Wednesday, August 17, 2011

What I saw at the riots

Mostly along the lines of this by the outstanding Peter Hitchens.
Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why?
...
The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates – fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery towards the vulnerable and the different, a cold sneer turned towards any plea for pity, the awful realisation that when you call for help from the authorities, none will come.
A friend of mine from Scotland and I had a little message back-and-forth on FB about this. She asked if this could happen in the USA. "Sure." I said, "Happens after every NBA final."

Snarking aside, I got more serious and I told her that it has and probably will happen again in LA, Chicago, maybe DC or other Northern cities - but this will not happen in any major Southern city outside of perhaps Atlanta or New Orleans.

"Why?" She asked. Simple, I replied - like the Korean shop owners acted during the Rodney King riots; in most of the South ya'll gets you'se-self shot.

I think, in time, we'll have a chance to see. Like I have said before, economically we are just 5 years behind everyone in Europe.