Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Reflections on Urban Unrest, Past And Present

People watching these things think of 1968, which is apt enough.

On the other hand, the Civil War analogy seems too linear, too coherent, too automatic-a cliché, even.

Anarchists out of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent trade germs with angry blacks and young whites on skateboards or $1,900 bikes.

An angry crowd tends to become a mob, and a mob tends to smash windows, to loot and burn.

People in cities around the country marched peacefully in a good cause but, on the other hand, many were inclined to rationalize or minimize behavior much less salutary-looting and burning and tearing up cities and destroying businesses large and small, some that their owners had spent a lifetime in building.

The bravest people I knew when I was young were the civil rights workers in the South.

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