[macerico]

As to the future, I'm not sure what to think or feel about many things. :(

Some comfort my "paranoia" by showing me that government is riddled with incompetence.

In large part, that is true. If they really want you, they will find you. Fortunately, they probably don't want any one of us bad enough to look too hard if we get out the door before they arrive.

However, all that means is that they can get you two ways. :(

1. If they want you, they will have the means to hunt you down....depending on how bad they want to get you.

2. If you do nothing, they can get you because bungling idiots can mess you up just by doing their job poorly.

I think FEMA camps will process people into two sad ends. One, you are segregated as a "threat" to be eliminated...separated from the general population and sent away (likely to die). Two, you are in the general population but get worked to death...literally. :(

Can we be the ones who trigger the very end? Doubtful. Consider Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In the end, the war still happens. Skynet was always SOFTWARE, not HARDWARE. All they accomplished in the last movie was delay the inevitable. The CPU was used to form something that could run Skynet software. Destroying it only resulted in the government building a huge supercomputer that could do the same program.

The end where FEMA starts rounding people up will happen for one reason or another. If we did nothing at all, it will be unleashed when the powerbrokers want it to happen. Also, keep in mind what good our struggling does. As people wake up, it jostles their plans. Remember the talk about the nuke drill in SC being a cover for another "terrorist" attack on the USA. Those who have woken up to the reality of what's going on kept so much scrutiny on the exercise that nothing seemed to come of it.

As much as the state has the guns, they are still outnumbered if the masses do not submit to fear and threat of violence. They need a "disaster" or "crisis" that produces willful compliance. If the public opinion thinks the event was staged as a pretext for a police state, they will find themselves in a hard position. In a way, the whole debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan is making people DISTRUST government more than anything else. I think they took too many liberties with the public trust after 9/11, and now people are so cynical and suspicious that future disasters might provide more resistance than they are counting on.