Cold Fires Rage

Reading Vincent Bevins' If We Burn in 2023

Recent history is the hardest to remember, the most likely forgotten and the most repeatable. How how many times can we really take the merry go round of spontaneity before we get sick to our stomachs? Vincent Bevins' If We Burn is an analysis of global protests that erupted from Tahrir to Taksin Squares, from Syria to Yemen, from Sao Paolo to New York City, each one leading to a terrifying series of unintended consequences. Marx said that people think they make history but history makes itself behind their backs. He didn’t actually say that literal thing, but I am interpreting it for us today.

In 2011, I remember walking home from work in Irvine, worried about our family finances and preoccupied by the events on campus. I was reading every book I could get my hands on about the financial crisis. Gillian Tett’s Fool's Gold was my favorite.