It’s mornings like this that I dread. Where something tragic occurs in the world, and it’s unfortunately the hot topic that the media is over. News, is inherently mostly bad, but it’s times like when some psychopaths charge a runaway truck into a crowd particularly peaks, further justifying the notion that terrorists are shitheads, religion is lethally divisive, there are some truly evil people in the world and the world is a shitty, shitty place sometimes.
Everything becomes disgusting at times like this. Faith in people, the idea that there are networks of terrorists out there that seemingly will never come to justice because of the idea that they’re secretly supplied by supposed allied forces in order for rich people to profit on the idea of war. Disgust in the media that can’t stop running gruesome imagery in the name of journalism and throwing discretion and sensitivity to the wind. Disgust that among the dead, numbers of those belonging to particular nationalities emerge, as if it’s more important that Americans, Canadians, Italians, or British people were killed amongst the French celebrating Bastille Day.
Honestly, it’s all tiresome. It’s tiresome the alarming number of incidents like such that the entire world hears about, where people are senselessly killed for absolutely senseless reasons. It’s tiresome to read, listen or see the aftermaths of the same songs and dances, that have been uttered so many times over the span of the last year that they’re completely losing meaning. Thoughts and prayers aren’t fixing anything. When is love going to triumph over all this hate?
It’s tiresome seeing the collateral effects of these incidents, like all the observations about how France gets all the solidarity and support of the world, while Istanbul is glazed over; or perhaps these fucking attacks are just happening with such frequency, that people just don’t have time to console another before the next terrorist ambush occurs?
And terrorism is more tiresome than everything else. I don’t even care why these terrorist organizations are doing the things they do, be it religion, objection to ideals, or they’re just plain assholes on a frightening scale. It’s easy to ask why the world doesn’t just band together and try to do something about it, but it’s neigh impossible to stop what doesn’t have a face. Shit like this is inevitably going to happen again and again and again, and honestly, it doesn’t feel like anything will, or can really be done about it.
You take steps back and steps back, and try to get a look at bigger and bigger pictures. It’s funny, because you think of the shit kids say, hippies used to say, or what beauty pageant contestants say, about how they want world peace. As nice of an idea as it sounds like, I can’t believe for a second that it’s even remotely possible. There are two popular narratives; one a little too succinct for modern times, and one that transcends time, and relates to basic storytelling: war is too profitable for it to disappear, and there’s no good story without villains.
The big picture of the current worldly landscape kind of proves that both are in full effect, and it’s hard to imagine a world that’s kind of at ease. Maybe I was just too young and ambivalent to have noticed, but it certainly seemed like the world was way more chill and peaceful-ish when Bill Clinton was in office.
The world is an awful place, and we have the unfortunate reality of existing in it, in its current shitty, shitty iteration.
