As I watch the riots, looting and burning in English cities like London and Manchester this summer of 2011, I have the sickening feeling I’m seeing something that will be replicated on these shores in the summer of 2012. Here, however, if the sparks catch, the eruptions are likely to be bigger, nastier, far more violent, far more destructive. And they are also likely to shape the outcome of the 2012 elections in very dramatic ways.
There are many social reasons for today’s riots on the other side of the pond. Some obvious underlying economic causes, however, are unemployment, spreading poverty, loss of government services, a feeling of despair that things will never get better, the widening discrepancies between ever richer haves and all the other have-nots.
Sound familiar? Sound like things that are already on view on these shores and which will become more apparent and pervasive when austerity cuts kick in later this year?
Cell phone-based instant communication between rioters in England have allowed them to riot around police (“copper on the corner of Third Street, start burning on Fifth”) Also sound familiar? Like what’s been happening this summer with so-called “flash mobs” of young people in cities like Philly?
You start thinking of possible summer riots next year in U.S. cities and a worse-than-over-there potential quickly comes into view. We have more soldiers with combat experience here, and one-third of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are without jobs today, with lots more likely by next year in the wake of military budget cuts. Budget cuts are also going to further thin the ranks of police and fire departments that would have to handle rioters, and perhaps the ranks of medical personnel to handle the injured.
Ethnicity is playing a role in English riots. There are many similar ethnic triggers that might start one here. In this country, religion might come into play as well.
There’s been an unfortunate tendency within the U.S. military for our fighters to increasingly see themselves as part of an “army of God.” Some ex-service personnel and the gaggle of militias around the country hold a similar view.
These people could easily see rioters as Marxist, liberal-inspired enemies of God’s favored economic system, capitalism. In which case very well-armed rioters (with at least three guns apiece including an assault rifle) with a goal of simple mindless destruction, are pitted against even better armed militias, with the forces of law and order desperately trying to tap down and separate incredibly confusing situations.
Capping off this summer of possible national urban discontent there’s those two political conventions, the Republican in August in Tampa, the Democrats in Charlotte in early September. There will be big demonstrations in both cities, of course, though these can probably can be contained easily because party organizers were clever enough to steer clear of a possible repeat of the Chicago riots that did so much to disrupt the Democrats’ convention in 1968. However…
If big city rioting is going on elsewhere in the country, law and order (i.e. order) will take precedence over every other issue, economic or social or international. And how might that play out?
Candidate Obama will of course strongly denounce rioting, but also make clear that we as a nation must look at the underlying causes and address them as well. Very logical, cool, judicious. While his likely Republican opponent, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, will remind voters how he shot a coyote with his laser pistol during a morning jog, and use that to show his own plans to handle lawlessness and rioters.
Guess who will win that debate in the minds of a frightened electorate?
I’m not trying to do a Glenn Beck here. I don’t want to be right so I can brag about it in a future post. But will someone, anyone, anywhere, please just look at where we are in this country, and where we appear almost certainly to be headed, and tell me one reason why his horrific prediction won’t play out?
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