As I often do, I was driving down PCH into Malibu to go to work on Sunday. I passed by Moonshadows, a local "hauterie" and watering hole on one of the world's most well-to-do Serengeti. Driving by, I noticed that, as usual, the parking lot was filled with high-end sports cars of various stripes -- your Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Lotus...es (Loti?). This was not a notable occurrence.
What was notable was that these cars were not overturned and in flames.
We are in an economic downturn, folks. Unrest is spreading, trouble's a-brewin', there's a bad moon on the rise, and so forth. And yet, this country's wealthiest citizens glide about town in their gold-plated coaches, unafraid of the hoi-polloi that lurks behind every dumpster and at the door of every soup kitchen. What gives?
I satirize, of course. But given the fact that this downturn is clearly deeper and more pervasive than we first thought, I would certainly not be surprised if certain parts of the world were plunged into unrest. Places that are already troubled, like Pakistan, Mexico, Africa, the Balkans -- we might see those places either erupt in violence or embrace once-discredited ideologies to provide a sense of order and security. Hell, even the UK is starting to look a little like the one depicted in "A Clockwork Orange." It's at times like these that those sorts of things happen. I once had a history professor say something like (and I'm paraphrasing, of course -- can't seem to lay my hands on that ten year-old notebook at the moment), "What was fascinating about the Great Depression in this country was that there wasn't more class-on-class violence or a move towards the political extremes."
I find comfort in that. I like to think our system is strong enough that in hard times, we Americans band together as a people and plow through the worst of it. Of course, I also know that we are not our grandparents. We're not the same scrappy, plucky people that found it in ourselves to subsist on cabbage soup and trudge to the salt mines in cardboard-reinforced shoes. I don't really see that kind of resolve showing itself after lying dormant for so many years.
Still, I'm not sure I see us resorting to joining roving bands of torch-wielding looters, or electing a powerful strongman to wrest money from the rich so the rest of us can have a crust of bread.
That could never happen, right?