I don’t fully accept that every crowd-involved moment in society is merely an act of nature’s will, moving us in the direction a Critical Mass event dictates.  We don’t get swept up in a riot, we get into the crowd we KNOW will riot, and do nothing to get out.  Nor do I fully believe that socially-impacting events (like Egypt’s tragic killings, the Boston Marathon bombing, or the Teen Choice Awards) are engineered, or even have their proverbial balls started a-rolling, by some cabal, klatsch, triumvirate, or shadow improv troupe.  America’s ability to gather and gung-ho for a cause is incredible, but we’d like to leave the tear gas and face-shooting to the thugs.

What I do believe is that much of what human societies react to are Fear, Oppression, Despair, and Threat.  When I hear gun-nuts (and I’m not talking gun owners, I’m talking bottom-rung Doomsday Preppers with half-finished escape tunnels in their garage) bemoan gun control, I want to remind them that if a military force DOES decide to come for those guns, they will in fact wrest it from those cold, dead, dirty, masturbating hands.  And that those hands will be deadened by either a sniper’s bullet or a drone strike, not by a 19 year-old Pfc knocking at the trailer door.  So when a threat is made evident, and fear washes in, and violence results, I believe there are groups who take a very keen interest in seeing the nature of the ripples in the pond.  A conspiracy theorist I know, who is also a great guy but totally and understandably anti-social (not asocial, he’s truly anti-American-society after his brother’s war-ravaged mind left him suicidal and addicted to drugs, and a few divorces) once told me why he believes that a cabal’s puppet-strings can be found in the periphery of such moments.

His theory is that the groups are always experimenting not only with what drives humans, and groups of humans, to rebel or react, but HOW they do it, the success rate, and if it’s conceptually transferable to a military act FOR the people.  That is, how can a military application come from crowd-sourced videos and tips from the Boston Marathon bombing, wherein cell phones and street cameras and TV footage and facial recognition software helped identify the suspects?  That seems to also allow for people to either take the military side to happily send images for review, or a conspiratorial air of wondering who among us is spying within? Big Brother is watching Step Brother watching Little Brother…

A woman recently walked in to a local grocery store and caused a full evacuation and bomb squad involvement.  She’s getting a mental evaluation. Her backpack was void of anything harmful.  19 years old… Hmmmm….  Did she think this up herself, to gain attention and power?  Did somebody pay her to walk in and do this to see what happens?  Where is she now?  This is worth following.

Somebody keeps taking nips off my Half-&-Half in the work fridge, so I’ll have to lace it with something to see who passes out or powerdumps at their desk.  I want to believe, that people are good, but man, sometimes people just really let ya down.  And I wonder what it would take for Americans, tax-hating, vacation-paid, partial-benefits-loving Americans to fill the streets with shouts and raised fists.  So far it’s just WTO and pro-sports championships.