Well off European is right!
For me it's more wishful thinking than believing or trusting any of the sources or giving a shit about the politics or racial background. Face it, everyone secretly loves hearing about idiots in less developed countries who cant regulate firearms shooting each other on the streets, it makes people feel better about their own country. I'd be disappointed if none of the reports are true, but i suspect i'd get over it.
Well, it's not the guns at all really. Guns for poor and disenfranchised Americans is nothing new, eg shays rebellion. And if you read about it, it wasn't that bad, the farmers were able to stall the courts and free some debtors. The chaos that is portrayed in the media today didn't exist back then. The main issue then was that bankers were taking over the legislature and instituting laws that favored the upper class much similar to the situation that's going on today (albeit then they were less hasty because there was more to lose). I think that there was a certain naivety throughout US revolutionary history. It was a completely new country without an identity comparable to European nations. We identified not as US citizens but as Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and so on. That's changed since then. We don't have that naivety anymore because we have the US Federal Government ruling over us more than any locally governing legislature does which wasn't the case back then. We're talking about this massive institution that ever since WWII has multiplied in size and military strength by an unfathomable factor. President Eisenhower warned us of the ongoing US military industrial complex and that was over 50 years ago. 50 years of heavy sustained growth in our military organizations. We don't march in the streets armed like our predecessors did because we're extremely afraid of what would happen. I guarantee you that the legislators wouldn't behave the way they did 228 years ago.
I actually laughed at (but wasn't surprised to see) all the middle-class sentimentality going on here. The way that we view Gandhi in relation to emancipatory politics isn't the way the American underclass does. They don't care about Gandhi. Since they can't march on the courts or march on the banks they'll do the only (semi-)comparable thing they can do which is steal a pair of tennis shoes. That's petty and I bet you're thinking that's unfair of me to make such a preposterous comparison but try to look at with the past in perspective; we can't bear arms and march on government. That's out of the question and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. So how does a working-class citizen of relatively narrow education go about a similar change? In my opinion, they're going to react with petty crime and steal tennis shoes and other consumer items that they've been brainwashed into thinking are valuable. It's certainly not the same as having the debt forgiven but since that's pretty much out of the question with today's politics there isn't much to do. So I understand them but I won't agree with them. I'm more of the sheltered & white & middle-class mind and think we should all smoke some weed and chill out in Central Park. hue
Whenever civil unrest of this kind flares up, whether it's Los Angeles riots, the Chicago riots, or the Boston Massacre (just gonna throw this in there to look cool), the media are always focused in on a singular event. It would be entirely idiotic to presume that unrest is triggered by one individual in one instance of injustice (whether or not any injustice was being done). It's much more broad and complex. It's the result of a system of neglect and abuse designed to strip away the rights and privileges of the lowest stratum of our society. But then again, the majority of us are working people who don't have time to read into it more than that and the truth is (this is what disgusts us when we see the pictures): we're fucking terrified of ending up like the rioters ourselves.
tl;dr The civil unrest in Ferguson, MO isn't shocking or new to America. We can't protest against the legislature like we used to. Now we steal tennis shoes. Meanwhile, (old as fuk) "rich people paying rich people to tell the middle class people to blame poor people". Don't read into the news and read moar history bookz. Also, gandhi.
i find ur disaffected european indifference impressive as fuck. srs.
