BALTIMORE BURNING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBS AND THE TYRANNY OF GROUP THINK

30,000 B.C.
October 4^th

The first mob ever.

Tonda can’t find his club. He looks and looks but can’t find it anywhere.

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. I think I saw that funny looking guy over there, Atouk, with a club that looks just like yours.”

Tonda: “What the…?? Get him!”

(Atouk is beaten to death by the clan.)

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. Never mind. It’s over here!”

 

 

Atouk

 

 

Tonda

 Ever since, similar scenes have played out over the centuries until Michael Brown’s step father in Ferguson, Missouri screamed “Burn this bitch down!” after the officer who killed him turned out to be completely innocent. And who can forget the rocks bouncing off the shields of the retreating officers in Baltimore? Anger over another dead black man erupted into more looting, burning, and rioting. Once again, nobody really knew what happened but ignorance seems to be the gasoline that fuels these things. Six officers involved, three of them black, were charged with manslaughter and second degree murder. The evidence? They didn’t get Freddie Gray immediate medical attention when he asked for it. They didn’t beat him or give him a rough ride in the van to knock him around a little. They just didn’t believe that the man with a familiar history of crying wolf and causing drama when arrested was actually hurt. That’s what passes for “murder” when you have an angry mob calling for blood.

In Afghanistan recently, a woman was accused of burning a Koran. She was beaten with sticks and set on fire by a crowd in broad daylight. She, too, was innocent. Eight police officers were among those arrested for the lynching.

 

When Omnipotentblog was in Haiti in 1995, a mob attacked and beat a soccer referee nearly to death. His crime? After the match the referee was exposed by a player as one of the police force that, under the Cedras regime, had brutalized and tortured the community. Except that he wasn’t. The ref had red-carded the player during the match. The player didn’t much like it so he “outed” him to the crowd. The ref was totally innocent but, you know, ignorance is gasoline.

Occasionally mobs get it right, however, as in this instance when a mob in India stormed a jail and beat an accused rapist to death. The victim claimed he offered her $50 to keep her mouth shut. India has suffered a rash of highly publicized rapes recently and rather than ignorance, it was a banned BBC documentary that lit the fire. There is apparently an attitude rampant among Indian cavemen that if a girl is out past nine o’clock, she’s literally a slut and is literally asking to be raped. Literally. Mukesh Singh, awaiting trial for another brutal gang rape and murder stated, “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy…Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.” “It was her fault” she died because she fought back. Indeed.

 

 

Feminist of the Year--Mukesh Singh

 

Financial bubbles are a different kind of mob but they are emotion-driven groupthink nonetheless. In the Netherlands in 1637 during the Great Tulip Mania, a bulb called The Viceroy (manly name for a tulip) eventually sold for 14 times the salary of a skilled craftsman. Other things traded for single bulbs that year were 12 acres of land, four tons of beer and 1000 lbs. of cheese. The whole country had gone mad. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics were getting in on the action until someone finally said, “4150 guilders for a *%^#$! tulip? That’s nuts!” The market crashed. Panic ensued. A lot of people were ruined.

 

Much has been written about the stock market crash of 1929 but the cause was essentially the same. The Roaring 20’s put cash in everybody’s hands. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics wanted in on the action. Stock values climbed to absurd heights. Just before the crash, experts were proclaiming a new paradigm, a perpetual period of wealth and prosperity. 

 

 

Michael Lewis, author of “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball” has written several books on the recent crash and big finance. In “The Big Short” and “Boomerang”, he documents how the mortgage, housing and bond industries got so completely out of control. There were a few sharp-minded contrarians who saw the crash coming but the vast majority of financial geniuses thought the fountain of money would flow forever. In retrospect, it should have been obvious but they really didn’t see it coming. Worse, some who tried to warn others were shunned or even fired.  

Are we all slaves to this groupthink? Maybe. Probably. In “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, Jonathan Haidt describes the mind as an elephant with a rider. The elephant is our unconscious world view. Haidt’s research shows that we believe that the rider--reason and intellect--is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider makes up justifications for wherever the elephant decides to go. The implication of this suggests the bulk of humanity is immune to logic and persuasion. History, a most depressing area of study, sadly bears witness. French Revolutionaries, drunk on their own opinions, thought they could create a society completely ruled by science and logic for the first time in history. They created a “Goddess of Reason” to replace the superstitions of the church. During the Reign of Terror, rivers of blood flowed in the streets as mobs cheered the thud of the guillotine. Reason!

If Haidt is right, it means that things like Omnipotentblog are rather useless and uninfluential (sigh). So how do people change their minds? Do they ever? Yes. Haidt’s research shows that no man is an island. It is through relationships that minds are changed. People influence people, not arguments. The notion of a society based on individualism is lovely but it has its natural limits. Collectivist experiments have failed spectacularly but it’s also clear that God created us to travel in packs. Politicians, pastors, and educators, especially conservative ones, should take note. Armed with slick arguments, mounds of data, and the righteousness of being utterly correct, you will convince no one of anything until you convince them you care.