Western Civilization?
Panic on the streets of London:
I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green were looted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of serious injuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is the third consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has now spread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?
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Jan '11
Re: Western Civilization?
Claire, I don't wish to disappoint you but violence can only be met with violence.
You start with massive quantities of pepper spray, work your way then to rubber bullets and then as a last resort live ammo. Anything less and the authorities will lose control of these incidents and next time they'll be even worse.
May '10
Re: Western Civilization?
Pike Bishop: Claire, I don't wish to disappoint you but violence can only be met with violence.
You start with massive quantities of pepper spray, work your way then to rubber bullets and then as a last resort live ammo. Anything less and the authorities will lose control of these incidents and next time they'll be even worse. · Aug 8 at 9:47pm
I agree. It is time to bring overwhelming, and lethal, force to bear on the criminals. The rioters will stop if they are confronted with a steep and sure price to pay for their mayhem.
Jul '11
Re: Western Civilization?
I'm going to agree with the two chaps before me. The best thing to do is follow (I can't believe I am going to say this) Mayor Daley's example and inform the public that the police have orders to shoot to kill where rioters are concerned. Water cannon, pepper spray, and rubber bullets... these are things to use en masse.
Dec '10
Re: Western Civilization?
It has begun...angst and undirected rage against a system that can neither save nor protect you will determine where it goes.
This is a tragedy that could only occur among an unarmed citizenry.
Edited on Aug 8, 2011 at 10:10pmDec '10
Re: Western Civilization?
What is the definition between a rioter and a revolutionary?
Re: Western Civilization?
Disappoint me? Of course that's what needs to happen. And they need to call the police in Istanbul for lessons. Whenever there's so much of a hint of this kind of thing here the whole neighborhood chokes to death on pepper spray and gets doused with water cannons. I note that Turkish shopkeepers in London fought off the rioters (reportedly) with kebab knives. Good for them.
Jul '11
Re: Western Civilization?
Well, almost all the revolutionary leaders had some deep thoughts.
One European Union study this year found that 17 per cent of Britain’s youth are classified as “NEETs” – for Not in Employment, Education or Training, in other words high-school dropouts with no prospects of employment – the fourth-highest percentage in the European Union. There are 600,000 people under 25 in Britain who have never had a day of work.
I doubt these Neets are contemplating the higher meaning of life as they Clockwork Orange the days away.
Dec '10
Re: Western Civilization?
DocJay
Well, almost all the revolutionary leaders had some deep thoughts.
One European Union study this year found that 17 per cent of Britain’s youth are classified as “NEETs” – for Not in Employment, Education or Training, in other words high-school dropouts with no prospects of employment – the fourth-highest percentage in the European Union. There are 600,000 people under 25 in Britain who have never had a day of work.
I doubt these Neets are contemplating the higher meaning of life as they Clockwork Orange the days away. · Aug 8 at 10:29pm
Well said. I was just getting ahead of the left on this one.
Jun '10
Re: Western Civilization?
Europe wanted a post-Christian world. They got it. Why do you suppose 1930s America was not defined by rioting in the streets? There were some union riots, but it didn't define the decade. It's because, bad as things were, people had hope, and they had hope because they were not just living for this world. They believed there was a next life, and to get there (to Glory) and to be at peace here on Earth, you needed to follow the Golden Rule. And they did. For the most part, they did.
Re: Western Civilization?
♪ I wonder to myself | Could life ever be sane again? … Hopes may rise on the Grasmere | But, honey pie, you're not safe here… ♪
Jul '11
Re: Western Civilization?
True, and many people defined their Christian life through great giving and sacrifice to help out the less fortunate. This still occurs but less so in my opinion.
Re: Western Civilization?
From the cited blog post:
Is there a co-ordinated state effort designed to depress their self-esteem, or do we blame an inference they pick up from a culture that has failed to sufficiently exalt their manifest accomplishments? Or do they tell themselves they’re good for nothing, because they lack the skills society once assumed a reasonable citizen could manifest: to cohere into social units that provide the things governments are incapable of providing - love, emotional security, generational stability?
Are we talking a community of people who sopped up the opportunities of the educational system (which must, by definition, be exemplary, being a manifestation of the all-caring State) and restrained from perpetuating their own social origins by declining to strew a half-dozen children among three women? Or is this the automatic “respect” we are obliged to pay to young males aslosh with testosterone, and regard the lack of rote deference a challenge to their cartoon sense of manhood?
Re: Western Civilization?
Don't mean to oversimplify and blame it all on welfare, but for heaven's sake: it's not as though the state announced it would no longer house and feed people. This had little to do with decreased subsidies for college.
It was fun, and they could get away with it.
Re: Western Civilization?
James Lileks: Don't mean to oversimplify and blame it all on welfare, but for heaven's sake: it's not as though the state announced it would no longer house and feed people. This had little to do with decreased subsidies for college.
It was fun, and they could get away with it. · Aug 9 at 12:15am
I probably should have specified, but I would have thought it obvious (given who I am) that I don't offer her political analysis as an endorsement. I was interested in that extract as a specimen of a young woman's bewilderment and panic upon confronting the reality that civilization does, indeed, rest upon force. The rest of it is mostly cognitive dissonance.
Anyone who fails to see from that video that violence is fun and exhilarating--among other things--needs to be detoxed off the Hallmark cards. I agree with you completely, James.
Edited on Aug 9, 2011 at 2:59amFeb '11
Re: Western Civilization?
I read that blog post from Ms Penny Red. Alas.
It's like that whole welfare state thingy never even happened. Even when rioters have her penned up in her house in fear for her life she is still on their side. Incredible.
And solutions she's got them: Try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain, and take care of one another. Oh - and build a nice, generous welfare state.
Because no one's ever tried that before.
It just bites when you run out of other peoples' money.
Aug '10
Re: Western Civilization?
I thought all of those Closed Circuit TVs were supposed to prevent things like this.
Dec '10
Re: Western Civilization?
I think these riots are a reaction to the public sense that the world just isn't right. In an of itself, that reaction is correct. The problem is that these young people don't realize that it is the system that is the problem, and nothing can save them from the dour fate the face eyes-wide-open, but themselves.
They see the problem, but not it's source. They fight back against the powers that hold them down, not understanding that it is liberty and freedom that will usher in the lives they long for, and not the security of an false omniscient and paternal overseerer that bring prosperity.
May '11
Re: Western Civilization?
In the 1930's people did have hope and aspirations for this world. There were huge numbers of immigrants. My parents, their siblings,and cousins were mostly teenage children of immigrants in the 1930's.
Socialism had not yet become a way of life in the US. The public educational system was, perhaps, the best it's ever been (or should I say "systems" for that pre-Dept. of Ed. world). Manual laborer immigrants expected their children to succeed academically. So did society at large.
That's hardly the situation today, whether in the UK or US.
Feb '11
Re: Western Civilization?
Too bad they didn't have a draft before this. Taking restless and unemployed youth off the street while strengthening national defense - sounds like a win/win in my opinion.
Apr '11
Re: Western Civilization?
22.50 Earlier tonight Turkish and Kurdish shopowners in the Stoke Newington area of North London were guarding their premises with baseball bats. There are reports now of "hundreds" of young turkish men chasing a group of young black men down nearby Kingsland Road, Hackney.
"A gang of vandals broke the windows of an Islamic bank in Whitechapel but were chased off by a rival gang of 100 Muslim youths who are standing guard outside the East London Mosque. Local shops have been attacked."
UK Telegraph, last night