It's not The Revolution

Civilization is, as always, only a thin veneer.

Now that the streets of Britain have turned into a remake of 28 Days Later, it's interesting to contrast it with the other "popular uprisings" that the world has witnessed this year, across the Arab world. There will undoubtedly be a minority on the radical Left who will make this all about The State and The Pigs versus The People or whatever, but that's mostly bullshit really. While there are certainly some legitimate resentments fueling the rampant destruction that began in Tottenham and overtook the country, ultimately the majority of it is little more than young men giving themselves license to unleash their anti-social sides on the world around them.

While there has also been an ugly side to the protests that occurred in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, those were people who actually lived in conditions of oppression and poverty, who rose up against the power structure in a relatively peaceful fashion. While the rioters in England are largely from the underclass, and are poor and disenfranchised by the standards of the UK, I imagine most people in North Africa would consider them to be immensely privileged. As with the anarchists who decided to cause havoc in London in March this year, it seems that there will always be a barbaric element in society that even relative affluence cannot silence. People all over the world living in genuinely appalling conditions can frequently stage uprisings that don't devolve into randomly stealing and breaking stuff.
I wonder what people in Burma would think of all this business.

This person knows the deal: