We have lived in the coal regions of southern Illinois for all of our life. A large portion of those operations center around strip mining that has gone on in the region for decades upon decades. Abandoned strip mines abound in southern Illinois. Some of them have been reclaimed while others still lie untended. Many are now filled with water, turning them into unintentional lakes of unknown depth. Many types of wildlife and semi-wild life abound in these areas. Large packs of feral dogs--wolf like beings--often live and roam these areas, causing most normal people not to venture out after dark. We have a friend, a neighbor once upon a time, who tells the story of coming out the back of his house late one evening to attend to his own dog, a nice little fellow who loved attention in any way that he could get it. As he tended to his pet, my friend heard the howls of these feral dogs off in the distance and it gave him an almost primordial feeling up the back of his neck as the hairs there stood completely on end with the type of indescribable fear and discomfort that comes with knowing that there are forces out there that we, in their element, cannot begin to think that we can cope with.

That is the feeling and the memory that we got when we awoke last week to the scenes of looting and rioting the had erupted on the streets of the city of London. One would not think, seeing the wedding that had occurred there just a few months ago between two very beautiful and civilized people, that such a thing could begin to go on in such a seemingly civilized and urban place. But, it did. We remember when Barack Obama spoke over in England at one of its most hallowed and iconic structures, a place reserved for only the most respected of not only English, but world society. It was a place and a scene so reserved and staid in history and tradition that there was only one round of applause during the presidents entire speech, when he said that only in America could the grandson of a cook for the British army in Africa grow up to be president of the United States.

We have seen and been a part of civil unrest in the United States before, if only unwillingly and unintentionally, and, we remember it all too well. It was back during the 1960’s when we saw our local university come under the assault of those who used rioting and insurrection as their tools for protesting what they thought was an unjust and an unreasonable foreign war--Vietnam. They brought down a government and helped to elect a new president by their actions as they worked both outside and within the structures of society and government to achieve their ends. As we watched the end results of their actions on the streets of Carbondale, Illinois as they partied when the university shut down over their incessant refusal to listen to reason, a reasoning that had little to do with the goal of ending the Vietnam War, we learned some valuable lessons and we came to the conclusion that we had not seen the last of what aroused people could do when they had been pushed to beyond the brink of what supposed civilized governments and societies could do to them.

We have fought other wars since Vietnam and we have taken to the streets for other reasonable causes during what have become unreasonable times for so many who could not see what they were doing by pushing segments of society beyond what reasonable people could not any longer tolerate. We see that situation developing in this nation once more with the potential to not just topple the administration of an existing government but, just perhaps, the entire government in its entirety. The Tea Party has become aroused and has used that arousal to force radical change on the government that it has been fortunate enough to exist under for all these many years. It has abandoned the art of compromise that built and has maintained this nation for over two hundred years in favor of almost revolutionary tactics in its quest to, in effect, bring this government down. It has used elements of the constitution and the Revolutionary war in a weird mix to achieve results that it has no idea of what it has unleashed upon the country and upon the world at large. Stability on a planet of over seven billion inhabitants is something worth having and presrving and the intended or unintended destruction of that stability is something that reasonable people might take pause as the results that might come from the lack of it might raise the hackles on the back of so many necks with much and not so apparent much to lose at the prospect of it all.

We have seen what can happen to a repressed people with what has occurred since January with the now so appropriately called “Arab Spring�. But, these have always been repressive regimes to varying degrees and it has thrilled so many to see their repressed citizenry rising up in demands for things that people in the west have taken for granted for so long. Perhaps far too long!

The rioting on the streets of Carbondale, Illinois that we saw so many years ago now made us realize that we had not seen the last of it and that the next time that we encountered it that it might be in a situation that might not be handled by the simple closing down of a major university for a few weeks until the summer term could resume the normal pattern of life. When the normal pattern and the underpinnings of a way of life are disrupted for so many in this life who have never asked for much out of it to begin with, we are fooling with an element, in the wrong and perhaps cruelest of hands, that might being us back to a time before governments ever existed in the first place. A time of anarchy when the mob rules the streets and so many innocent and gentle people are simply brushed aside and left to fend for their very survival. When we energize people like that and make them into savage beings we are unleashing a force that had best never be aroused to begin with.

What we saw on the streets of London, England was a mob of people that society has apparently forgotten, or, perhaps, has simply been ignoring. But, they are perhaps the mere beginning ripple of a tidal wave of unrest that could break out across this globe, and particularly in the United States. When people have their backs pushed up against the wall or feel cornered, they may react in the most uncontrollable ways imaginable. And, once this fine old democracy has been toppled that has sheltered and nurtured so many for so long, and we face the enduring prospect of more and more people of the streets, we may have no recourse except that of a very basic and barbaric way of life that features the law of the jungle and the fact that only the very strongest and most brutal will survive. There are those who are behind organizations such as the Tea Party. They have a level of wealth unimaginable to most human beings on this earth. And, they have the very most to lose in all of this. But, to get them to see that fact is, just perhaps, just as impossible as trying to prevent the sun from rising in the morning. Or,in setting into a very long and ugly night!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.