
A Shocking Number of Americans Want to 'Just Let Them All Burn' - curtis
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjzkn/a-shocking-number-of-americans-want-to-just-let-them-all-burn
======
Jun8
(from
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/characters/nm0000323](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/characters/nm0000323))
one of my favorite movie quotes:

Bruce Wayne : Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out
what he's after.

Alfred Pennyworth : With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that
_you_ don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My
friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy
the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their
caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we
went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who
traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a
tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

BW : So why steal them?

AP : Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't
looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied,
reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

So, how do you deal with such man?

BW : The bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?

AP : Yes.

BW : How?

AP : We burned the forest down.

~~~
ineedasername
I always found this ironic. The answer to someone who wants to watch things
burn is to, in effect, give them what they want and burn things down, on a
smaller scale though, I guess?

~~~
Apocryphon
Or perhaps by fighting such a man, you end up fulfilling their desires.

~~~
ineedasername
Which gives them what they want either way-- you either don't fight and let
them burn the world, or burn it for them. I suppose a 3rd option would be to
change their mind, but that seems a long shot.

------
Apocryphon
On the surface it seems pretty simple- the end of history utopianism of the
'90s has mutated to the end is near dystopianism. There are no shortage of
statistics explaining why the standard of living for the average American has
dropped off, sometimes sharply, compared to that era. Hence accelerationism is
now king.

For a good analysis for why both the far right and the far left are unhappy
(more so than in other ages, at least), there's this article on neoreaction,
which became vogue to talk about in 2013 before the present dominant political
trends: "Shedding Light on the Dark Enlightenment" by Rick Searle at the
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
([https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202](https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202))

------
ineedasername
I think the verbiage is misleading and inflammatory. "Need For Chaos" can more
reasonably be understood as "desire for change" when the individuals see no
actual path for that change to occur.

Calling it a "need for chaos" further alienates those whose very alienation is
the cause of the phenomenon on display. Better to use more neutral language
that doesn't inflame the population being observed or bias those doing the
observation into further perpetuating an "us vs them" mentality.

~~~
notus
I think this is pretty on point. You have a lot of disaffected people who want
something to change but don't see a reasonable path for the type of change
they want. Instead they just make decisions towards the most amount of change,
even if it isn't good change.

~~~
krapp
>they just make decisions towards the most amount of change, even if it isn't
good change.

How is seeking the maximum amount of possible change, regardless of its nature
and to no specific end not a "need for chaos?"

Someone who doesn't know what they want, other than to spite the system,
basically describes the Joker.

~~~
notus
Think of them as being lost in a forest trying to find a path out and
constantly looking for higher ground to climb to see if they can see a path
out of the forest. They never know if the hill they are climbing is going to
provide the view they need, but they still climb hoping it does.

~~~
pnutjam
There is no hope in what they are doing, it's a classic "if I can't nobody
can".

~~~
notus
That's a pretty terrible reduction of the problem that prevents any further
engagement. You cannot solve problems by ostracizing people.

~~~
candiodari
What I feel you're failing to consider is that less further engagement may in
fact be the preferable option, at least from their perspective. They feel like
they are able to survive and change their own situation for the better, but
just that others are in the way and make this impossible. So no, they're not
looking for engagement.

That doesn't make their assessment of the situation wrong. It just makes it
very inconvenient for government workers (whose jobs depend on said
engagement) and people who want to virtue signal from afar. They feel like the
policies, that by necessity are cheapest-possible-forced-help-from-10000-feet
policies are more of an obstacle than help. Frankly, I can come up with more
than a few cases where this was entirely right.

Of course, it _also_ doesn't make their assessment of the situation right.
Those same policies help people on a large scale as well.

However I would like to point out that there is a lot of research that less
intrusive, and more unconditional help certainly seems to be more effective in
quite a few places. A few random examples:

1) [https://www.theguardian.com/housing-
network/2016/sep/14/less...](https://www.theguardian.com/housing-
network/2016/sep/14/lessons-from-finland-helping-homeless-housing-model-homes)

2) Even in what seems like black and white cases. To take one really extreme
example. NOT helping kids who get abused by parents ... turns out to be more
effective than helping them [https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583)

(and there's a famous study from the 90s that claims that giving troubled kids
free membership to a sports club near them is far more effective than anything
psychiatry/social work/... can do for them, and certainly more effective than
prison. Not even checking if they actually attend)

------
AndrewBissell
> 40 percent concurred with the thought that "When it comes to our political
> and social institutions, I cannot help thinking 'just let them all burn' ";
> and 40 percent also agreed that "we cannot fix the problems in our social
> institutions, we need to tear them down and start over."

Hard not to sympathize with this perspective when:

\- The people running the country lie us into an unending, ruinous war with
help from the establishment media, and no one is held to account.

\- The people running the country demolish the economy with unsustainable
debt-driven speculation, and no one is held to account.

\- The people running the country openly associate with a convicted trafficker
of children, who conveniently dies in prison before naming any names and while
the cameras were "inoperable" and the guards asleep and his cellmate
transferred out at just the right moment, and (just wait for it!) no one is
held to account.

"Let them all burn" may not be the right answer, but at the very highest
levels our political and social institutions are rotten to the core.

~~~
lopmotr
Yet almost everyone keeps on voting for the same people to run the country.
They mostly believe keeping the enemy other party out of power is more
important than all of the other problems combined. Either that or they don't
vote which is itself a vote for the establishment.

~~~
armitron
There is no alternative, other than not voting. The political parties in the
USA are not the issue, since they are both playing for the same team (big
banks and corporations). It is unfathomable to many that Obama (either through
naivety or deliberate will) let Wall St off the hook. That was a moment that
defined the decade.

The system is corrupt because the checks and balances that used to be there
were dismantled (or slowly erroded in some cases).

The non-stop materialism-consumerism and lust for money that defined USA after
WW2 (especially in the 80s-90s) can be seen as a way to control-appease (or
distract) the population at large so that the power players could continue
their orgy uninterrupted. But even consumerism and cheap entertainment is now
coming apart. You can see it everywhere around you. The masses are reaching a
boiling point and fireworks are to be expected.

~~~
repolfx
No, that's just a standard Marxist lens on things. Nobody in Wall St was let
off the hook because incompetence is not illegal, nor should it be. The masses
aren't about to engage in counter capitalist revolution any more than they
were 100 years ago. Big banks and corporations aren't a "team" that people
play for, they're just ways in which resource allocation is organised. There
is no control-appeasement, whatever that's meant to be. Just people trying to
rule systems far too large and complicated for them, mostly at the behest of
voters, and failing at it.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Even for the ones who didn't do anything illegal, they were certainly "let off
the hook" in the sense that the massive bonuses they were paid for
economically destructive decisions were never clawed back, and in fact the
same fundamental structures of "no skin in the game" and "privatized gains,
socialized losses" were preserved and even strengthened in the aftermath of
the financial crisis. In the most egregious instance of this, firms which
would have been nothing but smoking holes in the ground without public capital
injections and backstops were allowed to pay out colossal bonuses to the same
people who got them into that mess in the first place.

However, it's also certainly not the case that there were no criminal acts of
fraud committed by Wall St execs during the 2000s bubble. Dick Fuld's Repo 105
scam is a great example:
[https://www.epsilontheory.com/repo-105/](https://www.epsilontheory.com/repo-105/)

~~~
repolfx
You're completely right about the problem of socialized losses, but that's a
system level problem rather than a problem of individuals - it would exist
even if everyone in the financial industry was completely replaced. And it's
ultimately a problem created by governments, which implicitly promise to bail
out bankrupt institutions if they're "too big to fail" (where how big that is,
isn't defined anywhere).

I haven't heard about Dick Fuld, I'll read your link, thanks.

------
mehrdadn
> 24 percent agreed that society should be burned to the ground

Haven't read the actual paper, but does anyone know what response percentages
one would expect from a "normal" population?

~~~
gota
I think it's implied that zero percent of normal people want to see society
"burned to the ground"

Edit: after re-reading that part of the article I'm not sure anymore. I can't
tell if the questions were phrased to imply a serious destructive desire or if
"burn it down" was passable as "I'm discontent with life". Might have to read
the paper itself to clarify.

------
mirimir
I've had my share of NFC at times. I was an idealistic Young Pioneer (not that
different from Boy Scout). But I got disillusioned, and became an idealistic
hippie immigrant.

Then I got disillusioned again, and went punk/metal. Megadeth's "Addicted To
Chaos" was my favorite song for a while. Plus Black Flag, Circle Jerks,
Butthole Surfers, Judas Priest, Turbonegro, Marilyn Manson, etc. But still, I
did a PhD and played in academica for a while, so I was arguably just posing.

Now, it's not so much that I have NFC. I'm just not at all optimistic about
the future. But not like it was during the 60s-80s, when nuclear holocaust
seemed all too likely. Now it's mostly the slow slide into an ~unlivable
climate. And all the social breakdowns that will come with that. And given
that I'll be dead, it's not such a big deal, personally.

------
chmaynard
Exactly. Trump is one of these people, which is why they love him so much.
That he is in a position of such great responsibility is incredibly dangerous.

~~~
war1025
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. That's more or less why I voted for
him.

~~~
kelnos
Out of curiosity, how do you feel now, 2.5 years in? If you knew in November
2016 what you know now, would you still have voted for him? Do you plan to
vote for him in 2020? Not trying to troll or start a political flamewar here,
I'm genuinely interested, especially as it's pretty rare that a HNer will
"admit" to being a Trump voter.

The thing that always gets me is that even though Trump presented himself as
this tear-down-the-establishment, drain-the-swamp kind of guy, it always
seemed pretty likely that he'd just replace the political establishment with
people in the business/finance establishment, which is essentially the same
thing to many/most of the people who this platform resonated with. And,
well... that's exactly what he's done, aside from the other expected outcomes
of inflaming racial/gender/etc. divides; ignorantly bumbling his way through
economic, trade, and foreign policy; and lying his way through every day in
office. What is it about _that_ which still lends him support? Is it still
just the chaos? Because he's not actually fixing anything for most of his
supporters; the elites are still just as elite as ever, and at best it's
status quo, but in many cases things are worse.

Put another way: it just seems unlikely to me that all the "burn it to the
ground" supporters expected or are happy with the fact that burning it all
down _also_ causes them more suffering, too; more suffering than the
establishment has been hit with. And yet, here we are.

~~~
war1025
I normally don't admit to it, but I've become less fearful of the backlash
lately.

Current plan is to vote for him in 2020. Worst case I will abstain from voting
for President.

The economy is still on fire as much as it's ever been in the midwest. Can't
complain there.

The trade war is unfortunate, but the alternative is to bend over and take it
from China. Everyone agrees that they don't play fair. So the options are to
do something about it, or to just let them keep on. My family has a
manufacturing background, so all the offshoring is sort of personal.

The racial crap isn't nearly as much of an issue as the media likes to make
it. It makes for good ratings, though.

\---

Basically I'm hedging my bets on at worst I think the government should be
robust enough not to be brought down by one bad leader. And if it is, then
maybe we deserved to fall. Plus from my perspective he's not doing all that
bad.

~~~
ineedasername
"The racial crap" appears to be crap media mongering primarily to those who
haven't been on the receiving end of the fire hose (metaphorically or
literally) some time in the past few decades. I'm sure it makes for good
ratings, and the media makes the most of it, but that doesn't mean it's any
less of an issue than portrayed.

------
yourbandsucks
And why not? The entire political process is kabuki interspersed with
conversations with important donors and lobbying groups that actually
establish policy.

Nihilism isn't the answer, but neither is demanding a particular kind of
we're-all-professionals kabuki without any real change. Flipping over tables
is at least something.

~~~
Apocryphon
Funnily enough, just a few months before the Anglosphere dove into the current
populist wave, people like Charles Stross were talking about a future of beige
bureaucratic dictatorships dominated by financialization and security states:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106983)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5187236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5187236)

Not that we haven't departed too far from that future, but now we have the
added problem of revived extremist tribalism and chauvinism of every type.

~~~
ineedasername
For those unfamiliar with Stross & his site, the site name is not "anti-pope"
as in "against the catholic pope". It was a drunken mistake a few decades
ago-- the site name was supposed to be "autopope" (specifically autopope.uucp)

Otherwise, just like his highly entertaining books, he often offers up
incisive commentary on society. Whether or not you always agree with it, it
always makes for an interesting read.

