Cain, it's a riot.

[Eater of Clowns]

Do you think there's still a center of gravity, Cain?  I'd love to find it, the tipping point, to agitate it and drop even the faintest whisper of weight upon its teetering edge.  There would be beauty in that cataclysm and horror, of course, and treachery.  When that cascade hits the ground there will be levees dug for its guided escort through the proper channels and I like to think it would be the right people that are doing it.  But the bleeding and cracked fingernails that feverishly worked on those gutters until bones became their digging tools need to compete with the one team that controls the one backhoe, a minority of prescient minds whose self preservation and preparedness for all eventualities brought them to where they are in the first place.

When I look at the successful protests of the past and the ones of the present, even the organized and controlled cases you bring up, I see causes.  Where once there was a center of gravity for a single behemoth there are now small collectives with an infinite number of causes.  It's a puzzle, it's the Tower of Hanoi, and when all the rings are in order it tumbles but without direction.  Each little mass will blame each other little mass as the source of the problems and all the pointed fingers will form a web that holds it all up, stronger than spider silk and double redundant.

Those drunk students that night, they reached the tipping point.  As large of a mass as I described them they're of course the tiny minority and when they hit the channels they hit the ones with the machines dug that fed right back to where they started.  The contained outrage, the controlled uprisings, the little slips in quiet acceptance don't gain momentum other than to allow larger forces to assimilate and learn to prevent such future mistakes, I wonder if they're not simply allowed for practice of efficiency.  You say why not take control where you can, but when their faces swelled from a couple thousand Scoville units worth of pepper ball I don't know how much control they had even in their own inebriated minds.

Cain, we can't outdig the backhoe but its goal is a singular river.  Even the most powerful rivers have subsidiaries, offshoots so numerous the main body becomes a trickle at the end.  Just enough to nourish the earth it sinks into.

[BabylonHoruv]

Riots are awesome, as a few people have said, the energy, the feeling, it is all incredible.  I was in Seattle for the WTO riots, right on the front lines getting gassed and all that fun stuff.  I helped to catalyze a march on down town after they declared the no free speech zone.  It was incredible.  And at the end we felt like we'd done something.  Meetings were stopped, Geneva Switzerland officially condemned the WTO.

Of course, it wasn't enough, the march of progress went on, trade continued to go the way they wanted it to, but it was a shining moment for me, a moment of freedom where it felt like anything was possible.

I cannot imagine this feeling being inspired by a football game, but I suppose when you can't see what is really going on, or you wont admit it, you'll take any excuse to do what you know, deep down, you have to do.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Riots are awesome, as a few people have said, the energy, the feeling, it is all incredible. 

Sure.  Unrestrained primate.  Ook, ook.

[BabylonHoruv]

Riots are awesome, as a few people have said, the energy, the feeling, it is all incredible. 

Sure.  Unrestrained primate.  Ook, ook.

Absolutely.  I think we all have to let that angry ape out now and then.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Riots are awesome, as a few people have said, the energy, the feeling, it is all incredible. 

Sure.  Unrestrained primate.  Ook, ook.

Absolutely.  I think we all have to let that angry ape out now and then.

Didn't say it was a bad thing.

[LMNO]

...And at the end we felt like we'd done something...

...Of course, it wasn't enough, the march of progress went on, trade continued to go the way they wanted it to...

Ah, the wonderful taste of empty calories.