Bullies on the Streets of Moscow and Minneapolis
The nightmare in Minnesota has me thinking about Russia in the 1990s, when aggressive young men wielded coercive power in the country's new markets. As Vadim Volkov relates in Violent Entrepreneurs, state collapse and the emergence of private enterprise encouraged individuals with capacity for violence to become enforcers rather than pursue conventional employment. I once saw one of these "gangsters" (not really the right word; you’ll have to read Volkov’s book) knife a kiosk owner in the stomach. I remember my shock as vividly as the act itself.
There is a certain type of individual who is looking for a fight. In normal times, we might encounter them on the school playground, but life moves on. Our bullies we see only at the high-school reunion, clustered around the bar across the room. Other people’s bullies we do not recognize, as they settle into harmless occupations that pose no threat to our lives and to our communities.
But those were not normal times in Russia in the 1990s. Nor are they today in the United States. We have bullies in the White House and bullies on the streets of Minneapolis. The normal constraints of society have broken down. This is shocking for those of us who thought that such people had disappeared from our lives.
We should be thankful it feels this way. It is shock that propels us to confront the bullies, on the streets and in the voting booth. It is the empowerment that comes from knowing what is normal.