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Friday, August 26, 2011

Rioting and Repetition: A Case of Situational Violence

I watched an episode of Twin Peaks last night which Leland commits the “same” murder, again. So I guess when I woke up I was thinking about repetition.

David Cameron and George Osbourne belonged to the exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford. Once a year they went to a fancy restaurant and totally wrecked it, Who style. Then the next day they paid off the owner.

Isn't the recent spate of rioting and looting somehow connected to this? Having lived through the Bush Administration I don't doubt it. Under the alcoholic frat boy Bush and his lackey Cheney, everything became very strange. There is definitely a psychological effect of leadership on people.

Just read Robert Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: his leadership style (somewhat inadvertently) in the Stanford Prison Experiment turned a small group of psychologically vetted normal enough grad students into Abu Ghraib prison guards in two days. Just as we laid Abu Ghraib at W's and Cheney's feet, so we should lay the riots at Cameron's.

Before Cameron, I bet very few people had heard of the Bullingdon Club. It's pretty stimulating information. Cameron, I'm now laying the riots directly at your feet. Not even because of the cuts. But because your existence at the top sanctions looting.

Let it also be noted that the only violence I witnessed at Oxford was by an old Etonian who literally tried to kick my door down with a metal tipped boot.

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