If you look at a lot of the hatred that is building up, especially hatred that is in direct relation to the corruption of existing institutions, you can see elements of a sort of tragic persuasion. In these large, complex social structures, a lot of the visible effects of the harm being done in relation to a given privilege is spatially and temporally distanced further and further from where the real power is, and so on down the hierarchies of power.
Changes to the system pass through the system and then intensify as they circulate. So to take the inflation for instance, you have existing wealth concentrating simultaneously with deepening processes of resource depletion and the associated contractions, alongside growing disruptions caused by those contractions (resource-based territorial disputes) and the destruction and constriction of resources via ongoing pollution flows (climate change, etc.).
Economic actors, across a broad range of industries have become aware that they can take more, as given suites of resources and value chains claim higher prices, and most of them are doing so, contributing to a general atmosphere of hiking prices and intensified expropriation and exploitation, and that ethic generalizes to all interconnected economic actors: everyone perceives they are getting less, so simultaneously they are all trying to take more, putting more and more pressure on those most vulnerable at the bottom of these so-called pyramids.
The harm itself runs away and intensifies the further it gets away from its source: the activity of elite decision makers benefitting from these runaway processes. Though less concentrated and visible as an actual individual-on-individual murder, these results are similar: it is a sort of rolling murder by institution.
In a large, complex society such as this one, the hatred and anger itself is difficult to channel to immediate threats. If someone shows up at your house and starts taking your shit, well fine you could figure out what to do quickly enough. But then what if that someone is connected to warrants and papers, those connected to courts, those connected to corrupt officials, connected to real estate developers and various magnates and possibly organized crime, those connected to the greater local and then state and federal governments and wider economic entities and so on. It gets to so that properly expressing your anger involves years of intensive political, economic, and historical research, and then who has the time for all that?
The function of scapegoating and random mob violence - however contemptible it may be - becomes more understandable in this respect. One power the ruling elite still manage to wield is a sort of veto power that fights back visible and comprehensible challenges to their power, such as those emanating from revolutionary and even reformist elements within society. With the power still available to beat back those challenges, the harms nevertheless continue to accumulate through the pathways of least resistance, piling up on those least able to defend themselves, and so blowouts occur in the direction of various targeted and marginalized groups.
