If I read one more bit of pop psychology about the Vancouver riots in the popular press, I’m going to need a psychologist myself. Everybody’s pet peeves about the younger generation—a condition of angst present in the older one for millennia—are being confirmed by the incident. They’re spoiled, vain, narcissistic kids. It’s the social media. It’s a lack of old-fashioned family discipline.
Shorter media: “Kids these days.” What a self-righteous collection of old-fogey stick-shaking columnists has been assembling since the riot occurred.
But here, for your reading pleasure, is another account, with some elisions:
The departing crowd joined the demonstrators, and a riot ensued…. Rioters were heard chanting…while they smashed windows, attacked bystanders, set fires to newsstands, and overturned cars. Over 50 stores were looted and vandalized within a 15-block radius [in the downtown area]. Twelve policemen and twenty-five civilians were injured.
The riot continued well into the night, eventually ending at 3 a.m., and it left [the downtown] in shambles. Police estimated between 41 and 100 individuals were arrested.Damage was estimated to be $822,695….One jewelry store alone estimated its losses at $57,589.
That was the Richard riot, 1955.
Kids those days. Is it OK to blame the grandparents now?