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The London Riots: Put on Your Seatbelt Main Street
Dateline London: Over 1,200 arrested; 16,000 police, and the violence just moves to other towns. Children as young as 9 years old are being arrested by police. Prime Minister David Cameron says, "If you're old enough to throw a rock through a window, you're old enough to go to jail." Are the London riots a harbinger of things to come?
Those watching the carnage both nearby and worldwide cry out:
How can these young people just run through town smashing and breaking everything-don't they care about the things they are destroying?
What they are doing is against the law-don't they care about the law?
Burning buildings and looting and turning over cars- don't they know that the people who own those cars, didn't do anything to them?
Answers: No, No, No.
Desperate people do desperate things. If there's a message from Main Street England to Main Street America in this mayhem and chaos, it's that hoodlums and vandals are acting badly, put on your seat belts.
In England, like every where else, it's not just the austerity gutting the coffers or acts like the one in which police shot the unarmed and then lied to cover it up, that's causing all of this unrest. It's not just a few bad apples convincing others to let the thief inside of them run with somebody else's goods. It's a culture gone sideways, the creed of winner take all. I got mine and we don't care about you, so get out of the way.
John F. Kennedy said, "Make a peaceful revolution impossible and you guarantee a violent one." Why has history always proven that true so many times? Kennedy was a student of history and understood the toils of the Boxer Rebellion in China at the turn of the 20th century. He studied the rise and fall of colonialists and oligarchs in Europe and Africa. He was very familiar with how mass inequities fuel peasant revolts and how the disenfranchised can lose their self-worth and take to the streets.
To suggest, as Prime Minister Cameron did, that it's gangs leading these riots, that it's criminals and low-lifes that are behind the violence, is disingenuous to those screaming to be heard and insulting to those in harm's way. No doubt the criminal element is opportunistic at such times, and they are getting the spotlight. And there is no doubt that to inflict personal injury on others is unacceptable, but to duck any responsibility to the disconnect of those who see the future wrenching back to no more than a choke-hold, would be a very dangerous case of denial. What are those who are watching their future being thrown under the bus to do?
It's not just to hunger for food that makes one feel meager and deprived. The crowds are mostly young because they're the ones who are watching their futures get bargained away to the same ones that have left the country with their jobs They are the ones who are watching their parents' safety-nets fly out the door as if in a rummage sale, and how they can't or won't do anything about it.
The young are being asked to drink reconditioned sewer water because clean water supplies are dwindling and wonder in what condition it will be in 20 years? They know the infrastructures are crumbling, that the rivers are polluted and little to nothing is being done about it. They see the degree to which the media farms their every move, they see a society squeezing their thin wallets for whatever the market says it's worth, and moreover they see how they are being squeezed out of any say in their future – marginalized and excluded from the debate.
Force-fed exclusion surely breeds contempt. No more should someone make excuses for this madness then should they identify it all by the actions of the portion that are criminally inclined. To see little more that a future of deficiencies is enough to make anyone mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. What are the young to do? It wouldn't be a stretch to deny those who have nurtured and fed this culture of winner take all, any part in what it will take to fix it, to be more inclusive, not exclusive, so to improve the quality of life for us all.
Where are the parents? Maybe it is time for them to get off their butts and be responsible for the conditions they are forcing their children to live under – either through action or inaction. Maybe it's time to make sure the water their kids will be drinking in a decade will quench their thirst, rather then make them sick. There is a reason for revolution, it is usually born from the disconnect between generations and the denial of its very existence. As JFK said "prevent a peaceful revolution and you guarantee a violent one." What will we do – put on our seat belts, or start correcting our mistakes.
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93 Comments so far
Show AllGood luck trying to make sense of this guy's execrable, but pretentious, prose. I found it unreadable.
perhaps what seems unreadable is the linking together of the profound pain and frustration in what has been excluded from public discourse, all to often accepted as 'making sense', hence 'thinkable' and readable
No, it's the grammar. The piece was printed in an online paper, but from the start the writer displayed ignorance of what 'you're' and 'your' is. I was able to make out what he meant, and yah, he's right about some things, but the grammar was terrible.
You're kidding, right? You bash an article because you found a typo?
I liked the article, I also know that my spelling is an invite to criticize it, I can be terribly lazy when it comes to punctuation or spelling or whatnot when posting comments. But it's a valid criticism when you're talking about people who go to the fuss and bother of creating a 'newspaper' if the article has spelling errors then that 'newspaper' is sloppy. They're not doing their jobs right, and it is something you can also see in the established 'newspapers'. Criticizing someone who posts in the comment section for bad spelling is a poor reason to bash someone (even if I am guilty of doing exactly that from time to time, hypocrite that I am) but the author's job involves writing, so...
If they don't check their spelling, why should I, or you, think that they check their facts either?
"If they don't check their spelling, why should I, or you, think that they check their facts either?"
The error you pointed out (erroneously substituting "your" for "you're") isn't a spelling error.
And we should always wonder about the accuracy of an article, no matter how flawlessly proofread.
Look. I’ve been a legal proofreader, and am now a member of the academic grammar police. I went through a three and a half year lawsuit where I had to proofread my lawyer’s documents because she couldn’t be bothered, and I knew typos can be very important in legal documents. I write often on this site, and often I make one or two errors. Who cares? Why should you? If you can understand what I’m saying, that’s all that matters, and if you’re going to get all huffy about “you’re” vs. “your,” yur not worth talking to.
Anyone who writes seriously, no matter how grammatically/technically savvy, knows that they need a proofreader, unless they’re [oh dear, subject-verb disagreement!] going to go through the arduous practice of reading backwards—that is, reading each sentence from the bottom up so the sentences will become unglued from their meaning. Anyone who is or has been a proofreader knows that their [another error!} services come cheap, but most outlets are unwilling or unable to pay the small price. Most journalists now live without real proofreading services, particularly the more honest ones. I don’t give a fark (please pardon the misspelling). I want to hear what they have to say.
Elizabeth,
I agree one hundred percent. The grammar police (here on this cd comments forum) really annoy me at times.
grammar is easy if not tedious
thought is hard work and requires intelligence and creativity
Funny, Jill (I hope). Love your posts, by the way, but I've never seen you crack a joke before.
You go, girl! Great response! IMHO, in my experience, a reader's objection that poor grammar or spelling render a specific piece unreadable is usually launched by someone who disagrees with the piece's message and is too cowardly to read it fully or to respond on its points. As for myself, I sometimes criticize a writer's lack of language skills, but generally it's because that lack is coupled with an irritating arrogance. Rainborowe derailed the discussion with his comment, unfortunately. When the world is burning, we can surely find more important things to discuss than "your" vs. "you're".
Really? Is the entire comments section going to a discussion of grammar. London is burning and all you people care about is an apostrophe?
Actually, most of us are trying to rein-in the grammar police who so frequently side-track discussions here. If you read further, you'll find our comments on the article.
Aaronica,
A couple of things on the misspelling. 1st, newspapers should proofread all copy before printing and yet they've eliminated most copy jobs. 2nd, its incredibly difficult for the original writer to catch all misspellings since they often read what they thought and not the written word. 3rd, many who post here have auto spell which changes words. And 4th, People like me who post from a phone keyboard sometimes just live with a couple of minor mistakes in preview because posting from a phone is difficult enough to bother with the do over. So please don't be too awfully hard on the writers.
"2nd, its incredibly difficult for the original writer to catch all misspellings since they often read what they thought and not the written word."
And I thought I was the only one with "creative eyesight". I'm not sure whether I'm relieved or not, to find out that it's common.
Are you offering to pay?
If you do not pay, why should I, or anyone, bother about what you want?
Put your money where your mouth is.
Whoah, and some of us thought the conversation had already hit bottom! We also do not pay for commoncourtesy, but have a right to expect it.
The point is this:
Writing a great article, and then proofreading and editing it takes time. Why should someone do that for free for you? Are you willing to do your job for free?
When you are getting something for free, you do not get to go around making lots of demands. You want to make demands, you pay. That is common courtesy.
One can never take seriously any writer who does not make every effort, including proper use of grammar, to make himself or herself clear. Typos are, of course, forgivable, but not slovenliness. I never read past a misuse of lie, lay or lain, let alone your vs. you're.
"One can never take seriously any writer who does not make every effort, including proper use of grammar, to make himself or herself clear."
Perhaps "one" can't, but I can. For one thing, not all people who write in English are native speakers, and the English language itself is far from being geographically homogeneous.
You're missing out on a lot of good thinking if you let a single grammatical error damn an article irretrievably in your mind.
BTW, I assume you apply that same standard to authors with whom you agree.
Excuse me?? He didn't make a grammatical error. "You're" is a contraction for
"You Are" and "Your" is a pronoun and the possessive form of "You". The problem
you are having is that the author is English and the piece is written in proper
English, something unfamiliar to most colonials in America.
Hello Fed54,
I'm almost certain that when this article was first posted here, it did indeed have "your" instead of "you're" in the first paragraph. I even looked on-line, and found that error in the original article,
Or maybe aliens abducted me last night and implanted that memory in my mind..
SSJJ - Your last line is the more plausible. Or maybe you should pull the probe out of you're asshole.-Pun intended, with the grammar error.
Here's the origunal article; you can see for yourself that I recalled it accurately:
http://www.thebradentontimes.com/news/2011/08/13/opinion/the_london_riots_put_on_your_seatbelt_main_street/
So, the explanation isn't what Fred54 thought.
Both "your" and "you're" were used correctly in this piece. A few minor errors: a comma splice after "badly"; "everywhere" is one word; there's a period missing after "jobs"; "whatever the market says it's worth" should have "they're" instead of "it's"; "then" should be "than"; "that" should be "than"; "anymore" is one word; "then" should be "than"; and there's a question mark missing at the end.
These mistakes are minor, and I suspect it's not these mistakes that caused your and others' difficulty understanding the article. I suspect it's, first, your hostility to the writer's viewpoint, and second, the complexity of the sentences, which use subordinate clauses as subjects and objects - and correctly. Obviously, you and rainborowe and rfloh want to make your lack of reading skill somebody else's fault.
Redballoon- excellent! I love it, so beautiful to see the actual rules of grammar applied,rather then the make-up-some-bullshit-to-redirect-the-dialogue tactics of RFLUSH et al. Let me point out that this is the tactic used in every article posted here by these same post names. It appears to be a mechanical action-ie produced by a machine. These two names in particular are used regularly while employing this tactic.
RFLUSH and Rainborobot often make up things to divert the discussion away from the article's topic-regularly devolving into complete absurdity.
I had no trouble understanding the article, but then I'm not a snob.
I had no difficulty either, and the living I make depends on good grammar, good spelling and excellent accurate and speedy typing. I am far more interested in what this article gets across and I agree with it 100 percent. I've been reading a lot about what is going on in England, I have heard interviews of the people involved. It is people from all walks -- the middle class on down -- who know what is being done to them and what the future holds.
I don't see how we avoid this happening here. The anger grows each and every day, while the political circus, totally out of touch on both sides, goes on. The Uber-Narcissistic Obama, intent on being the first Billion Dollar Presidential Candidate, and the cadre of nutcases on the other -- what a show -- a total disconnect from the pain and suffering of the American people.
I'm skeptical re the politicians from "both" sides being "out of touch." They (as well as those they partner with) probably know exactly, their "intelligence" constantly monitoring the pulse of the people being disenfranchised in the society they are making, constantly surveilling. "Information is power." They calculate just how far they think they can go, in increments, because the subjects would notice it being done if too swiftly. Imperialists feel free to speak and act their agenda rather openly as if they don't worry about the public moving to block their way. They simply disregard populist wishes and no doubt have contempt for the people they claim to represent.
Donnalou; You are so right. Google "They Thought They Were Free" a piece from years ago by Milton Mayer. It describes the process completely. It's a very scary piece and I have wished for years that every one who cares about the future of this country would read it.
"Good luck trying to make sense of this guy's execrable, but pretentious, prose. I found it unreadable."
I didn't. But as a person living in a foreign country where I'm trying to learn a non-European language, I'm used to making an honest effort at understanding what others have written.
It's not a matter of "luck".
"Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning -- not simply believing -- has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it."—Gilles d'Aymery (coined sometime in the fall of 1997)
http://www.swans.com/main.shtml
I have seen this theme in several places recently.
I wonder whether the sentiment from the authors is not could it happen, but should it happen.
Riots are not to be admired in any case. It is the rioters' side in America that always loses.
"Where are the parents?"
Working, I imagine. Perhaps this can be a new excuse for a "sick day". Sorry boss, can't come in today, my kid's rioting.
Remember Columbine? For approximately the first week after the shootings, the mantra of the mainstream media was the shootings were a product of overworked middle-class Americans who couldn't be home for the kids. At about the same following Sunday, all such expression ended, and was replaced to this day by, "The shooters were evil monsters." Cameron just skipped the sociological explanation, and jumped to the biblical. Think about it, if Cameron and Clinton had to confront the sociological basis of poverty, they would have to abandon their socio/political policies.
+1
the jfk quote really resonates in my mind. when people gather for peaceful demonstrations challenging an authoritative governing body and that hierarchy keeps putting roadblocks against meaningful conversation; that puts ever more pressure on an already confused, disillusioned and pressured society, they should expect the steam to busrts out. narural law, you know. gee, if these know-it-alls would talk with people honestly this explosive rioting might have been avoided. however, the oligarchy of the day always buys into its own public image of superiority so that they never see how their ignorance creates the very powder keg which threatens. the policy makers seldom accept any blame when their great ideas backfire!
The quotes by JFK resonate in my mind too. But John Kennedy got us into the VietNam quagmire, and it's too bad his grasp of history did not include the lengths the Vietnamese people have gone to repel foreign invasion. Of course, he bought into the capitalistic myth of the cold war, that Communism was a monolithic threat to our 'freedom'. Right now we have a threat much more real and terrible than monolithic Communism ever was--that of the complete take over of the world by corporate oligarchs. As long as this threat exists, you are going to have unrest in the streets. That we didn't here in the United States while Bush and Obama were selling us out to Wall Street is an indication of our complacency and selfishness and also to the fact that we have a lot less to lose than the British, who have the rudiments of a responsible social system, even after Thatcher.
Please read "JFK and the Unspeakable:Why he died and Why it matters" because there you will learn that he was given the Vietnam tragedy by Eisenhower and was fighting his advisers who even wanted to use Nukes. JFK had written directives re: getting out of Vietnam, just before his assassination. Because of this, his unwillingness to send troops to Cuba (against the CIA's ruse to force him to do so), and Detente with Russia for massive reduction of nukes... he was assassinated by CIA,( on behalf of military-industrial complex.) Talking to and producing peace agreements with the "enemy" Russians, was not OK. So he had to die, as did RFK and any Kennedy who would aspire to be president.Because they were enemies of Wall Street.
Thankyou for clearing the record. Our entire history has very basically been "mainstreet vs. wallstreet and/or city of london", in one guise, or another. Pretty much "we the people" vs oligarchy, in one guise or another. Even more fundamentally than competing economic systems: pro-human vs. anti-human.
HUMMING BIRD: How many in the forum think it's just a "coincidence" that the Pentagon has, of late, focused on urban warfare, i.e.crowd control?
If the empowered elites think long-term and plot their moves, incrementally, as a chessmaster would apprise the game board, then lets review their moves in light of what they've probably set their sights on (hint: Inverted Totalitarianism):
1. Beefing up the MIC after 911
2. Deregulating Wall Street to ease the way to the Grand Heist of 2008
3. Criminalizing certain forms of dissent, or certainly watching for any rabble-rousers, so that such efforts could be countered, before they became effective (illegal wiretaps retroactively rendered legal!)
4. Offshoring prisons outside the purview of national law
5. Breaking down the checks and balances of the 3 branches of government (so that much could fall under a mere presidential decree)
6. Bailing out the banks after an engineered bubble, (reinforced by a totally corrupt set of credit agencies) to direct loads of wealth to only a few (effectively robbing the nation)
7. Making election counts/results only decipherable to private computer companies!
8. Tightening the screws on Social Security, Medicare, unemployment extension
9. Defanging unions and demonizing nurses, teachers, and union employees
10. Eviscerating Acorn
11. Making whistleblowers into examples (of why there are serious risks in speaking out)
12. Setting up an inordinately pro-business (rights) Supreme Court... which then gave rise to:
13. Citizens United, so that yet more freedom could be delivered to corporate trespasses, as nature's systems all around us break down (and Cancer rates rise!)
ETC.
So when you said:
"when people gather for peaceful demonstrations challenging an authoritative governing body and that hierarchy keeps putting roadblocks against meaningful conversation; that puts ever more pressure on an already confused, disillusioned and pressured society,"
The outcome was known in advance, and meanwhile, under the guise of the War on Drugs, lots of prison beds are in place, paid for by taxpayers; and the media too captured to present a voice of dissent to whatever the authoritarians du jour decree as the law of the land.
The Chicago School, aided and abeted by Wall Street's finest, have effectively exported THIS MODEL. And we see populations everywhere attempting to rise up from their chains. Meanwhile, the same nation that boasts being "peacekeeper" to the world, has simultaneously ARMED much of the world, including zones run by corrupt dictators. Therefore the old guard, or network of tyrants that works hand in glove to allot U.S. corporations access to their nations' natural resources (and related assets) is well-armed and in theory, prepared to counter the attempts of citizens to win basic liberties, or in any way improve their collective lot in life.
Dismal. A worldwide revoution has begun... the fruit of its efforts will be evident between 2020-2025. It's quite a struggle till then... maybe some areas, like South America, will emerge ahead of the wave and act as positive role models to The Possible.
Chris Hedges recently defined the US as a post-law nation, and someone in the forum suggested post-justice. Either way, YOY has moved to a whole new dimension, and what may have once sounded like a conspiracy theory, more and more takes shape in real space and time. In other words... the evidence is in plain sight.
Great post, Siouxrose.
I second that, Sioux. Your political acumen keeps impressing.
NOTE This Aug 12 Global Research Article - UK Riots: The Lawless Thuggery & Looting of the Ruling Elites [http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25974]:
[ 'While pundits sit in comfy television studios trading inane insights about the evils of individual immorality, criminality, dysfunctional families, gang culture... The fact that the capitalist economic system is in worldwide meltdown is not even registered in the mainstream commentary. This is the system that the mainstream political parties have facilitated and fawned over, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, and which has resulted in social devastation across Britain while the corporate and financial elite has ransacked economic resources. This system of legalised looting has been going on for decades, but certainly took on a precipitous dynamic starting with Margaret Thatcher [in collusion w Reagan & Friedman in the US] in the early 1980s. Labour's Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were merely purveyors of the same dynamic.
Karl Marx words are so right: 'An accumulation of wealth at one pole of society indicates an accumulation of poverty and misery at the other end'. That is the hallmark of capitalism in today's Britain, the US and Europe.
All other problems are largely secondary in causation. Crime, racist policing, disorder, the lack of police budgets to restore order (so ironic), alienation and self-destruction, the mobilisation of resources to fund illegal wars - most of our present day problems flow from the tap root of dysfunction that is the capitalist economy.
The looting, thievery and lawlessness that Cameron so condemns is but the reflection at the street level of British society of what is taking place on a much greater scale at the upper echelons of government and the economy.
Despite the appearance of pinstripe suits and well-groomed accents, we can see decades of looting and thievery of economic and financial resources by corporate elites aided and abetted by Labour and Conservative governments. The taxpayer bailout of corrupt banks initiated by Labour PM Gordon Brown and now overseen by Cameron, paid for in large part by austerity in public spending cuts, is but the latest manifestation of official robbing of the majority to swell the already outrageous wealth of the ruling elite class [exactly what has & is taken place in the under Bush now Obama].
Cameron and his gang of plumy-accented thugs are gunning for $150 billion in public spending cuts to pay for the criminal enterprise known as British banking. This is racketeering that a street gang in Londons east end can only marvel at and indeed, in a very real way, only emulate.
Combined with that looting by the elite we see the total lawlessness and criminality of British governments who have worked hand in glove with other criminal governments to launch wars of aggression (Nuremburg standard war crimes) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya, resulting in the deaths of over one million civilians. Where is individual responsibility for that mass murder and destruction Mr Cameron?
This social decay and necrotism is a symptom of the collapse of capitalism, an economic system that enriches an elite at the cost of the majority. It polarises political power beyond democratic accountability to the point where wars and planetary looting are being carried out even blatantly against the consent of the majority public...']
Listening to mainstream [CNN, BBC, etc] pundits- their only critique of the London police is that they didn't respond quickly enough & more forcefully - to quell the riots by cracking down [IE: cracking heads]... They apparently don't want people to remember that things got started w London's cops shooting a Black man whom the cops apparently could have arrested without firing a shot [since he didn't do any shooting himself - it may even turn out that he was effectively unarmed]. YET Even that didn't actually start the riots. The rioting began when the victim's [Mr Duggan] family & community activists staged a PEACEFUL Protest at Police HQ, BUT then as many as 15 Cops in Full RIOT GEAR & SHIELDS began BEATING, STOMPING & CLUBBING a 16 yr old girl [allegedly for throwing a rock]- THAT'S WHAT SPARKED THE INITIAL RIOT!
Some how the main-stream talking heads @ CNN [& presumably BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc] have failed to critique these initial compound failures of the London Police! As the article above says all they're talking about is the responsibility & young thugs & gangs [& their parents or lack there-of] BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... Like most folks condone violence, looting, thuggery, etc by ANYONE - whether done by those who are impoverished {by} or that which is the result of the POWER ELITES' 'policies'....
I say this describes exactly how people would act when the rich are on their cozy and rigged 'winner take all and denying amenities of life' attitude. It also can't be seen and accepted by those on the 'receiving end of nothing' as anything but a declaration of war against them. It is not a war started by those rioting, it is a reaction to the war declared upon them and what has been done to them, denied to them and the insane neoconservative cameron type of attitude that no matter how awful the aristocracy treat those they leech off of and repress, those people owe the u.k. the act of taking it without objection.
It is great to see that there is a tipping point where when all hope of a decent life is denied and taken away, that people will revolt even by rioting and what better place, other than the u.s., for it to happen than the u.k. which is so apropos considering the long history of european suppression of people. It would not surprise me to learn the neocon cameron will issue a 'shoot on siight order' for anyone not 'authorized' to be out on the street along with summary executions in the street.
Cameron is definitely the u.k. version of the neoconservative administrations in amerika for the last 40 or 50 years from nixon, a little bit of ford, carter, a whole bunch of rear-end runnie reagan, the elder bush crime family lord, slick willie treasonous terms, the bow legged dwarf of w's traitorous terms when our own country was once again attacked by its own people in false flag 9/11 and now by o, the turncoat who won't do a thing to help this country.
“Where are the parents? Maybe it is time for them to get off their butts and be responsible for the conditions they are forcing their children to live under – either through action or inaction.”—from the article.
What complete bullshit. Where are the parents? Well, you see, they have no political power. The young know this, and they don’t blame their parents for it, for God’s sake. As Obama has made clear, in case anyone was still confused, the government does not care what people want, unless they’re corporate “persons”—and certainly not poor people. Foisting the responsibility on the parents is utterly ridiculous. Perhaps it is cynical to say so, but as long as people refuse to understand that there is no democracy, there is no representation, and this is a Corporatocracy, they’ll continue to waste their energies on an illusion. The only reason the government cares what the people want is to figure out how most effectively to lie to them, so they can continue to charade of elections.
ELizabeth- The 'where are the parents' meme is complete bullshit, the parents are in the streets fighting for a change in the world so their children have a future. I really like your post-keep it up.
MC- the parents were crushed under by the strategy of the oligarchs, like so many. They are now in the street fighting for the future. Just because 'the parents' have lost the battle for the present does not mean they were/are not victims of the class structure, just as assuredly they are in the streets with 'the looters' - ie insurrection.
I quite agree, Elizabeth-- it felt to me like Rehill wanted to address the unavoidable "Where are the parents?" cliché somehow, and clumsily reached or stretched for a response.
The simplistic dichotomy is between the classic "bleeding-heart liberal" view that the violence is a valid, if unfortunate, reaction to broad social ills and oppression, versus the reactionary conservative view that it is inexcusable mass delinquency of poorly-raised and poorly-supervised kids acting out-- i.e. atrocious cross-generational but individual irresponsibility.
Rehill here attempts to affirm that parents must be held directly responsible and accountable for their wayward and unruly kids. However, he also subscribes to the belief that the violent and criminal disorder results from overarching social and political conditions.
So he awkwardly tries to split the difference and blames the parents for not somehow asserting themselves sufficiently to give their kids a better world in the first place.
FYI, here in Philly, Mayor Nutter is working hard at the role of Stern Parent; the local news reports, with their usual combination of breathless trepidation and implicit approval, that police are proceeding with the mayor and police chief's vociferously-touted "crackdown" this weekend that has resulted in several arrests for curfew violations or prohibited spontaneous gatherings that resemble proto-"flash mobs".
However, Nutter also is waving the carrot, e.g. appearing at a "bowling party" at a local bowling alley to demonstrate his recognition that kids deserve wholesome, socially acceptable recreation.
I don't mean to be too disdainful of all this; at least Nutter is trying to practice some leadership. And even though I instinctively sneer at Good Clean Fun organized by adults, if some kids who are otherwise deprived of opportunities and diversions get a chance to do things they really do enjoy, even for problematic reasons, I'm not going to get all grinchy about it.
It bothers me that it's obviously a limited, superficial approach that at best manages the symptoms-- as some managers stay in the rut of constantly running around putting out fires because they are too impotent, ignorant, or timid to address deeper underlying circumstances that cause the chronic fires in the first place.
Maybe even a well-intentioned mayor is reduced to just trying to stay on the bucking bronco in hopes that it will settle down.
Meanwhile, the public-- at least the ones featured on the hideous vox pop clips that are the stock of local teevee news-- is uniformly supportive of all of the "public safety" measures, from curfews and increased police patrols to increased surveillance-- to keep the streets safe for decent folk and tourists. Sigh.
I recently lived in England for 4 years. I can say that in many cases one of the parents is holding one job, while the other holds down two, and there is NO time left to look after Johnny.