On Wednesday, President Barack Obama asked for a joint session of Congress so he could give a speech about jobs — why there aren’t any, how to create them, so on and so forth. Speaker John Boehner rejected that plan because it would conflict with a Republican presidential debate. Obama then acquiesced in that pathetic, pathetic standoff.
There will be another standoff, and another and another. And then, next year, voters will choose Obama — or not — and it will happen yet again.
But at this point, it’s expected. Nothing gets done here anymore. We’re trillions of dollars in debt with no foreseeable way out, on the verge of another recession with no jobs and shrinking benefits for when we retire. The future is, to say the least, bleak.
Though maybe we can learn from other countries who aren’t doing so well. When your country is fucked, your future is fucked and you have no real way of changing it, there’s only one solution: rioting.
In the Middle East they did it because decades of political and societal repression created a population of angry, politically motivated youth with a vision. In London a guy got shot, and people poured onto the streets. In Greece, the country’s total economic failure and the resulting austerity measures pissed a lot of people off, so they took to the streets.
Here, nothing is getting accomplished. The total political ossification of Washington means that our decline is all but inevitable. First came Standard and Poor’s downgrading of our debt, next will come economic collapse, then will come our gradual political and military withdrawal from other countries.
Then, of course, with the absence of military bases worldwide and the inability to dictate other countries’ policies, the entire world order will collapse, leading to nuclear war and the annihilation of humankind. That’s not an outcome I want, and I don’t think many other people do either.
So take action sure to shock politicians into action of their own, and quite possibly provide people with a bit of fun. Take to the streets, burn some cars, break some windows, make our demands clear: enough dilly-dallying in Washington. Enough with us not being in charge in all places at all times. It’s ridiculous.
As long as the demands are made clear — a few catchy slogans on posters would suffice — and enough people get to the right place at the right time, I don’t see a way it could fail.
And for those who don’t care about the political reasons to do it, here’s another: it kinda looks fun. Yeah, there is collateral damage and some people may lose their lives or livelihood, but you can’t tell me that guy smashing windows with a baseball bat or throwing bricks at police isn’t having fun. When the tear gas comes out, maybe it’ll lose a little bit of its charm, but it’ll take a few days for that to happen.
Riots may seem radical. After all, they’re violent by definition, and some might argue that they don’t really accomplish much. But regular old protests have gone out of fashion and our government doesn’t look too kindly on it anymore. When people in San Francisco tried to protest the shooting of a man by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) employees, they blocked cell phone service, preempting the protests on the supposed grounds that peaceful rallies are illegal.
That’s something that is happening more often here. Protests won’t solve anything both because you’ll probably get arrested, and because unless you have a million people protesting with you, no one will listen — unless you’re the Tea Party. But throw a few Molotov cocktails while screaming your demands. You’ll probably get a few people to listen, maybe another few to sympathize.
Rioting is a simple, easy and fun solution to America’s political ossification, declining stature in the world and inability to be a successful country anymore. Problem solved.