A short thread about riots

It's obvious (to me) that we're entering a high riot period in the US. Huge shock to economy, primarily affecting younger and poorer people, nothing done to help, together with pent up feelings from isolation and younger people more able to risk virus

The first riots are those from the injustices that America always has. Cops in America publicly murder an innocent Black man on video often enough so that this is an ever-present spark waiting for tinder

The following riots? My guess is rent related. There is no way that people in major urban centers can continue to pay rents without work: work isn't coming back because consumers aren't coming back in numbers large enough to keep all those service businesses going

Once riots start, they have their own logic. It is useless and marks you as an out of touch person to tell rioters not to loot or to tell them to go to a wealthier area and riot there. They are not planned insurrections with leaders and followers

For this same reason -- and now I'll lose anyone who's been generally agreeing with the beginning of this thread -- riots almost always end up being reformist. They don't do a large amount of damage and are followed by local efforts at amelioration if that

The broader the riot, the more motivated liberals are to buy the rioters off. The Yellow Vests in France, for instance, got a number of reforms largely (IMO) because they started as a rural phenomenon and then spread to the cities.