people seem to think we have been too gentle and too liberal but the problem is the opposite in that despite initially having liberal intentions, it has been more symbolic at the beginning but with no desire to actually connect with people further down the line. yes people act on their own free will be socially and culturally, we've been allowing things to head in that direction for too long and its not a "they are intrinsically bad people" thing its a "look at the world we created" thing.
I think there are different kinds how to organize a society and different images of humanity.
1) You can build a society based on trust, the "all people loving and respecting each other, we make this together" left wing utopia style
2) Distrust - "I don't like you and you don't like me so leave me alone" -style
(Generally, some people prefer to trust other people, some are more warily, it depends on varoius factors like certain childhood experiences etc.)
and there also exist two groups of people:
A) Rich, mighty and powerful people who of course want to keep their status
B) Poor people with less influece and access to ressources. They want to change their status.
In theory, democracy shoud compensate and equalize these aspects and interests. Practically the 'group A)' people have used their ressources to corrupt democracy during the past decades (Murdoch!), to gain even more influence in the end. These people also prefer to be among themselves and to isolate from normal society, because they share the same unpopular interests like redirecting public ressources to themselves.. So they prefer the rest of the world being organized in societies based on distrust. (2)) (divide and conquer)
You can see the increasing gap between rich an poor people in that context, as well as the privatisation of public services, the cctv monitoring of public places, the murdoch scandal,...
With the structural transformation of the economy and the decline of the industrial sector, unions and the labour movement lost their importance for the economy. The "establishment" lost its "antipole" and so the compensation and equalization of interests and ressources within western democracies doesn't work anymore. In the UK, it was immediately recognized that the working class lifestyle of the 70s had lost its basis and Thatcher was "appointed" as prime minister. In Germany, Kohl had similar ambitious plans in the beginnig but probably dashed against the federal system, so he had to moderate these plans.
The second assaulting wave against the lower class came in the late 1990 with labouir parties the "establishment" had meanwhile managed to corrupt. I have the impression that this wave hit especially the German labour class with Schröder's so called "Agenda 2010" and the "Hartz laws". Germany had the "Genosse der Bosse" (comrade of the bosses) as chancellor. The UK had a "New Labour" government...
So I agree by 100% with renegadechic. The current developments are the inevitable results of the antisocial policy of the past 30 years. And I expect more incidents to come.
The democratic compensation and equalization of ressources and interests has failed during the past decades, it urgently needs refomation.
