White Riot, I Want a Riot…

Or, as a little Austrian man once asked, "Brennt Paris?" I have been the recipient of yet another pearl of received wisdom from the oyster of reality. Pay attention, boys and girls. I know who’s right about the riots in France: everybody. Well, everybody except the little man in my head who thinks it’s a plot to soften up Earth for the inevitable alien invasion. He’s been reading too much John Ringo.

If you think the MSM is downplaying the Muslim connection, you’re right. If you think it’s the failure of socialism coming back to haunt the frogs, you’re right. If you think that teenage boys just like to burn shit, you’re right. If you think that poverty and a lack of social mobility caused the riots, you’re right. If you think Muslim extremists seized upon a thin pretext to start civil disorder, you’re right. The beauty of dealing with what is obviously a fairly complex multi-variate emergent phenomenon is that if you claim only one thing is to blame, you are partially correct. You are, as well, partially wrong, so all you people are wrong, too. The degree in which each of the particular factors is important is the real question, because that might point the way to a possible solution, or a least some way to mitigate future occurrences.

Of course, parsing the degree of influence of any of the factors is not the highest priority right now even if it would help with a solution. What matters is getting the situation under some kind of control before more people and things get burned. All I have to note on that score is that the gummint in France is looking particularly ineffective right now. I don't see a lot of armed civilian defense of property and persons going on, either. Expect more burning cars as the frogs fiddle.