Facts are simple and facts are straight, facts are lazy and facts are late, facts all come with points of view, facts don't do what I want them to!
Thus spake David Byrne in the guise of the Talking Heads on the song, Crosseyed and Painless, from the very excellent, Remain In Light. An apt description for this summer and my experience of the inferno we are currently subject to.
Red alert. For the first time Britain is going to experience extreme heat. Others may scoff, but they live in countries adapted to it. We aren't used to that, and that is the trick of climate change. Whisking you away to a place you've never been and expecting you to insta-adapt. We could, but we won't.
Pop quiz: Where was Boris as a COBRA emergency meeting was held, regarding the weather. Was he?
a) Attending, chairing the meeting as a prime minister caring for the nation.
b) Partying at Chequers, like inflation was 1999%
Hint: it's not a.
How does one cope with the legacy of these last two years? Where everything has changed, yet wearing the guise of the ordinary and the usual? Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. Denialists - cranks - will say "it's always been hot". or, the perennial straw man: "we used to grow wine in Roman Times". These are not arguments. They do not explain why things are as they now are. It's probably the wage price spiral anyway.
I am alienated. It looks like the country I grew up in. The faces are the same, the lies are the same. The broken system remains broken. But now, while home burns, Boris fiddles. While Nome burns, the freakshow comes to town. Which of these fact denying truth twisters will remain unbroken from their economic contortion act to become the next monster in chief?
Something has broken. It may never come back. This brave new world is hot to the touch. The sun, once a friendly welcome beacon - "here comes the sun" - is now an intruder. Angry at our poisoning the sky. Indifferent as we are to our own footprint on its heart. It gets a lot angrier than the rampant Christ-fascist wave in America. One that will drive out the last vestige of resistance to the baked in climate change. Baked in, like me in my house right now. Stifled by invisible waves of hostile air, unable to function. technology is unwelcome in the heatwave. All we can do is yield in our arrogance, if it will let us. I hope my computer will allow me the opportunity to post this without burning my fingers or melting down.
The world is on fire. It may never stop burning. On the plus side, intellectually illiterate self deciever, Liz Truss, may well be the next PM. The best we can hope for; blasted incompetence writ large like the fire that burns over half of the European continent. Pork Markets!
