From Theodore Dalrymple

I’ve only ever been in one political riot, and it soon became apparent to me in the course of it that there are few pleasures known to man greater than that of smashing shop and car windows for the good of humanity. (Here, incidentally, I really do mean man rather than woman, for women are but poor and unenthusiastic rioters.)

The rioters are, of course, young men, between 18 and 30, which raises the question of the role of testosterone in the causation of riots. If male children were castrated at birth, I very much doubt that there would ever be any riots though, of course, the cure would be worse than the disease. Also, they never riot in the rain or snow, which suggests that good, or at least clement, weather is a cause of riots, or perhaps I should say a precondition of them.

In my experience beer plays a major role in rioting. When I was in university a number of my acquaintances were drunken sots and cared for little other than alcohol, girls and creating havoc wherever they went. I recall watching a demonstration – I have forgotten on whose behalf the revellers were despoiling the property of others –  on TV and identifying a significant number of my fellow students. I knew them: they had given themselves to destruction for destruction’s sake.

A number of years later, in the 70s, I was in San Francisco minding my own business when a man in a long coat sidled up to me and advised me to cross the street. A number of ne’er do wells were preparing to vent their disapproval of something the USA was doing somewhere by igniting an American flag. The flag was duly ignited; I watched with interest; the police moved towards the protesters; the media rolled their cameras; the protesters, before being touched by anyone, writhed in mock agony and screamed “police brutality”; the pyromaniacs were arrested.

All this gave me an appetite, so I went for a seafood dinner on Pier 5.