It just occurred to me: this thing we’re seeing in the US right now is a riot. I don’t think it’s a takeover. I think it’s a bunch of people who are unhappy. They’re not trying to build something better; they’re only interested in destruction. They are voicing their unhappiness (and their joy in destruction) the same way rioters do.

If I’m right, then the response is the response to rioters: a show of overwhelming force and arrests of leaders and worst perpetrators.

Not sure how we do “overwhelming force” since they control many means of violence right now. Massive nonviolent resistance and voting, I think. That’s tough. Especially the voting.

Also, and maybe more importantly, sometimes riots go on for days, night after night. (“Night” because the reasonable people go to bed. Only when they have checked out do the extremists start doing damage.)

And the reason they go on for days, in spite of shows of force and arrests, is that the conditions for the riots still exist. They’ve been building for weeks, months, years (years and decades, in the case of politics-modelled-by-riots), so, in a sense, it’s too late once the riots have started.

The China shock, specifically, and globalization, more generally. Job loss and change.

We can’t dismiss racism, but I wonder (and now I’m thinking super-grand) if racism is just the shock (spread over generations) of meeting people different from us.

I probably can’t reduce it that far, though; it’s kind of absurd. There’s also plain competition over resources and our desire for war. Well… the desire for war on the part of our hot-headed young men and those demagogues and enablers who use that desire.

I’m thinking of northern Ireland – everybody looking the same and talking the same and picking a fairly abstract reason to murder each other over. And “fairly abstract reason” when violent young men are concerned is really just “excuse”.

So, anyway. It’s just a riot. Now what? 🤷‍♂️