Up in Smoke and Gone Forever

  

I talked to somebody a while back who remembers the 1967 race riots in Newark. The mostly black rioters there ended up destroying movie theaters, night clubs, bowling alleys, restaurants, small factories, mom and pop stores, and even a couple of grocery stores (costing the area thousands of jobs and prompting the white populace to flee). It was an full-bore hell on earth and the city TO THIS DAY hasn't recovered. You'd think that the people of these urban areas would have learned from this that the answer to grievances (real AND perceived) is not to destroy your own damned neighborhood but to hold the politicians that you continue to vote for over 90% of the time accountable and ask them to maybe try a little something different for a change (like, I don't know, making it a lot easier for people to start a business, giving the poor families of the city some school choice, etc.). Maybe?