Coming to a suburb near you?

The New York Times tells us that unemployment in the largely immigrant, working-class French suburbs that are currently on fire is over 30 percent.

Yet somehow, most discussion regarding the causes of the ongoing violence centers around the fact that the people who live in these communities are largely Muslim and come from Northern Africa.

Let's ask Bruno Beschizza, leader of the French Police Union, what he thinks the problem is: "This is a form of urban terrorism led by a minority of kingpins, who have a financial interest - such as drug trafficking - or an ideological one - such as Islamic radicals who have been seen by our colleagues." Ah, thank you Bruno. Interesting.

So international drug kingpins are responsible? And they would gain what exactly by pissing off every police officer in the country and focusing the attention and resources of every police bureau in France on the communities in which they operate?

Or maybe it's Islamic radicals... who have been... seen?... by our colleagues? What does that even mean? I'm hoping that this is an error in translation from the French, because it's barely comprehensible. Islamic radicals, huh? Let me ask a question. The people who live in these communities are Islamic. Some, no doubt, are radical. Does this mean that they are Islamic radicals?

Ongoing debate about these riots should interest anyone who assumed--as I did--that the hysteric, xenophobic, McCarthyite spirit that pervades American culture in 2005 stopped at our borders. What this proves is that the nonsensical "anti-terrorist" rhetoric of the post-9/11 era has infected even such eminently rational and intellectual countries as France.

And this is a scary thing, indeed. This is how critical thinking ends. This is how social progress gets murdered in its embryonic stages. We are witnessing the worst mistakes of the 20th century being replayed--this time on a truly global scale--at the dawn of the 21st. Solutions that have been effective in the past have not even been discussed, let alone implemented.

In 1900, when Big Business had become a selfish, destructive, preying monster on the American public, we elected Teddy Roosevelt. The Roughrider. The Trustbuster. He restored competition; he restored the public trust; he cemented a positive self-image for a country about to emerge from an troubled adolescence into an adulthood of responsibility and leadership.

One hundred years later, on the brink of senility, this country elected George W. Bush, who as the first American president with a graduate degree in business, promised to run an "MBA-style administration." He promised US an "ownership society."

Can we blame him for getting what we bargained for?

What he promised has come to pass. The first move your average Harvard MBA would make upon joining the management team at your average business would be to cut costs to increase profits in any and every way possible. This means outsourcing relentlessly. This means outsourcing customer service calls to Bangalore. This means outsourcing manufacturing to China. This means outsourcing skilled labor to places much more unfortunate than either.

This means merging with and acquiring other businesses to centralize operations and create vertical monopolies. This means that New York and L.A. get the meat and the Middle shares the scraps. This means slashing insurance benefits across the board. This means renegotiating pension benefits to retirees. This means axing employees of 20 years with salaries to match in favor of new fish with little experience and low pay--who will never enjoy the same benefits their predecessors did. This means sales is king. This means a kind of "free trade" that allows business to exploit natural resources, producers, and purchasers ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

From the government's perspective, this means globalization, deregulation, and privatization, the "real" Holy Trinity of the neoconservative revolution after intelligent design, abortion, and gay marriage get cast aside as the smokescreens they really are.

We are becoming a society based exclusively on ownership. Business owns the electricity in California (blackouts)... and in Texas (Enron). Business owns the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Business owns the governing council in Iraq. Business owns our roads, airways, and rivers. Business obviously owns our politicians. Business owns YOU.

Look at that unemployment number again: 30%. A number like that is coming soon to a community near you. The American economy is a house of cards. It has become an economy based almost exclusively on "services"; an economy that produces nothing of any tangible value. The one flesh-and-blood industry that persists in the United States, the industry that our entire economic and physical infrastructure has become devoted to--the automobile industry--is about to receive a cataclysmic, epochal blow when Peak Oil hits, either this year or next.

When that happens--and it will--what will happen to unemployment in the United States? I've been out of work for nearly four months; I'm 24 with good work experience; I live in what was purported to be a major metropolitan area... and I have a degree from Stanford. If I’m having problems, others will have more.

What will our "youths" think then? Will they be angry? Will they burn down the bombed-out inner cities of Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, and Toledo just like Paris and its suburbs are burning today? Will our leaders call us "thugs" and "scum," just like Nikolas Sarkozy just called the teenage rioters in France?

Or will they actually hear our grievances, and take steps to redress them? I think I know the answer...

Some people probably think that a Paris-like scene in a major U.S. city is the stuff of fairy tales. That it could never happen here. That problems like discontent and unemployment could never have the magnitude here that they have in France. That if there ever were such profound social unrest and such pressing social problems as exist in the Parisian suburbs that our "democratic" government would take immediate steps to remedy the situation, restore order, and take responsibility.

I would like to ask those people to take a look at one more picture, and then think. And then tell me if they still feel the same way.



Well?