OF THE
TIMES
The most characteristic feature of such a period is widespread hysteria, like that of the quarter century in Europe preceding WWI. "Happy" times of peace are necessarily dependent on social injustice, and children of the privileged class learn early to repress ideas that they and their families are benefiting from the injustice of others. Such unconscious defense mechanisms cause these individuals to disparage the values of those whose work they exploit. These processes lead to an hysterical state of inhibited logic and reasoning. This rigidity of thought then gets passed on to the next generation to an even greater degree.
[...]
During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life's complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man's flawed personality, whether one's own or someone else's? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life's joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.
Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called "happy" times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation's enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.
During "good" times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts.
It didn't stop there, the us vs. them mentality, which is overt in Lynch's words, continued."If we won't get support when we do our jobs, if we're going to get hurt for doing what's right then we're going to do it the way they want it," he said. "Let me be perfectly clear. We will use extreme discretion in every encounter."
"Our friends, we're courteous to them. Our enemies, extreme discretion. The rules are made by them to hurt you. Well now we'll use those rules to protect us."
"When I woke up they were all in here (the bedroom) . . . I was like, 'What?' And it's just 'Hands up! Hands up!' " she said.Glazier said her 3-year-old also raised her hands up.
"I was like, 'What is happening? Is this real?' " she said.
Comment: Ukraine sure is having a hard time hanging onto its gold reserves. It has already been robbed of the most of it by the US, under the cover of it being collateral for IMF and US financial aid. Now petty criminals are getting into the act.