Whether or not it directly starts here, keep in mind the raucous ambience generated during the primaries, particularly the rallies by Republican Donald Trump and to a lesser but perhaps potentially significant degree those that surround Democrat Bernie Sanders.
People want a change -- a major one -- and are now willing to even form rebellion, of a kind, to get there.
Such is the current frustration (and fear).
There is a great stirring in the American pot, and it promises, one day, sooner or later (perhaps sooner), to froth over all sides of the red-white-and-blue cauldron.
Along with spring, upheaval is in the air, and not only in the United States.
Germany is seeing a rekindling of the Nazi motif among those who fear Muslim immigrants (often for understandable reasons); in France and other nations is similar upset. Nation against nation.
Here's a few headlines from a news aggregate site:
VIDEO: Trump Forced To Hop Fence After
Protesters Form Human Chain, Block Entrance To San Fran Hotel...
Rioters rage outside Trump rally in SO CAL...
Smash police car, hurl rocks at motorists...
Hundreds waving Mexican flags...
Cops outnumbered...
'He's
gonna build a wall in our land'...
'Everybody is scared right now because they know change coming'...
Rush to naturalize immigrant voters before election...
Or that same day (4/30/16) from BBC:
"Hundreds of left-wing demonstrators have tried to block people entering a right-wing party conference in the German city of Stuttgart. The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party is expected to re-brand itself as openly anti-Islamic during the meeting. Police, who surrounded several hundred protesters, fired pepper spray at crowds. Close to 1,000 officers were deployed."
"The Los Angeles Police Department is bracing for a long weekend of political demonstrations following the California arrival of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and boisterous protests in Orange County. In the aftermath of clashes at an appearance by Trump in Costa Mesa on Thursday evening, thousands of unionized janitors took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Friday afternoon to demand higher wages and expanded rights."
The mainstream -- run-of-the-mill America -- is now rising up. At the same time, so are "minorities." Liberal versus conservative, black versus white, white versus Latino, Latino versus black, rich versus poor.
In Ohio: a call to 'arm yourself'
And more the next day:
The world is in transition and the upheaval -- incipient zeitgeist, the emergent division -- will be lucidly played out on American television as we see in recent days with supporters of Trump attacked by protesters, some of whom wave Mexican flags, even climbing a light pole to do so, in other cases, supporters of the candidate hurling racist remarks at protesters. The candidate: "Make America great again." A protester: "Make America Mexico again." Potent stuff.
Meanwhile, an elderly candidate who favors a socialistic approach to certain major issues -- and wants to close the yawning gap between the very rich and the average worker -- is embraced by throngs, millions, of young. They too want radical change.
This is not going to just go away with an election.
There is a great dis-ease in the United States because it has shifted seismically in too many directions; as in geophysical seismicity, there are rents, there is a rattling of the earth, chasms form; canyons.
Much of it is due to simple change: The nation has lurched from European ethnicity to an amalgam, from patriotism to globalism, from the warmth of education to its sterility, from two genders to several, from one language to two, from Christianity to indifference (or paganism), from a man and wife at the altar to a groom taking a groom (or a wife taking a "wife"), from a moral medical system to one that brazenly gouges, from print media to TV and radio and now from them to uncertain ether that is the internet, from piggybanks (and unselfishness) to hedge funds, from receptionists to phone menus, from paper money to chip cards, from love of neighbors to walls, from love to pornography, from vitamins to Viagra, from helping the elderly cross streets to road rage, all in a very short time. A slow fuse has been lit. We are left (there is a TV show called Lucifer) to pine for Leave It To Beaver!
Whether Ferguson, Baltimore, or Charleston, whether a racial, social, or economic issue, whether religious or secular, there is a powerful spirit of division circulating like the jet stream. And promising, like jet streams, extreme weather.
Without a return to its Christian foundations, America, like much of the rest of the world, will see one upheaval after another, one uprising after another, perhaps even another civil war (or series of them, at least battles; perhaps eventually, one day, even a splintering into republics). Caucasian males, fearful that they are growing targets, are looking toward the bunkers and heading to the shooting range. The rise of Aryan radicalism, of a coalescence between supremacists and even biker groups, as well as more mainstream types -- blue collar workers left in the dust by global corporations and once apathetic but now frightened white-collar workers -- will parallel the rise of new black radicalism (as not seen since the Panthers in the Sixties) and Latino factions. Each may war against the other, while yet more division will occur in the way of rebellion among those who have been shortchanged by those who are perched along Wall Street and have fared (at least financially) quite well, while Mayberry has vanished.
There is only one thing that can unite such diverse sectors, and that is Christianity.
Christ translates into every language. He is proclaimed in black Gospel churches as well as by Mexican immigrants carrying Guadalupe as well as by evangelicals in mega-churches and those who reach to touch the Holy Father at the Vatican (or when he visits anywhere: whether the U.S., Brazil, the Philippines, the Middle East, or Africa).
We see here then, in Catholicism -- which speaks all languages, which has Popes fluent in as many as seven (see: Benedict XVI), which has a liturgy that is the same whether here or halfway around the world, in Japan or Antarctica (yes, there is an ice church) -- the template for rescuing the West from what otherwise will be the Era of Rancor.
On a Catholic aggregate news site such as this, it is preaching to the choir, to proclaim Christianity.
More important is a call for prayer.
How often do we pray, instead of flicking between channels or clicking between news sites excitedly? Do we actually want to see society crumble around us? "Make America Great Again"? "Make America Mexico Again"? How about "Make America Good Again"?
There is whitewater ahead, and after that, a series of falls -- cataracts. Without prayer, without Jesus the Unifier, we head swiftly downriver toward Niagara.
[Resources: Retreat announced for My Father's House, Moodus, Ct., Retreat (Michael Brown): Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Fear of Fire]