Baltimore is going off.

Bottles hurled, windows smashed, trash set ablaze and flung in the street. Stores being looted, cop cars stomped, fists flying in all directions. Meanwhile, the real protesters are shrinking away in horror, their signs in tatters, their cause lost beneath the roar of mindless violence.

Here, we have just more roving gangs of idiots who love to riot. They have only a vague idea of who Freddie Gray is and no idea at all about the absolute importance of our freedom to assemble. Protest schmotest, they say, let’s crack some skulls, break some glass and load up on free loot.

It’s violence for the sake of violence there in Baltimore. If you squint, it looks just like the streets of 1992 Los Angeles or of 2014 Ferguson, Mo. Same lines of militant cops, same thrashing mobs of rioters. The division between “Us” and “Them” grows wider and a glimpse of an unhappy future is revealed.

It’s tempting to think in a linear way. Police appear to have manhandled a criminal suspect and caused his death. Abuses at the hands of police are rampant and ergo, we must rise up to voice our discontent. What better way is there to protest an injustice than by busting into a liquor store and stealing a few cases of Chivas Regal? What says, “We demand justice” more than looting a CVS and setting a Taco Bell on fire?

I wish there was a scientific way to prove that a very large percentage of the people rioting had no idea why they were doing so. Freddie who? These are opportunists, pure and simple. They are drawn to chaos and lawlessness like moths to a porch light.

I wish there was a way to prove that not everything about the Baltimore riots was unforeseen and unexpected — that to some extent it was orchestrated. Back in Ferguson, it has been established, by the Washington Times among others, that people paid a lot of money to keep the flames of discontent burning brightly. Agitators were sent to stir up trouble. Provocateurs joined the protest lines and happily flung bottles and rocks to make sure that nothing could be resolved peacefully. The mainstream media hyper-focused, bringing it to us around the clock and making sure the rage never had a chance to fade into something more manageable and constructive.

A shrewd politician never lets a crisis go to waste, we all know that. For those interested in promoting civil unrest, nothing beats a riot to divide people — to pit citizens against cops, turn ordinary people into raving lunatics and fuel calls for more laws, greater police presence and tighter control of the population.

Just what the tyrants ordered, in other words.

There is much to be gained when an entire city goes out of control, rolling over the young, the old and the innocent like a tidal wave. What Draconian legislation are shadowy government figures drooling over at this very moment, even as the fires are still burning outside Camden Yards? Riots are useful events involving useful idiots, a go-to plan for distracting, dividing and conquering. Is it any wonder they are becoming common occurrences? In 1992, when L.A. erupted over the Rodney King verdicts, most of us gasped at the sight of all that unrestrained violence. We had never seen anything like it and never wanted to see it again. It was a horror, but also an anomaly.

Today, not so much. Ferguson, Brooklyn and now Baltimore, and it hasn’t been a year. These day, the average American has a choice to make: Do I want to settle in and watch the Bruce Jenner interview or switch over to the news stations and catch the destruction and madness as it happens?

The majority of folks will tell you that these are isolated incidents and that ultimately they will lead to changes for the better. I’m not one of those folks. I believe, in every synapse, that the growing frequency of city-wide upheaval is a true look at a the future — a future where populations out of control are to be found everywhere and all at once. Can’t imagine it happening in Lewiston? Try parking on Pine Street and imagine the day when the bank machines are no longer working; when there’s no longer food in the supermarkets or water coming from the taps.

Why, do you suppose, our military has been so eager to park its tanks and armored vehicles at police departments all over the country? Why does Lewiston need an MRAP? Why does the University of Maine security team need M-16 rifles? Repeat in cities and towns from coast to coast and wonder.

Over the summer, the U.S. Special Operations Command will conduct drills along the southern portion of the country, stretching from the eastern edge of Texas to southern California. It’s called Operation Jade Helm 15 and its objective is colorfully described as “mastering the human domain.”

The operation is said to be the largest of its kind in the history of modern warfare. Elite soldiers won’t be confined to military bases. They’ll be out and about among the public in seven states, sometimes overtly, sometimes not. They’ll be prowling American cities and backwaters, practicing extraction drills and recruiting citizens to join the team.

Just part of the Army being all it can be, you want to believe. But, really? Have we reached a point where black helicopters above and fleets of tanks below are perfectly ordinary sights and nothing to get riled over? Will rioting and police lines become so commonplace that we’ll hardly notice when this kind of Third World chaos comes to stay? Are we being conditioned for martial law in America and yawning through it all?

Most people don’t see things like Jade Helm or the Baltimore riots as foreshadowing. Who wants to believe that the land of the free and the home of the brave might be transformed into something quite the opposite while we’re sitting here watching the tube and playing with our smartphones?

We’re living in amazing times, my friend, and I firmly believe that the coming summer is going to be something to behold.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Shadowy government figures can fail to recruit him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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