Remember Hunger? Me Neither. @ AMERICAN DIGEST

September 21, 2014

Remember Hunger? Me Neither.

But when the trucks stop for a week or two and the stores are cleaned out down to the Draino, it will be back. It never really went away, it just moved to Africa for a vacation.

From his childhood in the workhouse, debtors' prison, and bootblacking warehouse Charles Dickens knew about hunger:

The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.

Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

It cannot be said too often that "These are the good old days."

[Note: Due to the mad search skills of commenter Phil we know that the House of Mercy is still with us.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at September 21, 2014 3:35 PM

Hunger in this country will arrive in several stages:

First will be commodities dwindling on the store shelves; No restocking, storerooms empty;

Second will come the awareness that food is running out; fresh meat and produce will not sit long ere it is purchased with no concern for what it might be;

Third will have the more observant buying as much of anything edible as they can carry. Prices will raise and quantities will be limited;

Fourth will be those who feel "entitled" and who have depended on food stamps to buy their beer and chips and gooey Twinkies; what they cannot purchase they will steal and they will steal whatever they can carry;

Once the shops are empty they will be trashed and burned to the ground; The more enterprising of them will move outward from the urban centers to the suburbs in search of food, fuel, liquor and whatever shiny things catch their eye.

They will find that the suburbs have run out of food as well as the city cores and that anything left to steal and loot will be defended by citizens with firearms.

At this time panic and mob rule will take over as the strategic dynamic and riots will occur, complete with destruction of stores and homes. Any citizens will be considered the enemy and attacked on sight.

Children and females will be spared the sudden death as they are kidnapped and used for sex.

In parallel development will be citizen groups forming, gathering, mobilizing to patrol and maintain safety in their enclaves and communities. They will defend sufficiently against mobs of unruly and hostile hoards.

The smarter of the looters will also form, gather, mobilize and patrol in ever-widening circles to obtain loot in the form of food, fuel, firearms, medicines (from the looted drug stores of course).

Drug cartels, Black racist groups, organized crime outfits, Muslim terrorists and other criminal elements will pose a serious threat to normal everyday folks. At this time the citizens will be fortified by whichever law enforcement and military that choose to do the right thing rather than cave in.

It all started with running out of food, right?

Er, no, the conflict and strife were in place and the food thing was merely a trigger. Once the beer and TV stopped the wretches got up off the couch and started looting.

Posted by: chasmatic at September 21, 2014 11:21 AM

Second year:

Power struggles have condensed to larger groups, they have the manpower and resources to keep on. Cartels, militias, what's left of government; um, the weaker groups will be absorbed or killed off, such as: Black Panthers for all their apparent menace do not have the grit; the Klan same thing, they are sneaky night riders who when brought out into the light of day will fold; radical neo-Nazis, they have a tenuous grievance that will gather no support from any of the other groups. I bet even the Muslims think they are jerks. Militant feminists, queer power, the greenies, occupiers, they are not half the man their mommas were.

Territories will have been defined and efforts to fortify and secure will require manpower. Can't be a constant outward drive, will outrun supply lines. established groups, think: American Redoubt, Appalachian Redoubt, a few others, these folks stand a good chance. Established with fortifications in place, lines of communications set up, able to withstand assault by the above-mentioned groups that are essentially mobile. At least until they figure out it that it a good thing to have a home base. that takes time and while they are building forts the militias will be launching counter-attacks.

Long range agendas: Order and law and other elements of functioning society will be developed based on legislative examples of what works and what doesn't. We don't want to fall back into the same dog & pony show we have now, uh uh. Morals included too. Some spiritual content, I reckon mainly Christian and bible-based but not all. As long as the basics of don't lie, don't steal, don't kill, help others, mind your own business, contribute to society as you can, as long as these values are included we can't go wrong. This part will be flexible; give and take, not rigid or exclusionary, what works we keep, what doesn't we dump.

Unified efforts: In fighting any enemies that would destroy us and our attempts to get on with life we need solidarity, common cause. In forming a functioning society we need input and consensus. We should find what good things we have in common, not the points in which we differ. I hesitate to say it this way, but, sigh, we must do what is best for the greatest number of citizens. Not with "democracy". I don't rightly know how to go about it but I do know that we must stand united. Maybe we can read more of the debates and essays and deliberations that guide our Founding Fathers. what they did worked pretty good for a couple hundred years. I think we can improve on that.

Posted by: chasmatic at September 23, 2014 12:36 AM

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September 21, 2014

Remember Hunger? Me Neither.

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