Talkin' about a Revolution, Oh-ohohoh ohoh. . .

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

William Butler Yeats

US citizens are not used to thinking about conflict. There has been no terror in the streets here for generations, nothing to cut our eyeteeth on that would let us predict such a future. Perhaps that is our real arrogance, that it can't happen to us. And yet, our Center has been openly and in-our-faces ripped apart, and the blood-dimmed tide is clearly loosened. Small worried echoes of martial law, containment centers, curfews are growing in volume; voices of disbelief and confusion. No one knows what this means yet. Few have attempted to analyze or describe how a country of 328 million souls could fall apart. Fascism on this scale has never been tried before, and the number of variables is enormous. 

You could start with the kind of questions we use when looking at a smaller state's turmoil in revolution: How much power resides with the Feds? How much with the states or regions? Where is the military's allegiance? What about militias? What regional alliances might come into play? Where are the "hot" spots and why? Could roads be closed? Airports? Could armed guards be in city streets? Which cities? Could there be food shortages? 

It is overwhelming to think about and just so not in our character. While there have always been survivalists, individuals and small groups who want to be ready for the apocalypse (of whatever kind), this core group has now snowballed into the "preppers." As a rapidly expanding market, US manufacturers have jumped right on that bandwagon, and the number of sales of generators has spiked across the world and is expected to be worth more that $27 billion by 2023. Climate change, political upheaval, hurricanes and holocausts - people are running scared.

Brexit in the UK, closed universities in Poland, Nazi sympathizers in Hungary, marshal law in Ukraine, and the uncivil spectacle of unmitigated greed and privilege that defines Washington today; it is very hard to hold on to hope.  I am carefully watching what happens to the Yellow Vests in Paris.