I’m told it is best for our sanity to switch off, zone out, chill.
However, it’s still worth keeping one eye on the continuing car crash that is our time on this planet – if only so we have some idea of when best to sack it all off and take our chances on Mars.
So starting with the ‘horrendous’, and then tracking through the simply ‘awful’ and ‘bad’, here goes nothing.
Christchurch
The worst thing to happen in recent weeks was, quite definitely the appalling Christchurch massacre. In truly garish news characteristic of the Book of Revelation-esque end times we know live in, both the way the world and its media reacted, and the sordid and disturbing details which have emerged about the attack’s context have served to make us all feel very, very sick.
So how many times a second was the live stream being uploaded to Facebook and Youtube? That’s a rhetorical question. Do not write in with the miserable-fucking-details.
In Act II of this farcical horror-show, it turns out there was a financial connection between Generation Identity in Austria (proclaimed by the marginally less fascist Sebastian Kurz) and the terrorist bastard.
And which utter fool at the BBC authorised having neo-fascist terrorists ‘Generation Identity’ on to provide insightful (hate-filled) punditry immediately afterwards?
In Act II of this farcical horror-show, it turns out there was a financial connection between Generation Identity in Austria (proclaimed by the marginally less fascist Sebastian Kurz) and the terrorist bastard.
I mean – fucking really.
Shamima Begum – and others like her
In effect, this story started out simply. A British teenager who fled to join Isis, Begum was tracked down by a journalist in a camp in Syria.
Within about ten minutes, a media arms race had begun. Who could get the best Jihadi-bride scoop? The natural and horrendous conclusion was inevitable, the 19 year old’s infant child died and the UK Home Secretary made a not-at-all-motivated-by-his-own-leadership-ambitions decision to make a traumatised almost child stateless.
It should be noted that the minister in question is a noted Ayn Rand devotee, which is a huge neon warning sign if ever I saw one.
And then a cottage industry of journalists telling her and her family the latest miserable outcomes took hold, it shows no sign of stopping.
Where’s the humanity, eh? (A: For the love of God, not in an Ayn Rand novel.)
Feeling yellow
Even those most sympathetic to the gilets jaunes (in France, as opposed to their even more nakedly fascist copycats elsewhere) must be beginning to perceive a slightly worrying racist, anti-semitic tinge to some of what they’ve been up to.
Having a problem with M. Macron, that’s fine – free opinions, innit. Holding a lot of disruptive protests, also largely fine – this is France, it’s used to it. It’d be more annoying if cars weren’t blocked through Paris and Marseilles twice a week, really.
But hard to work out how to parse this horror – which has been linked to the more odious elements, who’ve also been screaming anti-Semitism.
It’s utterly dispiriting to be seeing the same tired tropes and terribly-daubed swastikas re-emerging worldwide.
Someone get me an expensive Armagnac, I’m begging you.
Populism, protest, whatever – it just doesn’t need to be like this.
As I write, more Gallic misery: the wonderful filmmaker Agnes Varda has died. Someone get me an expensive Armagnac, I’m begging you.
PorNOgraphy
So the British Government is about to do something very stupid and quite alarming, but I mention it because it’s also quite funny.
No, it’s not Brexit. (Though one wonders whether a bit of sexual liberation might do wonders for some politicians.)
It’s the imposition of a really clever and not at all privacy-threatening law which will require proof of age to be bought – either by entering card details on-line on whichever dubious (hopefully ethical and female-positive, but let’s imagine many pervy Brits aren’t so clued in) site, or – and this is hilarious – by going to a shop and buying a ‘porn pass’.
I kid you not.
Dystopia is kinda side-splitting.
A positive twist
MEPs finally called for a resolution and inquiry into the rule of law in Slovakia and Malta, after the murders of Jan Kuciak and Daphne Caruana Galizia, respectively.
Much overdue, and it’d be nice to see corrupt bastards actually caught out for a change. (No-one in particular, I promise, lawyers.)
Shame the EU’s also somehow found the time to ban memes, though.
Cover image: Jacinda Ardern, doing her best to remind us that not everyone on the planet is horrible. Credit: Appaloosa, Licence: CC by NC-ND 2.0