Recipe for Riot

A comment from Old Jules on the previous post got me thinking. I know, it’s dangerous, but it sparked memories from my studies in social sciences.
First, the basic principle behind all social science: We can observe a mass of human behavior and detect certain general patterns which are generally accurate and never precisely true. Some of what follows cannot apply with perfect accuracy to your experience, yet will provide a model which accurately predicts certain broad events. Don’t forget, I always throw in my own flavor of prophetic viewpoint, so take me with a grain of salt.
As a case study, the riots in London should serve as a warning to all of us. We share enough context with the UK to get similar results from the same inputs. The first riots began as a simple protest, rather orderly at that. It won’t matter what the motives are or whom you would prefer to blame. What makes things ripe for riot are the present in the US. All it takes is something to set them off.
This crazy business of class envy didn’t start with communist theory and the workers’ uprisings. Class warfare was a specific intent and motive of the middle class against those they saw below them. They despised anyone not like them, mostly in the sense they wanted everyone to be as phony. The middle class got that way when they were powerless under the control of the nobility. That was some serious class envy. The merchants in Europe wanted all the prestige but none of the responsibilities which tend to draw a few folks up to act somewhat more noble. And with the nobles, it was a very ugly and powerful origin of class consciousness. They went from lucky in battle, thus the clan warlord, to imagining their position was more a matter of inherent virtue and better DNA. It was the nobles, and by extension royalty, who drew first blood in this battle. Oppression began with the simple ability to oppress, and it’s as old as mankind.
Thus, class envy is not merely an isolated problem, a contextual thing worthy of some particular spite. When people feel like they have too many footprints on their backs, they get tired of it. When the cultural context makes no virtue of being a carpet for others, you should not expect a noble patience among the poor and oppressed. One quick look at predatory lending, riding on the back of manipulative materialistic advertising, in a legal system which sells justice to the rich, and a genuine armed revolt is wholly justified by God’s Laws.
But most of our oppressed aren’t that organized because they aren’t that bright. That is, they’ve been denied a good education, having their heads instead filled with marketing mush and fables. Technology they know; thinking deep is foreign. Most of them could become entrepreneurs, but the system genuinely seeks to prevent it, and most of the worthwhile jobs have been shipped overseas. And if you could read the philosophical and doctrinal discussions about law enforcement from the past half-century in the US and the rest of the West, and if you could understand what they were getting at, you would find a vast shift in thinking which forces the police officers to become schizophrenic. Put on the badge and everyone without one becomes your enemy, a criminal just waiting get caught. Yes, this is intentional; this is what the folks in academic ivory towers wanted. This is what we have now.
A significant minority of the US population believes the system owes them, calling their supports “entitlements.” The middle class rail at the welfare mentality, but suffer from the same schizophrenia they like to see in their policemen. They knowingly cultivated the very rules they demanded for offering it, just so they could turn around and spit on the folks forced to accept those rules. This is not theory, dear readers. I’ve read the crap they wrote when discussing the theories behind the current political system. The words they wrote justified the system; the attitudes they harbored, but refused to admit consciously, justified hateful implementations. The hook was set and our reputation for heartless torture of our captured “terrorists” is simply an extension of how the American mainstream views anyone who doesn’t suffer the same brand of madness.
So the system shreds all dignity from people who can’t bring themselves to adopt middle class cultural schizophrenia. Being honest is the best way to get into trouble, decency is punished. Is anyone surprised a significant element of the underclass is predatory? That’s because the middle class is no better, but prefers to use uniformed professionals for their violent thuggery, while the underclass is more DIY. From the moral standpoint, the mainstream are the aggressors.
Thus, we see a growing number of people who have had their patience and wisdom stolen, their morals intentionally crippled, and now what little creature comforts and conveniences they could squeeze from the system is being increasingly denied them. As more and more benefits of economic activity are funneled ever more tightly to the flaunting wealthy few, and not only the pitiful rotten jobs are fading, but so are all the other ways folks could occupy their time, they really don’t have anything better to do. The first time some genuine protest of grievance hits the streets, these folks will come out in droves so as to grab the few things which they have been made to believe matters to them. You shouldn’t imagine the race riots the MSM have been trying to cover up and describe as mere “flash mob” entertainment is not a symptom of a boiling pot with the lid on too tight.
The stage is set. Many of us old folks would gladly work if we could, bearing our share of economic decline, but there aren’t any jobs for us, either. We have been told, and rightly believe, what we have left to survive on is our right, because we paid for it from our pockets or because we gave up some sizable chunk of our very beings for some cause we were told was noble. Take away what the system really does owe us, and we’ll protest. Old or not, we’ll march on Washington, DC and everywhere else. When we do, the rioters-in-waiting will turn out and things will get messy.
I’m praying I got this all wrong, but I honestly expect full on rioting in some urban areas very soon.