I think they would. Waco, Ruby Ridge and other such incidents seem like training exercises in a way. And most people will still do what they're told even in an economic depression. It's the rare individual who says "Wait a minute--this doesn't smell right to me."
"...in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd. If I am like everyone else, I lhave no feelings or thoughts which make me different; if I conform in customs, dress, and ideas to the pattern of the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness. The dictatorial systems use threats and terror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries, suggestion and propaganda. There is...one great difference between the two systems. In the democracies non-conformity is possible and, in fact, by no means totally absent; in the totalitarian systems, only a few unusual heroes and martyrs can be expected to refuse obedience. But in spite of this difference the democratic societies show an overwhelming degree of conformity. The reason lies in the fact that there *has* to be an answer to the quest for union, and if there is no other or better way, then the union of herd conformity becomes the predominant one. One can only understand the power of the fear to be different, the fear to be only a few steps away from the herd, if one understands the depths of the need not to be separated. Sometimes this fear of non-conformity is rationalized as fear of practical dangers which could threaten the non-conformist. But actually, people *want* to conform to a much higher degree than they are *forced* to conform, at least in the Western democracies."--Erich Fromm, THE ART OF LOVING
yay 900!!!
