Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

The job is going fine I guess, such as it is.  I have not had to stop anyone from stealing so that is good.  I have been thinking about what I would need to have on hand if I decided all at once to get out of town.

When I got out of the military after all those years I had a fair bunch of money saved up.  I bought three things fairly quickly.  I bought an old Toyota pickup that was about the same age as me and looked like it too.  But the motor runs very well and that is really all I care about.

I also bought an AR-15 rifle and a Berretta Model 92 pistol in nine millimeter.  Those two guns were similar to the ones the Army used and I thought they should be good enough for me.  I did get a few accessories to go with the guns along with some ammunition.

Now I was thinking about what else I should have on hand for when I decided to leave.  So on one of my days off I went to a large sporting goods store near here to pick up a few things.  I got a reasonable tent that was one of the very few that was not a bright color (this one was fairly dark gray).  A sleeping bag and a few camping supplies.  They had some backpacking food and I bought a selection of that also.  They seemed to have everything you could ever want and soon my cart was overflowing.  I finally thought enough is enough and paid for everything and left the store.

A couple weeks later when I had three days off in a row I loaded up and drove well out of town and found a place where I could camp to try everything out.  Camping was no new thing to me after being deployed so many times.  Just the terrain and the equipment were different.  Everything went fine and when I returned back home again I took the list of little things that I had forgotten to buy and went and got them so I would have things a little bit better on my next outing. 

While things were going smooth in my life that was not happening world wide I can tell you.  The world was a mess and seemed to get worse daily.  There were war escalations everywhere with threats thrown by everyone at everyone else it seemed. 

On the economic front Greece missed their payment to the European Union for their bailout a few years ago.  They missed the payment and said they would be making no more payments for the foreseeable future.  This caused quite a debacle around the world even though I think everyone knew very well it was coming.  Greece had even made statements ahead of time saying that was their intention.

So stock markets fell, gold prices went up, the Euro went down in value, and the dollar went up in value but really not much changed all that much.  Like I said everyone knew what would be happening.  Now Portugal was talking about doing the same as Greece.  And if they did then you could likely expect other countries like Spain and Ireland to do the same.  This was not looking very good for the future.

Many banks in the United States reported their losses now that Greece defaulted on all their loans.  It seems like the banks here somehow thought it was wise to invest in Greece even though everyone knew that Greece was in dire financial straits and would very likely default at some point.  So our banks made it almost impossible for Americans to get a loan for a house but they would lend money to Greece?  Something was seriously wrong with that picture.

At home the GDP figures had been negative for the first two quarters of this year.  And everyone was making all kinds of excuses for this drop and kept saying our economy was strong and would grow the rest of the year for sure.  I think they must be trying to convince themselves because no one else believed it.

Many states were in financial trouble and Arizona was the first I think that put a cap on welfare in their state.  When there was not too much backlash five additional states did the same thing to try and balance their budgets.  Of course the federal government did not have to do any cuts because their budget was never balanced, it always ran a deficit.  The national debt would soon be waving eighteen and half trillion good bye.  A number that was impossible to comprehend and certainly would never be paid off or even paid down any.

Now more and more economists were warning a crash was coming and coming soon.  Many when asked what could be done to stop any crash just said it was too late and the crash was inevitable at this point.  The timeline for when a crash would happen ran the gamut from next week to five years from now though most would just say ‘soon’.

And just when the protests were done in America and things might get calmer for awhile a trial for a young police officer ended with an acquittal and the policeman walked out of court a free man.

The case was about two unarmed people (black, though it made no difference) that were stopped by thirteen police officers in Cleveland after a car chase.  A car backfired and at least one cop must have assumed he was being shot at by the two in the car and he shot his gun with what he thought was return fire.  Upon one officer shooting the other twelve cops also started shooting.  The scene ended with one cop jumping up on the hood of the car and firing fifteen shots point blank through the windshield into the occupants.  This was the officer that went to trial. 

A total of one hundred and thirty seven shots were fired by the policemen at the unarmed occupants of the car killing them.  The end result was civil suits against the police department (the result of which the taxpayers would have to pay) and some possible disciplinary action for the policemen involved.  The acquittal of that one policeman started all the civil unrest up again.

There were again protests not just in Cleveland but in many cities across the country.  It was not long after that a policeman in another city shot another unarmed black teen and this time it was ruled a justifiable shooting and no charges of any kind were brought against that officer.  Right or wrong this inflamed the protesters and now many of the protests turned into riots. 

Even before these events started to run down another trial came up from a much earlier cop shooting and again the policeman was acquitted.  Again it was a white cop and now dead black man.  It was just like pouring gas on a fire with the protests. 

The media seemed to be doing everything they could to fan the flames to keep their ratings up.  Even our President seemed to only make things worse with every speech he made.  No one ever mentioned that most blacks were killed by other blacks and had nothing to do with police.  No mention was made that as a percentage of population blacks caused way more crimes than whites.  No one mentioned that cops killed white people also.  I think facts in these cases had little to do with what was happening.

Maybe it was because blacks had way more unemployment than whites.  Maybe the police did target blacks more than whites (and if so maybe that was justified) though it could not be proven.  Maybe everyone was just frustrated and upset by the long drawn out economic downturn in the United States. 

Maybe the media and even the White House and Congressmen should not keep harping continually on the ‘income inequality’ in the United States.  That sure did not help when the economy was so bad that most everyone was hurting financially.  No one wanted to blame themselves for anything, always everything was someone else’s fault.