the shape of things to come

Of course, it's already here, as if you didn't know.

Religion and violence. Please, spare me the spiel ...religion is about peace, spirituality, etc., etc. It's already here, a kind of low-level disintegration ('low,' that is, as opposed to a major one-off massacre).

Now, of course, it goes without saying that there is something wretched and sick about human nature that makes violence possible and quite common. And I'm perfectly willing to accept that religion has had a dampening effect on some of those impulses some of the time. But when religious people set themselves up as the 'chosen people' or the 'best nation' then what you get is the classic distinction of us and them, the pure and the dangerous. 'Them,' the vermin, always bring with them diseases and (moral) corruption...deviation from the one true path.

So, it's not just the violent few we need to look at. (And, after all, the mob was 3,000 strong this time). We need to look at the cultural attitudes of the silent partners that either turn a blind eye or reinforce these hatreds.

Putting on my pragmatic hat for a mo. There's not much use in trying to understand pathological behaviour. Much better to drain the swamp. Economic progress, education, opportunities for all etc. has to be one plank in the strategy. Along with: cutting off Saudi funding and better policing. But when you think about it, the military have been cultivating the extremists for ages for their own ridiculous ideas of "strategic depth". What's changed, you think, is that the political parties now want to cash in: street power makes the mob 'useful'. The more you feed the beast, the more you try to bring them into the mainstream the greater the risk that they become an independent force in their own right. So, as Cohen sings, things are going to slide...