U.S. Demonstrations/Riots——Causes and Significance

U.S. Demonstrations/Riots——Causes and Significance

Some musings I am eager to write—the subject matter is often challenging, intriguing, and worth thinking about. This subject is not such a subject. It is rife with sadness, anger, misunderstandings, miscommunication between groups, and a cultural albatross around our country’s neck. 

I grew up in the 60’s. Naive as hell. Oblivious to racial discrimination. The town I lived in was like 25% black and it may as well have been 100% white. There was no seething anger amongst anyone I grew up with about blacks at all. A few mild jokes rarely. I don’t recall ever having any personal confrontation with a black person at all my entire time growing up. Actually, I don’t recall any meaningful conversation with a black at all until I went out for sports my senior year in high school. 

As far as the Black Panthers and hippie stuff, “if they did’t like it here, they could leave”. It wasn’t until I started teaching in Universities that I came face to face with the realities facing so many ‘less fortunate’ individuals, not just blacks, but certainly a high proportion of blacks. There is nothing like personal contact with those different from oneself, yet worthy decent individuals just trying to make something of themselves in an admiral way. These encounters tend to jolt one into reality. 

It takes time to realize how much our own successes are luck and good fortune. We learn to be a lot more humble about our own achievements if we take the time to reflect on our many unearned advantages in life. The truth is we did not earn our parents, we inherited them. We didn’t earn our looks, our unique personality, our place of birth, the schools we attended, our personal health, our availability to good health care, our athletic talents, and on and on it goes. Many times we just happened to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right people on our side. The actuality is, it would be hard for a lot of people not to be a ‘success’ in life with the cards dealt to them. Conversely, it would be hard to be a success with the cards a lot of people are dealt in life. 

It doesn’t help much for us to focus just on turmoils, such as these demonstrations against police brutality.  All sides of the issue can find enough individual culprits or heroes to rage against, or for. Will Rodgers (I think) once stated something to the effect that it is hard to find an innocent person, and if you took a shot randomly and shot someone, 8 out of 10 times they deserved to be shot for something.”  

When all is said and done, with of course more said than done, every society has a collective responsibility to maximize contentment amongst it’s various constituents. When it fails to do this, that society implodes and has done so throughout history. Great civilizations with various forms of governance have risen up in history and collapsed over time for basically two reasons. The foreign empire over which they manipulated control gets too expensive to sustain, and the disparity at home between the rich and the poor gets too lopsided; then, when push comes to shove, the ‘have-nots’, with nothing to lose, always win over the ‘have’s’ with so much to protect. Like it or not, this is exactly where we are today in American society. For the smaller few it is the best of all possible worlds; for the larger many, it is the worst of all possible worlds. Worst may not be the best word, but their world certainly isn’t any bed of roses. 

This is where America is today. Add the new wrinkle of global human overpopulation with the subsequent dire consequences bearing down on countries across the globe, and we are like deer frozen in the head lights of an oncoming car. None of us can individually control any of these major aspects of life today on our planet, and the natural tendency is for every group, of every ilk, to start circling the wagons, and vainly try to ward off those perceived as threatening to their own personal status in life.

The human species can sustain itself and endure under the most difficult situations. Not individually in many cases, but collectively as a species. Of course we are all dead in the long run, or at my age, in the short run. Our species survived the cave-man era, the primitive hunter tribal phase, serfdom, slavery, women as inferiors, Kings, dictators, insane demagogues, and now we have the Koch Brothers, Palin, Jerry Fauldwell, some characters named Cruz, Cheney, Putin, Ayatollahs of various derangements, a Korean Madman, etc. 

Species survival is different from individual success. The price for evolutionary progress comes with a heavy price for most individuals of any species. Everywhere we look someone is getting the short end of the stick, and even those who get the longer end too often get not enough to brag about. Admirable ethics abounds too, but is easily overlooked for the overabundance of sad situations. At this stage of life I opt to remove myself personally from any direct involvement in these endless depressing predicaments. My productive years sufficed for that.

When it comes to the misbehaviors of police and the senseless street rioting, the trees invariably become the focus rather than the forest in which these trees constitute the whole. That is to say, it is always government which is obligated to create environments in which all constituents receive justice, a level playing field for personal development, and reasonable opportunities to gain some contentment in their life. Of course individual differences and environmental circumstances make fairness in achieving contentment for everyone impossible. A good friend sent me the following as an example of the Golden Rule: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Simple as that.”  This all good except it is not the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule has no “if” in it. We are obligated, by the real Golden Rule, to do the best we can, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Period. Let’s put it this way: “Treat others as you would have them treat you, even those who treat you unfairly. You show fairness to others not because they are ethical, but because you are.”  No society functions well in which individuals run around meting out punishment to their perceived enemies. That is some sort of variant of the wild west. The frontier is gone, there is no place to pack up and run to anymore, any places where you can easily live off the land in some kind of isolated self created nirvana. Those who think less government is best, and a good solution to societal strife, are invariably those who either are in a position to  pile up endless wealth for themselves and genetic relations, or find that their misery is caused by heathens of various sorts, or ethnic groups of varied sorts, or cultures of varied sorts, or sexual orientations of various sorts, or politics of various sorts, or economic status and so on. A sort of ‘if I am not doing well, it is because of these others—that these others who I have so little tolerance for—exist. 

Every year various ‘happiness polls are conducted across the globe to see in which countries the greatest percentage of citizens are contented with their lives.  And every year it is the same countries, almost all of which are countries like Denmark, Sweden, and others in which their governments do the most to give every citizen the basics to achieve their potential in life. That is to say, every child has a decent school to attend with teachers of similar quality. Every citizen has guaranteed health care. Every employee gets 6 weeks vacation. College education is free if you can pass the entrance exams. Everyone is eligible to a decent pension. To Americans these are the long established welfare states in which people don’t earn their blessings, they are just handed them. And it all comes with a steep cost. The tax rates in such societies hover around 40%. It is much different in America. First of all, 43% of United States citizens pay no Federal Tax at all. They are simply too poor to qualify to pay any tax. The middle class pays around 20% but it varies all over the place. The wealthy vary the most, and some of the wealthiest pay little or no taxes. Depending on the poll, the United States ranks anywhere from 15 to 104 on this world happiness index.  Americans remain steadfastly amazed how the citizens of such countries can be happy when their government takes 40% of their earnings. “Socialism is never going to happen in America” is the ingrained mantra, and this sentiment is second only to the American “wild west” mentality that murder rates will go down only when all the decent people are armed, not just in their homes, but everywhere they go. While the legal right to parade around with guns of all types is mostly in place, the consequences of this are yet to be fully realized. Today somewhere between a third and one half of Americans own guns. "Americans are 20 times as likely to die from gun violence as citizens of other civilized countries. Why? Because other civilized countries rein in guns."  Critics of statements like this claim the disparity is for other reasons than our gun ownership.  That could partly be true. 

It would seem not surprising that in countries where no citizen has to worry about good schooling, affording college if they can pass entrance exams, get 6 weeks vacation, have minimum wages, a job with a living wage, decent pensions, and so on tend to be a happier citizenry. Americans, on the other hand, have low taxes but struggle with all the aforementioned concerns, and the battle to achieve these basic needs can be exhausting, and often out of reach.  

The requisite rambling above so far leads into just what these police demonstrations and riots are really all about. Demonstrations, riots, and terroristic actions, are becoming more and more commonplace across the globe. What even 50 years ago was unthinkable behavior, today is commonplace.  Behind all of this unrest, this anger, this intolerance, this indifference to the plight of others, are some basic circumstances new to our own species. Sadly, so far, we have not the ’smartness’ to effectively address these issues, and the time to effectively fend ourselves off from the dire consequences, may already have expired. These issues did not arrive over night, but took decades to evolve, and it would take decades to correct. We probably don’t have decades to correct it—and this means Mother Nature will make the necessary evolutionary corrections. These kind of corrections are often brutal, can last for hundreds of thousands of years, and few, if any, species will be spared the resulting turmoil. Sure, things have always worked out in the long run, and life on our planet rebounds with new and better life forms leading the way to higher levels of life on the planet. The long run for life on our planet is, from any historical perspective, going to be even better. For the short run, well—turn out the lights, the party’s over, this hand is over, and the cards will be reshuffled for a new hand in a new version of the same evolutionary game. 

These new circumstances behind all the turmoil erupting all over the globe are human overpopulation, the subsequent inadequacy of our natural resources to support this overpopulation, and the approaching climate changes resulting from too many human activities. Even today, there are not enough natural resources available for all humans to live a lifestyle the affluent now live. As the competition increases for the natural resources to sustain a ‘good life’ increases, the tolerance for diversity will become more and more strained, and desperate acts (including irrational beliefs and blame) will proliferate. The problems we face today are not really all that much about form of government, ’true’ religion or ethnicity at all.  These latter factors just become targets for blame. An amazing percentage of people blame all the real troubles facing our species on certain ethnic groups, certain religions, certain forms of government, and certain cultures. As more and more people sink lower and lower on the economic ladder across the globe, the anger gets directed at those who still have good health care, good wages, good pensions, decent homes, etc. Instead of the goal being to include more people to have a more affluent life, the goal becomes to bring down those still possessing affluence, down to a lower level of affluence so many are now experiencing. 

It is really hard to imagine how our American society can essentially accept having 40% of our population make so little money that they don’t even qualify to pay taxes. Then to top that off, those making huge incomes, and wanting even more wealth, are determined to do just that even though it can only be done off the backs of the middle class, forcing more of them into poverty. Of course this can’t continue very much longer, but it still proceeds, and at a pace which exceeds that of any other industrialized nation. 

We were all amazed that communism in the Soviet Union could collapse overnight. We didn’t see that coming, and we can’t see our own, now ineffectual status of democracy, heading to the same fate, and just as quickly. These riots over the police are more riots over the way so many people are living today. Who in their right mind would want to be a policeman in charge of keeping millions of people satisfied with being poor, with no jobs, or jobs without a living wage, poor schools, inadequate health care, no personal security, and so on. And it just gets worse. We too often call these angry mobs of poor people names like thugs and thieves and animals. We respond to their unrest by jailing them right and left until 25% of the people across the globe in jail are in American jails. Then we are told that to protect ourselves from all these degenerate poor we need to arm ourselves, and once everyone is packing guns, we will all be safe—you know like in Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia, South America, etc. We in America have still not accepted the historical fact that violence begets violence. We have enough bombs, missiles, and drones to obliterate most any country. Were it not for the fact that a few countries have the capability to do much the same to us, maybe the right wingers would do just that to other countries——obliterate them. We did a pretty good job obliterating society in Iraq, and if the right wingers had their way we would still be there obliterating. With all our military might, we haven’t had success with military ventures, outside of Granada and the Balkans, since the Korean War well over 50 years ago. We have managed to topple several governments in South American via support for rebels, much like Putin is operating in Ukraine, but the people who live there never prosper from the violence. Yes, violence begets violence. On a smaller scale it is like parents who think they can make their son or daughter marry the right person, or make young people dislike certain music, or make young people dress a certain way, etc.

We need to get real. If every policeman behaved perfectly these masses of angry people would be just as angry over their situation in life. So many Americans are living without hope, with no light at the end of the tunnel, with a life little more than quiet desperation, that their anger will always be there just for that reason. We are really asking police to do what the government wants them to do, and that is to keep these people ‘down on the farm’. One might ask, well why don’t citizens, in a democracy, force the government to create more level playing fields? There are two answers here: greed and a broken democracy. Only somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of eligible voters vote. If all the people for whom the playing fields are not level were to vote, the playing fields would be made more level. Hell, if the 40% so poor they don’t make enough to pay taxes voted, that would turn the tide. The answer most of them give is not so irrational: “Why should I bother to vote, it never makes an difference in my life” The answer there lies in just who the candidates tend to be. It takes millions or billions of dollars to compete successfully for office. Money controls who wins elections with rare exceptions. When just one wealthy person can easily contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to promote political candidates, where do the poor find that kind of money to launch a candidate for their interests?  Amazingly, for the 2-5% of our citizens who own 90% of the wealth, to control the government, a lot of voting citizens have to vote against their own economic interests. Interestingly enough, the wealthy do this by sophisticated manipulation of social and religious prejudices. This weakness of human nature has been exploited for centuries. Get those desperately fighting for a bigger piece of the economic pie to focus their anger on others in the same boat who are different from themselves. Of course life would be better for them if it wasn’t for the immigrants, blacks, inferior cultures, gays, religious heathens, and all sorts of ‘misfits’ to their own mirror image. And to make matters worse, if any of these ‘misfits’ manage to get over all the unfair hurdles and become successful, that is the ultimate proof that if these ‘misfits’ were not in existence, success would be there for others instead. What is more of a Laurel and Hardy show than some ‘tea party’ enthusiast living in a trailer park railing on about the ‘thugs’ in a black ghetto. Religion is rarely more important to any group anywhere than the poor. This is understandable. Seeing no light at the end of the tunnel for their own efforts and daydreams, they desperately need to feel God will be the route to contentment and success, if not now, then in Heaven.

What is even more puzzling: with so many of our citizens living lives of quiet desperation, 40% of whom don’t even make enough money to be eligible to pay taxes, plus the many others mostly trapped in environments with poor schools, poor or non existent health care, little personal security, trapped in decrepit homes with bars on the windows and doors ,with no play area for children outside the home——why aren’t these millions of citizens all rising up everywhere, constantly, to demand changes for their situation? In other words, the puzzle is not why a few demonstrate and take over the streets, but why more do not?

For most of history religion was often the opiate of the poor. God would save them and make things better if only they prayed more, harder, and with endless patience. If God would not make things better for them in this world, then the poor would be rewarded in Heaven. Today, religion is fading fast, and the internet is replacing religion are the opiate of the poor. Even the poorest can be entertained all day via electronic gadgets. Trapped inside a dilapidated home, endless social conversations can be had with people close and far away. There are endless movies and games available to play all day. The affluent have their rat race, and the poor have their entertainment gadgets. In earlier years the poor were used to physically build our country. Today we use illegal immigrants for much of this slave labor and mostly the poor and young to work on jobs with non living wages. They can just live at home with their parents, work 2 or more jobs, live in group living situations, or get involved with illegal enterprises. The 50 year War on Drugs was essentially a job market for young entrepreneurs in ghetto urban or rural areas. Jails became, for many, like safe havens between the more dangerous adventures outside of prison. 

Well, so what? The poor are gated off out of sight, self amused with electronic gadgets of all sorts. There is one glitch in this method of controlling the huge number of poor in our country. These same gadgets allow more and more of these people living lives of quiet desperation, to become organized and stirred up emotionally about their predicament. Just as preachers of various sort get religious purists stirred up about all the heathens abounding around, these various internet groups can get the frustrated poor all stirred up about the social and economic trap in which they find themselves. Essentially then, there now exists a delicate balance between riot and settling for 24 hr gadget amusement. The bigger question remains. What kind of country wants to have 90% of it’s wealth owned by 2-5 percent of it’s citizens and the rest numbed into submission by addiction to internet devices? It is simply hard to define this kind of civilization as progress. 

This kind of delicate balance between riot and gadget amusement will not stay balanced for much longer. Obama originally got elected because he gave so many of the poor and middle class hope for a bigger share of the economic pie. But Obama found out quickly, that aside from marginal help for some of the middle class, there was no way a President could do much for the poor. Congress and the Supreme Court are controlled by the wealthy, through lobbyists and campaign control over elected officials. As long a money controls elections, with the help of voter indifference, the wealthy will rule the country. To top it off, these wealthy characters are not the brightest knife in the drawer——not because they are not smart, since the ones that actually earned their wealth, not inherited it, are usually pretty smart. But that is irrelevant since wealth has become an addiction for them, and addictions by nature become excessive and self destructive. Abstractly, the wealthy really can understand that if they grab too much of our country’s wealth, everything implodes and they lose their wealth big time.

The near future is likely to tip the balance in favor of widespread riots. First, Obama will be gone and that restraining factor removed. Second, the economy is likely to collapse big time. Third, climate change will start to run up astronomical costs as the predicted extremes in weather continue to increase. Water shortages will soon be devastating to most of the south and south west, as will the extreme summer temperatures. Riots will not be old fashioned riots in which the citizens are defenseless against the police or national guard. Citizens are well armed today and the internet provides all groups with means to communicate round the clock. The police or army can’t be everywhere at once. Our military force can no more defeat it’s own citizens than it could raggedy assed Vietnamese or Iraqis.  None of all this will be limited to this country. The problems are global. There is no place to run. It will not be a slow drawn out revolution. When these kind of riots occur, like they have in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria, to give a few examples, the streets become ruled by thugs. Humanitarian statesmen will be no where to be found, just dead or in hiding.

The short term looks ghastly. For the long term there is no reason to be gloomy. First, those of us alive today will not be alive in the future. Second, Mother Nature bats last, always has for millions of years. Evolutionary corrections, of varied sorts, and sometimes lasting for millions of years, sort things out and progress resumes with new life forms, new kinds of environments, and improved more civilized communities of life on the planet. It is regrettable, for those of us alive today, that our human species, with the brain power to prevent all this, simply cannot control human population growth, and discipline ourselves enough to ensure the least fortunate are given enough level paying fields, and enough support from the more fortunate, to allow the less fortunate to achieve some contentment in their lives. 

The Impact of the internet and all the associated gadgets is pervasive across the world. It also explains why so many know so little about politics or world events or for that matter anything about those whose activities produce notable contributions to society. These less fortunate citizens across the globe, including America—growing in numbers at an exponential rate—have turned out the real world and live in an internet generated world of movies, chat rooms, games, recreational drug induced emotional states, and fact-less beliefs (both religious and otherwise). Never before in history has any species been so possessed with non reality as part of their lives. What all this leads to is beyond comprehension. Frankly, at my age, it is not something over which to worry. For every individual the end comes, the lights go out, and the party’s over. 

Related Quotations:

“Advance or decadence are the only choices offered to man- kind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.” Alfred North Whitehead (British mathematician, philosopher) 

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley (English Writer) 

“None is so blind as he who will not see.” Unknown 

“Real intelligence consists not so much in knowing how to do what you have learned to do, but in knowing how to behave in circumstances for which no prior experience has prepared you.” Sydney Harris (Essayist and Drama Critic) 

“Incompetence is vanity and PR and people who talk about ‘massaging’ or positioning’ or ‘spin control’. It’s a society that celebrates style over substance, image over reality, credentials over experience; a society that embraces the credo of the Philadelphia sheriff John Green---’Fake it till you make it’; a society devoted to consuming and acquiring, to self-fulfillment and self-indulgence, a society infatuated with money, power, sex, and drugs; a narcissistic, solipsistic, materialistic society saturated with advertising, dominated by entertainment, and living only for the here and now.” Art Carey (American editor and author)

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts; To return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, ‘I was wrong’.” Sydney Harris (essayist and drama Critic) 

“Care is not weakness. Care to us is the very essence, the greatest demonstration of strength. That’s what makes us democratic socialists. That’s what makes us so categorically different from them. We believe that strength without care is savage, and brutal, and selfish. It’s the strength of the jungle. We believe that strength, with care, is compassion; the practical action that is needed to help people lift themselves to their full stature, their full potential. The strength to care. Not the strength of the jungle but the strength of humanity.” Neil Kinnock. (Welsh politician)

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.” Dean Acheson (United States Secretary of State) 

“The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and work for their interests by working for our common country.” Teddy Roosevelt. (American President) 

“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President) 

“We now communicate with everyone, and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel. and it is a television’s antenna (and lots of other gadgets). A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy, in which everyone’s opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit. Indeed, it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace in television’s ocean of banalities.” Ted Koppel (American broadcast journalist) 

“Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class (or family).” Plato (Greek philosopher) 

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabit- ants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws. ‘You speak of-- ‘ said Egremont, hesitantly, ‘THE RICH AND THE POOR’.” Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman) 

“The majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France (French writer) 

“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro, bearing slavery’s scar,
I am the Red man, driven from the land, 

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan, 

Of dog eat dog, or might crush the weak.” Langston Hughes (American poet) 

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it can- not save the few who are rich.” John F. Kennedy. (American President) 

“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President) 

“The graveyards are full of people the world could not do with- out.” Elbert Hubbard (American author, editor, and printer) 

“HOW MANY TIMES CAN A MAN TURN HIS HEAD, AND PRETEND THAT HE JUST DOESN’T SEE?” 

“Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. John Hume (Irish politician) 

“We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.” Wystan Hugh Auden (British born American poet)