My approach to current events and things political is about the same as everyone else's, with perhaps a few extra syllables thrown in here and there. I intentionally avoid political wandering, mainly because there's already plenty of language and gas thrown in that direction. Too many voices on a hill all too quickly become a discordant and even cacophonous choir.
Even so, the recent rioting in Great Britain has surprised and startled me. As a result, I've found myself casting about for reasonable explanations.
Our family has been to England only once, in 1999. We spent about two and a half weeks there, with about five days in England and London with the rest being spent in Scotland. In London, we rode the underground multiple times a day, both during the commute as well as off hours. In addition, we rode buses and walked for miles. I do not claim to be an authority on all things British. However, in all our time there I saw nothing that would have tipped me to the idea that the events of the recent weeks were even a remote possibility.
It's possible that things have changed drastically there since our visit but it's more likely I think that things were already changing then. The change was just not yet particularly obvious. Even so, given a dozen years of "progress" I doubt that walking around downtown London would be much different now than it was then. After all, the British invented the concept of keeping up appearances.
I've read a number of articles by various commentators regarding the riots. Most of them were not particularly satisfying. Especially annoying were the sermons that this was somehow a political consequence of the British class system and related inequities in the economy. Of course, that would be the same class system that at one point ruled a good part of the world, fought and was victorious in two world wars, opposed the spread of Marxist tyranny and eventually released nearly all of their colonial conquests...and that's just the last couple of hundred years. Since the class system was in place for all of that time and one can assume that there have been poor people in Britain for all of that time plus forever, I think that's a bunch of, I'll use a good British word here, poppycock.
Similarly, the related idea being floated that the underlying cause of the riots is that "there's no hope" is so intellectually and socially vacuous as to be insulting. I've lived half a century now and it's all too easy to see someone trying to turn a circumstance into a lever used to advance them toward the object or policy of their desire.
I've seen a couple people hint at what I've come to suspect myself is the underlying cause. I think the answer to the question of what's happened in Britain is this: A large percentage of British parents have gone missing in action. The easiest evidence of this is to be found in the surveillance videos available on the web. Whatever the situation was the day these riots began, they've been carried forward by British youth, apparently regardless of gender. I've found a good many other evidences of this phenomenon as well but this is the easiest to site briefly.
Through a truly terrible combination of narcissism and social policy, it seems that Britain has managed to undermine a substantial portion of their society and family structure. It's not looking good for the coming generation of their decision makers.
Things are still a bit different here. Despite T.V. and the predominantly progressive coasts, there's a large number of Americans who still believe that it's inappropriate to hate ourselves for being Americans, that believe we sometimes have to make our kids do hard things they don't like, and that would rather work to get ahead rather than not work and live off of others.
I hope we have more than a dozen years but its hard to say. As Britain is demonstrating, a landslide begins with a few dislodged pebbles.
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