Flashpoint

I wondered today about the things, which shape our world – the bad things.

Mankind has an oft-remarked penchant for destruction. Serial killers and snipers, mass-murderers and things, which blacken our days just by their existence, walk among us unseen.

As children we know they are out there – the bump in the night, the scratch at the windowsill. Then we get older and decide those things were all our youthful imagination. We decide these creatures are not real, because the message, “you are safe,” is repeated continually. We are all told this fable, by those in authority, because most of the time, it is true.

Don’t believe it anymore.

One of my friends, a former SEAL team member recently told me, “I see terrorists around every corner.” Maybe this is because they really are out there in a myriad of guises. My friend also pointed something out, which was a brilliant observation – but he got it from a friend of his, so the source of the brilliance is really somewhat unclear.

Here it is: Like pushers and pimps, the real monsters in our leadership have in the past done all their dirty dealing and shadow-works in hiding. Obama’s administration was supposed to open a new era of transparency – and in one way it has. All the dirty dealing and all the thievery and attacks on the regular people, is being done in the open. They don’t care who views their actions. Nor do they care who opposes them. They are terrorists themselves. Instead of hijacking planes, these monsters are taking a country, piece by piece.

It doesn’t matter how many marches or how many demonstrations are held in Washington or elsewhere. They will continue to crash the pieces of the country they have control of, until there is nothing left. What happens then?

My belief is that the end of this all may be “flashpoint.”

It is the moment that always occurs when unarmed, untrained people meet trained, well-armed people in a small street conflict. People make mistakes in this kind of environment and then there are deaths. China’s Tiananmen Square comes to mind. Remember 1989? One million people had gathered in pro-democracy and anti-corruption demonstration in China. The whole movement lasted seven weeks until military units cleared the square on June 4. The estimated civilian death toll after the protesters were attacked is not even known, but could range from 400 dead to well over 1,000 or more.

Arrests, jailing and disappearing of supporters of the movement then ensued. The government in China remains, but many of those people who protested it, do not. The structure of these kind of protests here in the U.S. is already in place. A government turning away from free-market, democracy and toward Statism, is now a reality here and it is attracting heavy opposition from the regular citizenry. We have even had large demonstrations, approaching the size of Tiananmen in our own country’s capitol. How strange is it that the crowds gathered in D.C., have collected there for the same reasons that the people in China demonstrated in 1989 – because of government corruption and loss of freedom. Both groups have tried to face the darkness.

Whether we win or not this time – and whether we face “flashpoint,” depends on how much power our own set of government creatures are given, or allowed to steal. From global warming to universal health care; alternative energy to new taxes, we are facing a government which will be fit for a dictator – not a president. People keep asking “where is Waterloo” for one group or another – even for Obama himself.

But I want to know where will be our Tiananmen? And do we really need to have one?

Can we stop the monsters?