I doubt that a single person who reads this article started doing so with the disposition that the world’s trends are comforting ones. In all things there is a theme, trend and commonality that can be recognized. “The nature of the beast”, is a phrase that was first recorded in 1678 by John Ray. In his Collection of English Proverbs, he surmises, this phrase represents “the (usually undesirable) inherent or essential quality or character of a person, event, or circumstance, etc.” With that said:
To begin the exploration into the current trends of the world this week, let’s begin by looking close to home. In the event of crisis, governments always attempt to divert our attention from the issues in their own backyard by looking over the fence at their neighbor’s lawn. We have been doing this very thing by pointing and yelling at the Euro and the countries crumbling beneath it, all the while ignoring our own deficit’s issues. We squabble over the need to cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next decade. It was a number designed with the purpose of baffling what the government perceives as simple minds, a method akin to that which the scientists attempt to use in their explanation of our planets age. For those of us without such easily confounded mathematical skills, the government has attempted to lure us into political debate over the inability to agree upon how those cuts should be made. These are all means of distracting us from the real issue, because they are not actual cuts, but simply decreases in the planned increases in spending. Meanwhile, our postal service balances on the precipice of defaulting on the $5.1B that it owes, and entire counties are filing for bankruptcy. Our national debt reaches $15 trillion, and instead of taking responsibility, we point the finger at China, a country we were begging to purchase our debt only a year ago. Strange enough, the very demands we are making of China are the ones with the potential to throw their country into a tailspin with the rest of the world.
Socialism is a terrible tasting dish, and yet, there seems to be a great driving force pushing multiple governments towards it. The new Prime Minister for Greece is a banker backed by the socialists, as is the new Italian PM to whom it is being attributed the construction of a “technocratic” government. America and the UK have been stomping through the private sector throughout the years, but have recently started tiptoeing towards fascism with the bills they are trying to fast track into law surrounding the governance of the internet. A vast majority of internet companies have stated constitutional concerns, while the financially bloated entertainment industry offers its full support of the bill becoming law.
I would like to reiterate my lack of belief in coincidence (there is none) before looking to another trend, violence. The same day that the Occupy movement celebrates its two month anniversary, there are shots fired at the White House. Fortunately, the suspected gunman whom shot at the White House is in custody, along with more than 200 of the Occupiers, at least five of which were charged with violent felonies. Many supporters of the movement have attempted to portray the criminality as being a few bad eggs, but that argument can no longer be upheld when the Occupiers are using the same outlets for their propaganda as the hacktivists, Anonymous. I was shocked, not an easy feat I might add, at what I heard being preached by the hacktivists. The group started by explaining how the use of nonviolent protest is the best means of producing revolution. They went on to list occupation, various types of media and vandalism as the core outlets. I was surprised at the boldness of listing vandalism, but I had to pause the video when they explained how violence will end up being needed in response to the violence used to suppress them. Their only disclaimer to this is that the violence will need to be organized. When I returned to the site, in order to create a direct reference to it in this article, I could not. The propaganda is presented in such a way that you must simply watch everything. That being said, it did appear again, but they prevent you from accessing the code directly correlating with that video. They instead provide the embed code that allows you to watch the ongoing stream of videos they use to promote their cause.
Geophysically speaking, trends are being broken, which in essence, is a trend in itself. There is for example, a wall of plasma partially circling the sun, an occurrence unlike anything ever recorded. Another large series of storms exploded through the south east of America, affecting more than half a dozen states. Natural disasters are happening everywhere, at an accelerated rate! And yet, Nasa has felt the need to release a series of videos and articles explaining how all of these occurrences are simply coincidence, and that 2012 will not be particularly different from any other cycle of such events. My personal favorite was the explanation of how the scientific evidence of numerous “Super Volcanoes” exists, but that they only explode every million years or so. That might be comforting if you believe one of two things: 1) that you are on the safe end of the million years. 2) That the Earth is no more than ten thousand years old.
Written by Logan Smith, Streams Staff
Habakkuk 2:1
I will stand on my guard post
And station myself on the rampart;
And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me
