tahariel | (no subject)

A lot of people are talking about how this is just about criminality, and people feeling like they can steal things with nobody stopping them. I’m not going to disagree that that’s a huge part of this whole thing, and I'm not going to claim that this juvenile assholes are political or that they're 'protesting' anything, because they're not. But personally I think a lot of the why is this happening now is because the recession has been going on so long that we all feel weighed down by it, and that young people in this country have been told all their lives that they deserve to have a giant TV and to be famous for no reason and roll in money and have games consoles and luxury goods and not to have to work for it. And they don’t have that, because it’s ridiculous to expect that they should, but they do because that’s the way they’ve been programmed, and so they feel like they’ve been deprived of these things and so now they’re taking them because they feel like they’re owed and because of these riots they can.

We live in a culture where it’s never our own fault, it’s always somebody else’s, and it’s always somebody else’s responsibility to raise our kids to be polite or earn money or report a crime or build something good for our communities. I’m sure most of you have commented at some time or other how rude kids are these days, and how disrespectful, and selfish. And this is the result.

As ever, please feel free to disagree with me - I won't be offended! I love a good debate.

Everyone in London, please be safe and let us all know you’re okay. We didn’t let some assholes blowing us up stop us from being strong and caring about each other and working to make things better, and we shouldn’t let this stop us either.

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First of all, I'm glad you're safe! The pictures are so worrying.D:

I'm far from disagreeing with you, you pretty much summed up what's wrong with today's society. It's dismaying.:/ I'm all for individualism and going after the things you want, but goddammit, there's such a thing as being a decent person and a responsible adult. See also: common sense, integrity. Sad thing is, it's not even the kids' fault, but their parents', who didn't teach that to them. /recapping what you said in a grumpy old man's voice

Yeah, it's ridiculous. It also infuriates me that people are cheering the rioters on. They want to swap places with me?

Exactly. I've seen some Americans cheering them on, for instance, and I'm like 'how would you feel if we cheered on the 9/11 bombers? Not a lot, I'm thinking.'

Exactly! There's a car down Smithdown (or there was this morning) that was completely burnt, only the skeleton left. This isn't a rich part of Liverpool - the owner may not be able to replace it. Is that worth cheering?

If they were protesting a totalitarian regime, I could almost understand having sympathy for them. But instead they're just ignorant fuckheads trashing the place for the fun of it and stealing things that don't belong to them. Not folk heroes.