The young people who loot the streets are the mirror of our society

We live surrounded by violence of varying intensity and we have normalized it. That is why I find it surprising that so many people are scandalized by what young people are doing on the streets. These acts of vandalism have been generated by our society, they are our fruit, but we do not want to harvest them and we act as if all this has nothing to do with us.

We have never lacked nihilists, people who deny values, authority, beliefs, organization. We sow the seeds day by day, all of us together. The pseudo-nihilists of these times are dedicated to looting shops. It is curious. We are faced with a mob of radical consumers who violently procure access to products they cannot afford. We are the society of intolerance to unfulfilled desires. We want everything. We want it now.

In the streets there is nothing but our children. And we must take charge of it, because we are responsible for them. Clamoring against what is happening is a useless path. We have work ahead of us: to analyze, to reflect, to rectify... In short, to act, to recover our citizenship beyond the television screens.

Capitalism is a system based on violence, no matter how much one might want to place it on the pedestal of the least bad of systems. It has caused, is causing, and will cause wars, looting, rapes, murders, and suicides. We can count them by the millions. Every second that passes, it leaves people homeless. Every tenth of a second, it leaves people without hope. Our value is exchange value. Our dignity comes from what we can buy. And since there are things that have not changed no matter how much they have become sophisticated, we continue to sell our labor force to the highest bidder so as not to lose momentum. Whoever gets distracted, falls behind. They become a nobody. They are no longer valid.

Of course, the violent outburst of these weeks is intolerable. But it is so because it is our mirror. It portrays us. We have become this.

Meanwhile, politicians, pundits, and analysts make a fuss instead of getting to the roots of this situation. How they love to be scandalized! How they enjoy the spectacle! Such cynicism even makes me nauseous. So much hypocrisy generates an unbearable feeling of rejection. The question I ask myself is whether they are that stupid or if they simply try hard to look like it. Unfortunately, neither of the two answers gives me hope. We are lost.