigged. Free speech, illegal search and seizure, and gun rights have all been under attack.

People are becoming aware. Initially people sat back and said, “What can I do? I am just one person.” Then came the Bundy Ranch Standoff, and the “Occupy Movement”, and most recently, Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

People are taking a stand. Sometimes armed, and sometimes not armed. Meanwhile, others remain divided. They argue back and forth, both on the streets and in social media.

As long as people remain divided, daily life in America will remain the same. People will go to work, and come home to their families. In many cases, when one wage earner comes home to take over the responsibilities on the home front, the second wage earner will leave to go to their job. In other cases, both wage earners are at work at the same time, and any children in the family are left with outside care givers.

Free time is spent watching television. What once was a status symbol in American homes, has now become a fixture. Even as late as the 1970’s, a 27 inch color TV with a remote was something to strive for. Having multiple TV’s in the same home further increased your status in the neighborhood. Today, every home has multiple TV’s, and the screens are getting bigger, and bigger. 32 inch screens are at the low-end, screens of 50 inches or larger, are becoming more and more common.

And it’s not just the TV’s. Cell phones, laptop computers, and video gaming consoles…most of these with processors in them that are stronger than the computers that controlled early space flight.

Families cram “vacations” into 4 day weekends, because vacation time at many places of employment has merged with sick leave to become Personal Time Off, or “PTO”. Rotating shifts at many workplaces make it hard for households to plan family vacations. As a result, people sit home and stare at screens in their free time.

Is it possible that this is all some sort of master plan? Keep the masses pacified, so they don’t realize that they are being exploited, and that their rights are slowly being taken away from them?

When I was a child, and really, right up until September 11, 2001 people could stay with a family member that was about to board a plane right up until they walked onto the boarding ramp. If you got to the airport with half an hour to spare before your plane was scheduled to depart you had plenty of time.

In my home state of Maine, from September until December you saw pick-up trucks with gun racks, and those racks held weapons. Sometimes times you would see a truck with two long guns in the window, as well as a holstered handgun hanging from a gun belt. Grocery stores, department stores, in the parking lot at the post office, and yes, dropping off or picking up children from school.

Kids played guns at school. Kids played games like “Smear The Queer” at school. Children put on Christmas pageants, had Halloween parties, and exchanged Valentines at school. But now those things have been banned. At my son’s school, children can’t even play tag!

My son is growing up in an America where exercising your constitutional rights can get you expelled from school, fired from your job, and have your character crucified in the eyes of the public.

We are growing closer and closer to becoming a society where we will need a device on our body that will be scanned before we can buy and sell.

We are growing closer and closer to becoming a society where our location can be tracked through microchips. Our pets are the test subjects. Will parolees, or people out on bail be next?

People are becoming aware…What will happen next? There is a fear among MANY people that “THEY” are coming after our guns….Are “THEY”??

From a logical standpoint it makes perfect sense. But people are becoming aware!

Wealthy politicians with their eye on the White House spend millions of dollars funding anti gun legislation in states they don’t even live in…why would they do that?

But people are becoming aware!

Social media sites like facebook have banned firearms sales on their forums, and there are rumors that pro Second Amendment sites are coming under scrutiny as well.

BUT PEOPLE ARE BECOMING AWARE! What will happen when ENOUGH people become aware, and they realize there hasn’t been a REAL electoral process for a very long time???

I don’t know what the solution is.  Actually, I do.  We need to follow the example of other free countries, like France…(OK, the French are only partly free, but THOSE folks know how to be heard!)…We need to take to the streets, and we need to STAY there, until the “We The People” regain OUR country.  But because of the scenarios I outlined above, that can not happen.  Our nation is too big.  we cant (wont?) get enough people in one place, and KEEP them their long enough to make a difference.  To do that would risk losing the THINGS we have.  We have to decide if “things” are more important than liberties.

I will close with a line from “George Orwell’s “1984” it can be found in the first sentence of Chapter 7  “If there is hope…It lies in the Proles”

Doug Alley

About Doug Alley

I grew up in Bath, Maine in an upper lower class family with 3 step sisters, a step brother, and a little sister. After high school I spent 3 years serving in the USAF at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage AK. I've competed in, and won, demolition derbies. I've competed in, and never won, stock car races. I am the 47-year-old father of an 11-year-old boy who is pretty sure he is smarter than I ever was. We live on a little less than an acre of land in a 1973 mobile home in Stetson with my wife Jen, some cats, a few chickens, and rabbits, and a couple of goats. I hunt, fish, camp out, dabble in photography, gardening, and I cook in variable degrees of near success.