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As the streets of var­i­ous U.S. cities descend­ed into dis­or­der set off by anger and anguish over police bru­tal­i­ty, the domes­tic tran­quil­i­ty for which Amer­i­cans the­o­ret­i­cal­ly sur­ren­der large chunks of their for­tunes and free­dom to the gov­ern­ment seemed out of reach. Some protests devolved into gen­er­al­ized orgies of destruc­tion and even arson—the most fiendish­ly destruc­tive thing the aver­age per­son can do in dense cities, and an act com­mit­ted with care­less glee dozens of times.