A lot of news stories hit with power this week. There is a new pope, NK has ratcheted up its saber-rattling, Cyprus is in the middle of a bank run, and Obama is preparing to visit Israel.
Cyprus has decided to ease its economic problems by taking money out of depositor accounts, thereby causing people to dry up ATMs and vainly attempt to transfer by wire in panic. It is not clear how much panic this will ultimately cause, or if it will spread to other Eurozone countries. This was a decision which will ultimately affect trust in European banks. I certainly wouldn't keep money in a Greek, Italian, or Spanish bank knowing that the EU would be willing to agree to such a bailout plan. The medication in this case includes side effects of mistrust of banks in other European countries; probably worse than the cure.
Hopefully there is no panic in Europe when Biden arrives in Italy for the coronation of the new Ayatollah of the Vatican. While Obama entertains the mullahs in the Knesset, both the vice-president and commander-in-chief may be out of the country. In the event of an attack to coincide with Biden and Obama entertaining zealots, there will be no one to issue a timely response. In the same way that Obama was unreachable during the 9/11 attack in Lybia, so may happen again.
Though most Americans are unaware, the United States is on the verge of absolute anarchy and collapse. The fear of a domestic terrorist attack has never been higher -- not since Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma. Unlike the 1990s, however, today's right-wing militia extremist is wired and disseminating his message to a global audience. For several months, I have been hearing chatter in conspiracy channels of the possibility that the government will set off an attack using a nuclear dirty bomb.
One of the problems of the internet is that there is someone predicting all sorts of horrible things. Eventually, someone is going to make the right prediction of doom, and convince enough people that there is evidence of government “foreknowledge.”
So, even if Al-Qaeda were to successfully set off an attack while Obama and Biden are abroad, the general consensus in many right-wing militia circles will be that it was a false-flag attack by the Federal government in order to justify elimination of the 2nd amendment. The US has not been this polarized by internal mistrust since 1860.
If another major terrorist attack does come during this president's term, the ensuing government and counter-government response may be far worse than the attack itself. In times of war, in times of hysteria, the need for evidence is lost: prejudices often show true.
America is in such a precarious state that one man, one Timothy McVeigh, could set off a chain of events not too dissimilar from the series of events that followed the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand and led to years of trench warfare, chemical and gas attacks, and which also lay the groundwork for the rise of Hitler. 2014 promises to be not too dissimilar from 1914. America has too many too many McVeighs and too many archdukes.
