One of the popular apologetic images composed by the ruling elite and its admirers and enablers is that of the shrugging dope, who rolls his shoulders in exasperation, asking: "what did I do? It's just because I was naturally talented and meritorious, and perhaps had a little bit of extra luck, that you are now all enviously and spitefully clambering to tear my wealth down," as the angry mob swarms the wealthy in hard times.
But the basis of that wealth is a constant and perpetual pushing down and tamping together of the less-privileged classes, holding them in the desired shape to maintain the power and form of the wealthy in question, whose very existence is predicated upon the toil and exploitation of those lower classes, and the necessary maintenance of that very specific and contingent state of affairs. This is a constant soft - and hard - violence with effects that accumulate and eventually seek to rush back to their sources as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
There is a multitude of possible social forms that could and do emerge in spatially and temporally limited forms, of which are constantly carved off and pummeled away by the forces of reaction and empire. Even the negative forces of contraction - of people attempting to simplify and get by with less - are bitterly fought back in favor of maintaining the hamster-wheels and treadmills that feed the processes of stark accumulation. I'm not talking of poverty - which in its nature is bound to the other side of the coin of vast opulence - but of modest and ethical cycles of production and consumption. Indeed, having nice things does not have to be inherently destructive.
The so-called "violent mob" is only a transmutation of those social forces of sculpture and hold-fasting, blowing back, just as one slips off of a cutting surface with a dull knife and strikes one's own hand with all of the power and pressure meant for the hard material.
At a more specific and smaller-scale level of organization, one sees the viciousness with which Trump's continuing claims are dismissed after the election, a viciousness mirroring the viciousness of his own administration and supporters, itself a viciousness that rushed outward into the political sphere to meet the better-concealed viciousness and contempt of the betters it was meant to unseat. And now the seesaw continues to bounce.
At a still smaller and more intimate scale of organization, one can imagine that the only possible reaction to an angry shove - that is, for someone attuned to conventional and horizontal social signals and in the position to respond - is an angry shove back. And so the process pingpongs in escalation until it disperses, or one of the sources of energy is extinguished.
