Do you hear the rumbling? It’s the collective frustration fomenting just beneath the surface of humanity. Sounds awfully grandiose, sure, but the world is not becoming a more stable place. Matter of fact, the future looks dreadfully bleak.
Let’s assume for a moment that an arbitrary percentage of the population disagrees with any and everything, vehemently, enough to mobilize against it. Put that number at 3 percent and do some minor calculations.
According to the United States Census, the current U.S. population is about 290 million, with the global population dangling around 6 billion. Three percent of the U.S. population is 8.7 million and, globally, three percent is about 180 million. On its surface, that is tons of folks, but wait.
The United States’ and global populations are expected to double by 2100 to roughly 600 million and 12 billion, respectively. That measly three percent of people becomes a whopping 18 million nationally and 360 million globally … far and away enough to throw our fragile stability into an uncontrollable tailspin.
As if the sheer numbers weren’t enough, the current disposition of these protests, both nationally and globally, is cause for alarm. The ultra-liberal San Franciscan protesters are demonstrating in the streets, shutting down the city and increasingly becoming violent. A protest in coddly-woddly San Francisco becoming violent is humorously ironic in and of itself, but its implications are serious. This violence demonstrates a growing trend among protesters not only wanting their voices heard, but also wanting them felt.
The recent “die in” in New York City, an event where people laid on the pavement across a bustling 5th avenue to make their point, and the violence Saturday in Paris both are paradoxical. To act with a diminished regard for human life, as violence and die-ins suggest, not only undercuts and discredits protesters’ message but it puts these demonstrations on a principled parity with the atrocities they claim to be rallying against.
Couple the number of folks willing to take to the streets and their diminished regard for the sanctity of life with the sky-rocketing employment of communications technology in these movements and, my friends, we have a recipe for disaster. The widespread use of mobile telephones, text messaging and e-mail affords any moron with conviction and an agenda, the opportunity to wreak havoc and chaos on society … and despite the small percentage willing to believe in his or her cause, population growth has provided enough bodies to stir the pot with a dangerous veracity.
To all this, add the expansion of media coverage. The world now has so many global 24 hour news services, from Foxnews to CNN to MSNBC to al Jazeera, needing to fill air time that what is considered newsworthy has been reduced to nada, zilch. Almost any fools with a couple of hundred folks can be broadcast worldwide. This is problematic because broadcasting their message, by its very nature, affords the message legitimacy, no matter how illegitimate its conception.
No one is debating the rights of the message to be heard. Our Constitution affords us this liberty, but there are time, place and manner restrictions on how free speech is to be exercised. The time should be chosen more carefully, busy city streets are not the place and violence is not the manner in which the purported pro-peace movements (or practically any other movements for that matter) will most effectively achieve their desired ends.
So brace yourself. The trends in mass movements in this country and across the world are on a slippery slope and at the slope’s bottom is violence, anarchy and chaos. The number of people willing to mobilize behind any movement is growing and as the number grows, so grows the ante. If steps are not taken to stem this tide of violent protests without quelling free speech liberties, we’re in for a long, perilous journey through the maze of life, and what’s the best advice I can offer … Godspeed.