A Period for Reflection, a Summer of Events.

As our summer begins to wane and the days seem clipped by the impending autumn, as the streets gleam wet with rain, flecked by the ever fading azure glow of the departing sun, we can look back on a season of grave significance.

First there were the tragedies in Norway, as a single man, a mind polluted, sought to solve a problem only he could see. His fears brought on by an anxiety that only the mad possess and the rational lament. His horrific acts were shocking and inexcusable, but not unique. The ceaseless violence was, unfortunately, well within the limits of human possibility. It is now that we must hope that humanity is, ostensibly, orderly and decent.

It is when this order is twice tested that we begin to lose faith; in government, in community, in man. The riots in London tarnished the capital, however it is reductive to characterise this awful event as simply a duel between forces of good and those of evil. Were the youths who took part the dispossessed, victims of a society who has left them behind? Or were they simply thugs, determined to destroy that which surrounded them?

Too often we resort to describing these people as singular entities, a homogenous mob driven by the same terrific motive. But these were individuals: Perhaps for some it was an emotional response to the controversial death of a man at the hands of those sworn to protect him. Or maybe it was pragmatism, the chance to take something from a society that has given them nothing, and promised nothing in the future.  Or maybe it was the feared extreme of human will; a desire to reject all that is orderly and decent.

But fuck that shit, this is media, we’re gonna exploit this in some well inexplicable manner. And I just got a new glass coffee table from DFS that I wanna cut some lines on. Didn’t even pay for the fucker. Ta.