On the Disturbances in Downtown Silver Spring...

Sorry, folks, sometimes you just have to repost. This was originally at the comments page for Final Word on DTSS "Melee", regarding the melee that broke out after the Mixed Unity "go-go" show on March 7, 2009 in downtown Silver Spring.

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Anonymous of March 13, 2009 7:09:00 AM writes, in-part:

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The scariest person I ever met was a young white man in a very poor part of Pennsylvania, and I was damn glad that there were iron bars separating him from me. Some of the most loathsome gang members in this nation are white supremacist skinheads. Russian mobsters are a plague in Brighton Beach.

But that's there. Here around D.C., the gang members are mostly black and latino. It's not racist to point that out, but it is ridiculous to deny it.

Yes, statistics are statistics and it's useless to deny it.

But let's take a trip through the past into Twinbrook and Aspen Hill neighborhoods of "East Rockville".

It's kind of funny how in Aspen Hill, when I was growing up I never ever heard the phrase "poor white trash", mostly because if anyone had said it they'd have been saying it about most of the community and most of the community would have piled right on. Despite the exceptional lily-whiteness of these communities up until fairly recently, a surprisingly large percentage of the people with whom I attended highschool went on to live most of their lives either behind the bars of the jailhouse or prison, or behind the bars of disapprobation and outright shunning. At least a lot of the illegal aliens aren't predisposed to burglary as seemed to be almost universal in the community in which I grew up, I have to give them that much.

As time has gone on, and civilization has crowded in and has left the barbarians no place to hide, the sociopaths have tended to kill each other off or get themselves put into their graves mostly in ways that the coroner calls "death by misadventure".

Sociopathy knows no race nor class nor culture, other than the parody of culture they always evolve among themselves. PWT are mostly weeding themselves out, caught between the low birth rate and the high standards for getting ahead and raising a child to reproductive age.

It's not as if the police aren't trying to help the sociopaths help themselves right into lifelong institutionalization. As much as some people like to trot out statistics about how the crime rate is higher for this or that ethnic group, it's a lot more on point to trot out statistics about how many people wind up behind bars (or in the ground) because they belong to a pan-ethnic group of people suffering from profound disorders of conscience, or lack thereof.

The problem is, it's almost impossible to distinguish between the natural and normal mental processes of teenagers and the profoundly disturbing incapacities of adult sociopaths. This explains, in part, some of the institutions we see in cultures from all around the planet. Certain trials, as it were, are left for the young adults, and as they pass through these trials we find out who is going to emerge from the glib sense of entitlement of teenagers into the more cooperative and considerate status of adult, and we also see who will never grow up and will always need to have someone watching them because they'll never comprehend limits or boundaries.

So, in that sense, this concert was a deep success and the crowds of kids you see on Ellsworth or 10,000 comparable "scenes" around the planet are there for your study.

Be on the scene and be in it. But know why you are there, and why the scene is there.

I see a lot of people posting and they're talking about "the kids" or they're talking about blacks and latinos and whites and who knows, eventually someone's going to bring up native-americans or pacific-islanders. I see a lot of anger and probably people see a lot of mine. But coming from me, it's just that I grew up in an all-white neighborhood mostly notable for the high percentage of psychopaths and sociopaths and the most important lesson learned -- although few ever learned how to articulate it or that there was even a simple word and concept to describe it -- was that you can't usually tell a sociopath just by giving them a quick look up and down. You've got to see them operate. And then once you see them operate, you never take your eyes off of them for even a second.

One of the reasons for the enduring popularity of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" among young adults of a certain age is that it deals with that final clicking into place of the awareness that some people -- most of them, thankfully -- are what you call "dynamic characters" in the terms of literature. As they move through the events of the story, they change, usually growing "for the better". But some people just never change, they never grow up, and this final realization in Kerouac is one of the most compelling passages in modern English literature.

And that's what you -- and the cops -- are looking for down on Ellsworth. You're looking for the people who never change. Every kid steals candy, but most of us grow up out of it. The ones you want down at Ellsworth are the ones who stop stealing candy because they stopped stealing. The ones you don't want down there are the ones who stopped stealing candy because they found better things to steal.

Stealing, of course, is just an illustrative metaphor, for behavior that violates, that doesn't recognize boundaries and rights.

Kids of the age that folks are complaining about are kids of the age that are just a hair too young to understand what Kerouac was saying. But pick out a few of those kids and watch them for a few years, and almost all of them will feel Kerouac in their bones... and you'll know who they are. You'll also know who are the ones who will never "get" Kerouac:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

But will that flame settle down to the sort of steady burning that you want in your hearth, or will it flare up into dynamite and knock things over? Only time and observation will tell..

In the meanwhile, the sparks are struck and the match is lit down on Ellsworth, in Adams Morgan, and in 10,000 scenes around the world. For most of the kids, they'll flare and sputter a bit like any candle does when you light it, and settle down into the steady burning light upon the darkness that is the basis of society.

Some won't.

But let's not deny the spark to all.