July 07, 2006
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
Were English soccer hooligans able to establish their fiefdoms of violence because the English police force has been clinging, for decades, to an idea of metropolitan civility that history hasn't even glanced at for sixty years? Are Americans—experts at individual acts of firearms testing on human subjects—less versed in crowd violence because their municipal police forces are modeled on the military, and not on fox hunting parties? Which presumptions to social order would you trade to avoid living with soccer hooligans? Would a paramilitary police force be just fine with you if you knew mob violence would pop up only every ten years or so? If you knew you wouldn't have to worry about mobs of twentysomethings swarming your subway on the way home from work? Give or take a riot?
Posted by Sasha at July 7, 2006 11:04 PM | TrackBack