On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
>It should be obvious that these riots are not so much ideologically
>motivated (though that's the pseudo-rational), but testosterone motivated.
>Most of these monkeys couldn't spell anarchy let alone understand it
>philosophically. Let's not confuse the cover story with the real
>motive--fucking stuff up for the fun of it.
Hmmm. I was digging after this for a while, trying to figure out
why these people were rioting. As you note, there's no real
coherent message from the protesters, not even a thread of unifying
platform or goals.
But then, the information content of what comes out of the mouth of
someone who's just hit his/her thumb with a hammer is pretty low, too.
It doesn't mean s/he doesn't have a real concern.
This is just a guess, but what *I* think motivates these people is
frustration and disenfranchisement. It's not that any substantial
group of them want any particular thing, it's just that the whole
bunch of them feel that they don't have a voice in what's happening
any more. The "globalization" people are consulting *each other*
instead of the people affected by the laws to figure out what laws
they should pass, and the people are pissed off because they don't
feel that they have any input into the process.
Also, the personal pressure on them is a little higher every year
as the forces of capitalism get more ruthless and efficient at
exploiting them as a market and as cheap labor - and the barriers
to actually starting a business of one's own seem to be going nowhere
but up - so they're also frustrated by the fact that even though
they may be making more money, they're still working for other
people and at the end of the day they're still poorer. Capitalism
from the worker's perspective means working longer hours, getting
paid more, and winding up under family pressure (because your family
is an intensely and effectively targeted market) to spend it all on
stupid stuff. Furbys, TV's, and barbie dolls, for god's sake. So
at the end of the day they have more stupid crap but they're poorer
and more tired and have less time to spend with their family - and
after a while they get frustrated.
But none, or few, of them see it in exactly those terms. They're
just angry and frustrated and they don't really know why. The
few issues they believe in are getting ignored, so they go protest
about those few issues and it turns into a chaotic mess because
everybody has different issues and different degrees of how pissed-
off they really are. More frustration.
Bear
