I Can Tell You How It'll Go Down, but Only You Can Tell Me How It WIll End

They're rioting in London - a silly little Chav / PWT entitlement riot, it seems, not unlike the chaos that swept LA in 1992 over the beating of Rodney King: poor people had had enough of being poor, and decided to smash some windows and burn some buildings.  The same thing is happening in London, and it's more significant than it appears.

Reduced down to their most common terms, riots like Tottenham and LA amount to little more than a collective mob finding an excuse to act out on their most violent impulses.  What's the matter, little guy - mad you don't have a TV?  Scream "JUSTICE" and smash a window to get one! But this is reduction to common terms and superficial percepts - the issue goes deeper.

We don't need no water...

Why would anyone feel entitled to a television in the first place?  Easy answer:  people are lazy and believe every commercial they see.  More correct answer:  in a world they don't understand, in a system they can't master, in the richest societies in the world, such people cannot manage to procure the most fundamental resources necessary to human life.  The TV in this case becomes a defiant symbol (as does the big car, the gold chain, the full-body tattoo, or other ostentatious and tacky display of consumption) - a way of saying "hey, I can afford expensive shit, so fuck you if you think you're better than me." 

So it's not so much that rioters feel entitled to a TV per se, but that they know there is a system in place that they cannot master.

Also: some people are just dicks.  Let's never forget that. 

Did you ever play Risk with a sore loser?  At some point, one player will hole up in Oceania (a tiny little parcel of land with only one attack point - it's very difficult to dislodge someone from Oceania), and after an hour of throwing army after army after army at the embedded player, the sore loser simply stands up and swipes his hand across the board, scattering play pieces all over the room.

Next week: Axis and Allies

The proper way to take Oceania is in a war of attrition - Oceania produces only limited resources, and so the player owning the rest of the world need only bide his time and marshal greater and greater forces until such time as he can afford to send an endless parade of armies into Oceania.  The Oceanic player will not be able to rebuild and recoup at the same rate, and will eventually succumb to superior numbers over time.

But if you don't know how to dislodge a player from Oceania, you'll get frustrated and angry.  You'll get tired, lash out, and give up.  Similarly, if the prosperous world around you thrives and multiplies all while seeming to leave you behind, you'll soon tire of the game and you will take the first opportunity to strike out at that system in any way you can.


DISCLAIMER:  I'm not saying that rioting is justified, nor am I saying that it is not.  I am as ever trying to put my finger of the pulse of is, not is right or is wrong.  I'm not saying that poor oppressed people should righteously rise up and smash the forces of wealth and power, nor am I saying that ignorant ghetto wretches are wholly to blame for their own poor situations.  First-Causes-and-effects are beyond the scope of this two-page blog post, though I'm happy to discuss them in the comments.  For now, whatever your opinion on chicken and eggs, I'm trying to make a meal.

Did the bystanders burn the building, or did the burning attract the bystanders?

Eventually, such outbreaks may lead to real agency and change.  That seems to have been the case with the Arab Spring, but it is probably not the case with London, nor do I think it would be the case were such troubles to come to America, and here is why.

1) Diversity - riots require an inciting incident, and this is often a single and demonstrable instance of oppression, imprisonment, or death committed by the power structure upon an individual with whom potential rioters will identify.  White people in Kansas City did not care about Malice Green because he was black and lived in Detroit.  America's citizenry are quick to draw distinctions amongst themselves, thus preventing real solidarity.


2) Size - America is huge.  Couple the country's diversity with the geographic isolation most cities feel from one another, and it's hard to get a critical mass of people going all at once, and cities don't count: remember, again, that I don't care what happens in Houston - Houston is 2000 miles away.  It is a three-day-drive to join a riot in Houston, and by the time I get there to join it, either it's over and I missed it, or I've completely cooled off and lost interest.

I like to sing-a, about the moon-a and the June-a and the Spring-a...

3) Satiety - At the moment, the government is still paying out a lot of entitlement and security benefits.  People aren't exactly as fat, dumb, and happy as they were, say, 12 years ago, but we have a long way to go before we're looking at bread lines and robberies of necessity.  There's a large movement afoot to embrace "austerity" (read: poverty), but should this subside, we may see more civil unrest.

4) Enforcement - Unless I miss my guess, which is possible, we will see an increased police presence over the next generation.  I think we'll see increasing demonstrations, and burbles of unrest, all of which are easy (due again to diversity, isolation, and comparative satiety in the observing persons) to chalk up to deranged malcontents.  However, as more and more municipalities embrace "austerity," these police will generally be young, angry (having come from "austere" backgrounds themselves), and poorly trained, and ready to put the boots to any rabble-rousers.  These are not the police you know now: this is a new thug caste. Hard cases will be rousted and disciplined so as to assuage charges of police brutality, but for the most part we'll be cheering the fascists for keeping us safe.

Shomp, shomp, shomp - that's what jackboots sound like in unison on pavement

George Orwell said:  if you want to know what the future is like, imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever.  But to really get the clear picture, you have to remember that the face under the boot is a different color than yours, that it's on the other side of the continent, and that you're really sleepy from eating a big lunch of macaroni and cheese.   Don't underestimate the significance of little street-level poverty riots, but it seems to me that violent uprising isn't going to be the path America takes to any sort of change anytime soon.