stabbing – Observations and Misunderstandings

There was another terrorist related incident in London today. It seems we have one roughly every six months these days. I know that’s not accurate but it certainly feels that way. I also don’t really understand what such an ambiguous statement terrorist related incident means. The media love jumping in without all the facts and throwing around accusations of A, B and C before they really know anything. This is as much down to their irresponsible necessity to sensationalise anything they can as it is to the constant demands of twenty-four hour news coverage. I also don’t know the facts but I’m also quite sure I’m not going to dangerously mislead the seven people, including my Mum, who read this.

Seemingly a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. He was someone who the police had been monitoring for a while now and it must be for this reason that they believe this was the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims, thank you Google dictionary for that definition of terrorism. To speculate what exactly happened and what his motives and rational for doing what he did are pointless. This is partly because I don’t know and probably never will, but also because I imagine them to be far more complex than the lazy and dangerous ‘bad man’ narrative some would have you believe.

The London Mayor Sadiq Khan used the exhaustingly tired cliche that he wanted to “destroy our way of life” but curiously enough also said that the Metropolitan Police truly “are the best of us”. Despite all the other information that entered my mind while reading about todays incident, this statement shocked and offended me the most. I’ve met the Met as the sticker they stuck on my bag once said; I have certainly felt compelled after and since that moment to use a rather different type of superlative to describe them.

The idea that people are trying to destroy our way of life though is a very interesting one and something which never really gets discussed in much of a mature manner in any of these public news style debates. Are we supposed to just believe, as many do, that this man simply hates democracy and freedom, two increasing loose and ambiguous concepts. Is our way of life not in fact capitalism and globalisation? There seems to be something more constant and tangible about that than some abstract notion of freedom and the illusion of a version of political theory invented over two thousand years ago.

Perhaps to admit that there may be reasons other than that he hates us simply for existing would mean not only that we may have to discuss whether any of his beliefs or rationale have any credibility or justification but that this de-humanising narrative is an irresponsible and dangerous one. It must be said that at no point do I justify killing anyone, especially innocent people going about their daily lives but this narrative we’re all willingly skipping along to never really deals with why this man felt compelled to do this in the first place. Perhaps if it did we may just have to deal with the one thing we really can’t and that’s ourselves.

Part of my resolutions are about to begin. My friend owns some exercise equipment and I’m going to use some ski machine thing I think, or at least something which he says is going to probably make me sick from the twenty minutes of effort I have promised him. The reason sick is actually a good thing for once is that as a result of my attempts at beer making I have not been too far from the toilet these last few days. If this continues I may be writing a piece soon detailing a salt water cleanse, or at least the benefits of it, over the intimate details of the procedure. My friend also drank the beers on Saturday but was sick on Sunday and seemingly felt better after. I unfortunately trained myself when younger not to be sick which can be good when drinking and smoking excessively but along closing the heart chakra apparently, which is perhaps a story for another time, it does mean that my body doesn’t necessarily expel poisons by vomiting in times it should. This attempt at doing some crazy amount of exercise when already feeling a bit weak and ill is completely the most ridiculously illogical approach and reminiscent of tv series from my youth like Jackass or Dirty Sanchez. I am though willing to give it a shot because while I doubt it’ll actually make my sick, I know it is at least an opportunity at making a start on my resolutions and I’ve passed up on far too many chances already. I am though losing weight by being ill so at least the belly is slightly shrinking. Does that mean I am inadvertently sticking to my resolutions? Only in the most perverse of ways. I also accept fully that nothing I say in any articles after this one can be taken with any seriousness and I may have completely destroyed any sense of credibility I have had the good fortune to acquire these last two months. But fuck it, here goes nothing….

…If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs is a line from a poem by Wilfred Owen about the folly of patriotic war and death, this line about the effects of chlorine gas during the First World War. It feels comparable to what I can taste in my mouth now. That old familiar taste of iron. The stabbing sensation in the ears and the throbbing of the head. My legs feel like jelly and either I’ve got cramp or I’ve hurt my hamstring but I completed twenty whole minutes of surprisingly gruelling exercise skiing, running with some bag on my back, lifting some heavy ball repeatedly and doing push ups. I didn’t vomit, I knew I never would despite the silliness of the first paragraph. I should be proud of myself apparently. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I manage to scrape myself off the floor.

Tag: stabbing

Resolutions Update 2.0