Riots in Great Britain

For the past three days, riots have been raging in parts of Britain's major cities. There are no signs that these have been spurred by political agendas, but by the mere joy of mob violence and looting. It brings to mind the movie A Clockwork Orange: though that film didn't depict riots, it did present a scenario where disaffected and unsupervised underclass youth organized themselves into predatory packs to loot and rape and pillage. I suppose one shouldn't be too shocked at such a phenomenon: after all, as Hobbes put it, life without government is "nasty, brutish, and short," and, as population grows, economic conditions continue to stagnate or decline, environmental viability disintegrates, and large numbers of young people are just superfluous to a wealth-obsessed culture, a whole underclass characterized by despair, nihilism, and socio-pathology will emerge. I guess my mental image of England, a land which nurtured my ancestors and my imagination, will have to take another hit. [sigh]. Waking up from the nightmare of history is hard to do...

(At top: policeman with white paint on his face. Directly above: lone policeman faces down feral mob)