Why are we not rioting?

” people in Europe and developing countries are taking to the streets to protest the global economic collapse — while Americans, who started it, are not.”

Americans are not responsible for the global collapse any more than any other country with money. It is world wide money looking for a little better return on investment chasing bad investments (bad mortgages).

Like was said better in the Declaration of Independence, people will bear troubles a long time while they’re bearable. Problems also cause people to first go into survival mode: find a job, update the resume, check the bank accounts.

And don’t overlook a big factor. Unlike most countries, we just happened to be having a national election at that moment. People were in the streets, but doing GOTV in hopes of fixing things. And we won. We didn’t have to riot. Iceland by contrast needed street protests to pressure the government to go, otherwise they’d still be there, but that’s also a parliamentary system.

Ddrag, I wrote “Americans, who started it” based on a line in a Daily Telegraph (UK) story that’s quoted in the AlterNet article: “A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading.” That may be the way it looks from London, but I accept your view that actual origins are actually more complex.

Americans are not educated enough on the true realities of why this happened and who is responsible, much less how to fix it. We’re blindly waiting believing that ‘they’ will fix it for us, not thinking that maybe ‘they’ are to blame. Besides we don’t have those kinds of problems—-it’s just so third world to be rioting in the streets, might be ok for the French but we’re the US of A, we just always land on our feet!

Americans are complacent right now since we just brought in our new president. People are still clinging to hope along with the complacency. Give it some time. I think that California won’t hold out long. I’d give it 4 to 6 months before we see riots there. Without welfare checks and unemployment checks we will start to see a time in the next few months where prison will start to look like a free bed and meals to some. Once people feel that prison would be less bad than there current situation they won’t be faced with much of a choice. If you look at what is selling right now you will notice that people are too busy stocking up on guns, ammo and precious metals to worry about rioting just yet.

Americans don’t riot unless we’re hungry. If we’ve got food in our bellies, we don’t riot because we don’t want neighbors to think we have a problem.

And yes, the global economic meltdown has Made In The U.S.A. written all over it.

I am tired of protesters, our founders gave us a system to get rid of our government every2/4 years, so exercise your rights fool! If you don’t like the contract that they binded you to, move to Mexico and see if you can find a job. It’s the 1% of Anarchists that are ruining America and the world. Someone sent me this article and I did not realize before I read it that it was a far leftist paper or article. When the Mayhem comes, I guarantee you I will be on the side taking out the leftists who have destroyed this country. You and your little Marxist Leninist Engels and Chairman Mao little red bookers, your time is coming and you don’t have the spit or the guts to take this country by force.

Stem must be a very level-minded thoughtful individual who drinks entirely too much coffee.

>Why are we not rioting?

We’ve forgotten how.

Kind of sad. Americans were the ones who pioneered rebellion. Its been sucked out of us.

Why is that it’s always the folks who belong to the top-down authoritarian party who accuse others of being Marxist-Leninists?

The U.S. will be a better country if we ever improve education to the point where people realize that “communism” was a rightwing perversion of socialism. Democracies and socialism otoh are a great fit and complement each other perfectly.

Yeah, but when are they *not* rioting in Europe?

Well said Mark, StemDaMayhem not everyone who doesn’t like the government is a “leftist” “red booker” or indeed an ignorant right-wing hillbilly like you, they(Government) want you to fall into the left/right paradigm. Life isn’t as simple as the choice Democrat or Republican, Capitalism or Communism, Red or Blue. I don’t know what you mean about changing government every 2/4 years because Congress and The President are both controlled by Corporate Interest, you might change the players but it’s still the same game.

Protests are just parades. Whats more American than a parade?
Anyone who has ever seen a riot or been in a riot in the US since the 60′s knows that they are caused by the over reaction of police to the actions of a few isolated individuals. They happen when one person (or a small group of anarchists or ‘agent provocateurs’) pisses off or encourages a police officer by breaking a window or throwing something at the officers and the officer can not or does not want to find the individual responsible and he is pissed or empowered by it. So that officer and his buddies, out of anger or by design, take it out on everyone near them. This pushes law abiding protesters to protect themselves, which is an instant felony, and the other officers step in to stop it. I have seen four riots in my life and all were caused by police who chose not to isolate and arrest those responsible for property destruction that was taking place but rather took the limited outburst as a justification to beat, stomp, cuff and drag innocent people which led to widespread anger and a riot.

When protests are policed in a just way riots do not happen. Perhaps by electing a less jingoistic and draconian government we have expressed our distaste of indiscriminate violence and we are all just waiting to see if our peaceful protests, organizing and voting will create the changes we have asked for. Just a thought.

Compared to the US, Europe is a much more politically diverse place. Lumping all of Europe together for analysis is just loopy. Don’t even try.

It was a mistake on our part to feed the wealthy in the hope that it would trickle down to us. Riots will only occur if we fail to feed, clothe and shelter the poor that we have created by wandering down this foolish path. We are not Somalia yet and we have a long way to go to get there. We have the resources to avoid calamity. The right wing agenda of weakening government by reducing taxes and eliminating necessary regulation is what has brought us to this point. America is an example to the world of both the best of what freedom can offer and the worst of what greed can cause. We can learn from the rest of the world and they can learn from us. We will sort this out over time.

It will come in it’s own time. Part of the holdup is the proclivity of our society to organize everything beforehand I think. We don’t want a tiny turn out, and so we schedule, call, email and post. I think that once things move into the summer months, with more free time for youth, more job losses and generally worsening conditions for poor, we’ll see a lot of large protests, some turning to full blown riots. Just my opinion.