People don’t know what they want.
People want to riot.
It’s physics. Chemistry. A reaction. You need to build up the pressure to make the explosion — the right ingredients will get the job done. A large group of people, about the same number of people who would be shopping the last Saturday before Christmas. Put them in a space that’s too small to hold them all. Build up pressure by decreasing the volume. A huge crowd of people rubbing against one another, getting more and more pissed off by clothing soaked in sweat that is not theirs. Pissed at the constant elbows and knees that poke at their sides and thighs. Pissed at the stench of humanity, the oils and greases that we exude throughout the day but try to mask with perfumes and deodorants. Once those wear off, you have yourself a dense crowd of mildly angry people.
Mildly angry is not angry enough. Make them uncomfortable, restless. A heat wave: air so dry you can’t think straight, your brain cries for water, for shade. Make them mad with heat. Give them an issue, a cause. Their politics are right, the establishment’s politics are faulty. Religion. Fluoride in their drinking water. The price of gas. Superstores driving small businesses into bankruptcy. The smaller size of laundry detergent bottles. Focus the attention of this wild mob on something, anything. More pressure. You have a bomb in your hands. A grenade. Pull the pin.
I did it by throwing a chair at one guy and punching another. The second guy went down quick, but the first one didn’t know that I had thrown the chair. He went off on the man behind him. You’ve all at least seen a fight, right? Even if you haven’t been in one? You know that normally, people will hold back the fighters until the proper authorities can take charge of the situation. Normally, people will act like good little citizens. In this case, they had no room. One guy fights another in the middle of a big, hot crowd, there’s no room to keep the two apart. You make room. You beat on the person next to you. Once they’re out then there’s more room for you.
Dominoes fall. A chain reaction, snowballing.
One thing leads to another. Everyone fights. The mob bursts out of its confined space, breaking windows and doors and cars and everything they find. People in the street join the fun. John Smith works a 9 to 5 for Genericorp, the first place that gave him a job straight out of Generic State University. He has a boss who hates him, a cubicle that hates him, a salary that hates him and no chance of promotion any time soon. Firebombing Genericorp’s lobby affords Mr. Smith a cathartic release unrivaled by any orgasm he’s ever experienced. His deadbeat son and his son’s friends are looting the stores, taking TVs and couches and canned goods and anything else they desire. Homes robbed, but only because their inhabitants left them vacant to break into the nearest department store.
Anarchy. Freedom. All for the cost of some property damage and a few lives. But for that price, so many people find themselves free from society’s leash. No constraints. No police. No restrictions regarding what you can do. In the middle of a riot, you become the real master of your destiny. If you want something, you take it. If you want to set it on fire, you light it up. A visceral experience. There’s no room for philosophy or higher education when one neighbor flipped your SUV and another is running down the street in a gas mask with a Louisville Slugger in one hand and a couple Molotov cocktails in the other. Everyone is equal. Socioeconomic class doesn’t matter so much when society and economy cease to exist. You’re alive. You’re you,without the mask you put on for civilization’s sake. No kissing ass. No pretending to like your peers and colleagues like your kindergarten teacher taught you to do. No laughing at stupid jokes. No pretense. Freedom. Anarchy.