I think I'm going to love Oakland

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Really?  Because the way you wrote it implied (stated) that the victims of the riot were guilty.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Really?  Because the way you wrote it implied (stated) that the victims of the riot were guilty.

Clumsy language, which I'm guilty of more often than not.

By "guilty" I meant they failed in their responsibility to form a cohesive, competent community capable of dealing with the stressors that lead to riots. I use the word "guilty" clumsily because I don't believe in "good/evil" dualism but was raised with that kind of vocabulary.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Really?  Because the way you wrote it implied (stated) that the victims of the riot were guilty.

Clumsy language, which I'm guilty of more often than not.

By "guilty" I meant they failed in their responsibility to form a cohesive, competent community capable of dealing with the stressors that lead to riots. I use the word "guilty" clumsily because I don't believe in "good/evil" dualism but was raised with that kind of vocabulary.

Sooo...Let me see if I'm reading you right.  Joe Sixpack is responsible for not spending every waking hour trying to "build a community"  (while he's spending every waking moment trying to make the rent, etc), and is thus responsible when some dull-witted rioter burns his house down?

I can't possibly be reading that right.

There IS another possibility, though.  Maybe, just MAYBE, we could hold responsible the miserable, useless fucker that actually torched his house?

[LMNO]

You know, if this "society" you talk about were some mindless, lifeless entity, I might go along with your reasoning.

But it's not.  It's people, and riots hurt the very opposite of the people it intends to hurt, and benefits those in power. 

It's fine to be aloof when making grand statements, but the "innocent masses" get fucked in a riot.

[Juana]

yeah this is the post where i say mindless mob violence is ok.

It's not okay, it's a product of a defective society.

The mob does not care what it fucks up. It is terrible, and it shouldn't happen. BUT it does happen, not because it is OK, but because allowing your government to be corrupt, ineffective, and generally terrible CAUSES it to happen.

As a function of society, riots serve a purpose. It's like your immune system going fucking crazy and killing everything it sees to eliminate particularly nasty infection. LEFT UNCHECKED it might develop into Teh AIDS, but if the government responds appropriately, it fades away and things go back to tolerable.

I am not arguing in favor of the goons on the street causing the property damage, I am arguing in favor of "The Riot" as a social mechanism that occurs in order to eliminate something people are fucking pissed off about but the government refuses to address. There's probably a purely subjective line between that kind of riot and just general lawlessness; but in the end if the riot produces results acceptable to most people then it was successful and it goes away.

A riot is a communal act arising from communal dysfunction. In order to prevent such things from happening it is a responsibility of every person in the community to work together and maintain a sane, balanced, and civilized form of government that is capable of relieving and avoiding such communal dysfunction in the first place. If the citizens fail in that responsibility and a riot springs up, then that is just what happens when not enough people give enough of a collective fuck about the community.

I think I get what you're talking about, but I still think you're wrong. Riots are a symptom of the disease, but not a cure. They might lead to protests, which are the people's immune system imo, to borrow your metaphor.

[LMNO]

When did a riot produce anything more than property damage, injury, death, and police clampdowns?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Sure. When the riot's over and you have enough evidence to prosecute the douchebag who burned down Joe's house, then yeah... by all means prosecute. As for Joe's culpability - maybe the fact that he has to spend every waking moment making the rent should tip him off that something isn't right. Maybe he can't spend every waking hour "building community." Maybe it should be important enough to spend a couple of hours when he'd otherwise be asleep, though. I'm not saying anybody deserves to get their house burned down by a mob during a riot. Nobody deserves having their shop vandalized and looted, or being pulled out of their truck and beaten, or shot to death by the cops, or any other unpleasant thing. But what you deserve and what you get are often worlds apart - especially when you're too busy minding your "own business" and keeping your head down to notice that your city is falling to pieces and the people around you are getting more pissed off by the second.

When things blow up, the explosion doesn't make any distinction between the innocent and the guilty. That's why it's everyone's job to keep the bombs defused to begin with. Is it Joe's fault that a judge in some case he has nothing to do with is corrupt and lets a guilty person go free? No. Is it Joe's fault that he fits the opposite demographic of the average rioter? No. But Joe's only fault wasn't just being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- but also being in the right place at the right time and doing nothing while he was there.

Community implies responsibility. If no man is an island, then you can't very well pretend there's a moat around you and nothing has any business affecting you unless you specifically set it in motion. If you want to guarantee that bad shit doesn't happen in your community, you're not going to get there by pretending everything was fine until it wasn't one day.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

When did a riot produce anything more than property damage, injury, death, and police clampdowns?

In general, successful riots are not referred to as riots in the history books.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sure. When the riot's over and you have enough evidence to prosecute the douchebag who burned down Joe's house, then yeah... by all means prosecute. As for Joe's culpability - maybe the fact that he has to spend every waking moment making the rent should tip him off that something isn't right. Maybe he can't spend every waking hour "building community." Maybe it should be important enough to spend a couple of hours when he'd otherwise be asleep, though.

Have you ever done blue collar work, Vex?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When did a riot produce anything more than property damage, injury, death, and police clampdowns?

In general, successful riots are not referred to as riots in the history books.

Oh?  What are they called?  Can you give us an example?

[LMNO]

Sure. When the riot's over and you have enough evidence to prosecute the douchebag who burned down Joe's house, then yeah... by all means prosecute. As for Joe's culpability - maybe the fact that he has to spend every waking moment making the rent should tip him off that something isn't right. Maybe he can't spend every waking hour "building community." Maybe it should be important enough to spend a couple of hours when he'd otherwise be asleep, though. I'm not saying anybody deserves to get their house burned down by a mob during a riot. Nobody deserves having their shop vandalized and looted, or being pulled out of their truck and beaten, or shot to death by the cops, or any other unpleasant thing. But what you deserve and what you get are often worlds apart - especially when you're too busy minding your "own business" and keeping your head down to notice that your city is falling to pieces and the people around you are getting more pissed off by the second.

When things blow up, the explosion doesn't make any distinction between the innocent and the guilty. That's why it's everyone's job to keep the bombs defused to begin with. Is it Joe's fault that a judge in some case he has nothing to do with is corrupt and lets a guilty person go free? No. Is it Joe's fault that he fits the opposite demographic of the average rioter? No. But Joe's only fault wasn't just being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- but also being in the right place at the right time and doing nothing while he was there.

Community implies responsibility. If no man is an island, then you can't very well pretend there's a moat around you and nothing has any business affecting you unless you specifically set it in motion. If you want to guarantee that bad shit doesn't happen in your community, you're not going to get there by pretending everything was fine until it wasn't one day.

Well, I suppose the view is a lot better from that ivory tower of yours.

[Whatever]

When did a riot produce anything more than property damage, injury, death, and police clampdowns?

In general, successful riots are not referred to as riots in the history books.

No, if damage, injury and death are acceptable results of a "successful riot" (which is an oxymoron if I've ever heard it), then I think the word you are looking for from history is war.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Sure. When the riot's over and you have enough evidence to prosecute the douchebag who burned down Joe's house, then yeah... by all means prosecute. As for Joe's culpability - maybe the fact that he has to spend every waking moment making the rent should tip him off that something isn't right. Maybe he can't spend every waking hour "building community." Maybe it should be important enough to spend a couple of hours when he'd otherwise be asleep, though.

Have you ever done blue collar work, Vex?

Yeah, actually. And it sucks. By some definitions, what I do now is blue-collar work. But it doesn't completely remove a person's responsibilities.

When did a riot produce anything more than property damage, injury, death, and police clampdowns?

In general, successful riots are not referred to as riots in the history books.

Oh?  What are they called?  Can you give us an example?

Sobibor
Haitian Revolution
1733 slave insurrection on St. John

These are rebellions of the oppressed against oppressors; classic 'revolution' rebellions where an underclass challenged and overcame a ruling class - riots, of course, are smaller versions of the same thing. But when they are put down, they are considered riots. When they're successful, it's because the underdogs won against their oppressors. Like the difference between "insurrection" and "revolution;" history is written by the victors, etc.

Well, I suppose the view is a lot better from that ivory tower of yours.

So we can talk about Big Ideas here, so long as it has nothing to do with real life?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Obviously I'm outbrained here, though, so I'll go just go back to talking about boobs in IRC.

[LMNO]

So we can talk about Big Ideas here, so long as it has nothing to do with real life?

You do realize that you're essentially making the "acceptable losses" argument ITT, which is just down the road for "the ends justifies the means", right?


It's not the big ideas, or that it refers to real life actions, it's the extreme disassociation between the two that is bothering me.