Monday, August 8, 2011

Confusion Will Be My Epitaph

I'm bursting. So many pundits have something to say but all seem to miss the point. I looked at the list of riots on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots
Certainly, Wiki is not the Be-All of facts, but if even 70% is correct, there have been hundreds if not thousands of riots that I don't even recall, in my lifetime.

What struck me is that in the terse rendering of causes there was usually one act that tipped the balance. In the "Harlem" riots (we had them in Brooklyn, too) of 1964, police killed a young black man. Sound familiar?This was on top of all the horrors of segregration atrocities in the South and the missing Mississippi civil rights workers. Things came to a head. As things usually do.

Pundits I've heard so far have wagged their tongues from every direction. But none to my knowledge have pointed at the corruption and lost faith in and trust of the police. The recent uncovering of widespread bribery and "white collar" crime in the Met Police has been treated very lightly, as if it's a given. I suppose, only right and consistent if you're fine with police killing civilians over nothing and letting them get away with it. Which is what we do, time and again, ad infinitum.

Yet underneath it all is the real cause- poverty and all its ugly accompanying horrors- that nobody wants to look at with compassion, only judgment.

And that's not to say that I would put it past the PTB to light the fuse, either.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWtOz7GVxJM

2 comments:

annieoatcake said...

To obtain the most 'balanced' view of the recent riots in London, I suggest the Guardian newspaper. It's not exactly a 'leftie' but their journalists are very good (and, apparently, free from corruption!!!)

Austan said...

Oh yes, I'm an avid Guardian reader. It's the only paper that accurately reports what's going on in the US. ;)