The mood on the street

I was recently speaking to my esteemed colleague, the future Dr. Matthew Star Austin, Esq. about the terrorist bombing here in London, and he turned my attention to the FoxNews website, which was an eyeopener to say the least. Matt informed me that Murdoch's media mouthpiece was sensationalising the whole event, with massive photos of the burned out bus at Tavistock Square and large declarations of condemnation and revenge by Blair and G8 leaders.


This, I think, is one of the most potent denunciations of FoxNews imaginable

It made me want to retch, but I have to say that to be honest, I'm actually a bit underwhelmed about the whole affair. As I was writing the first sentence, while it occurred to me to qualify the term 'terrorist bombing' with some word like 'horrific', I really couldn't be bothered. I have received a flood of emails and phone calls all day from concerned friends and family but I've not really had anything to say about the attacks, preferring instead to ask the callers how they were doing and how their day had been.

From my limited knowledge of medicine, I understand that people often experience a sort of post-traumatic shock which desensitises them to terrible events in their lives, but, limited though my medical comprehension may be, I cannot honestly give myself such a self-diagnosis. I was nowhere near the bombings (though had class still been in session, I might very well have been) and I didn't even know what was happening until hours after they occurred. No, I think a more accurate diagnosis would be that I am simply feeling blasé about the whole affair, a sentiment which, despite Fox's shrill cries to the contrary, I believe is shared by many other Britons here in the capitol with me.

Do not misunderstand me: I am appalled by the events and I am terribly sad for the families. I would like for the perpetrators of this crime to be brought to justice and for this whole protracted war on a means to an end to be over. I certainly have been affected by the events of the day, but from my experiences today I have witnessed a people who were calm, level-headed, well-organised, and who essentially handled the grim business they needed to conduct with the proverbial stiff upper-lip. The statement circulating on the internet claims that "the heroic mujahedeen carried out a blessed attack in London, and now Britain is burning with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west," but from what I can tell, people are more worried about getting from point a to point b than they are about being blown up by a suicide bomber. It's not just me being blasé about the whole affair: in the hundreds of people I have passed today, I can think of only one who seemed the least bit phased by what had occurred--a man on the bus who was resting his head on the seat in front of him--and he might have just been really tired or hung-over.

I've been thinking about this and I think that the people who carried out this attack probably chose the worst people to try to terrorise with bombs. First, the English don't openly display their emotions the way that Americans do, and this reserve, I believe, helps to keep themselves and the people around them level-headed. The strongest emotional statement I heard today came from David Davis, the eloquent Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, who calmly and coolly argued that respect for the dead, calm, and focused determination were going to make things right. I can't imagine the response had Bush made a statement like that in America, but I imagine the treatment he gets from the left would be recreated on a far greater scale by the armchair generals and jingoists that populate our fair land. Even the media coverage was understated: having lived here for a year now, I rarely use American news sources, but the difference between FoxNews or even CNN's coverage of the event was markedly different from that of the BBC or the Times of London. The boldfaced headlines and huge interactive picture galleries that filled the entire page on the American sites was countered by a sober graphic in the top left hand corner on both the Beeb and the Times pages. Check out the difference yourself if too much time hasn't passed...

Continuing on, the second reason is that, probably owing to the perpetually pissing precipitation here in Old Blighty, the English always end up looking at the bright side of things. I cannot count how many times I have heard, "Well, it could have been so much worse," or "I can't imagine how many people could have died considering what they did." A few minutes ago I heard the first hints of humor when a man wondered aloud to his companion "now how are we going to get to work tomorrow?" The closest thing to humor on 9/11/2001 was that everybody at the bar I went to thought that playing 'Rock the Casbah' was riotously amusing and politically apt. But the English that I witnessed today seemed really no different than they did before: laughing, flirting, chatting and other such carefree activities were just as much in evidence as yesterday. It's clear that the English talent for putting a brave face on things makes them particularly unsuitable as a target for terror bombing. I mean, come on, these were the people who went through the Blitz and then got up and kept fighting! On top of it all, they've had to deal with this kind of thing for decades with the IRA, which has only increased their readiness and, unfortunately, their experience with losses to terror groups. I don't think I have ever been so impressed with the English as I have been today, and I can't help but think that my own calm reflection about the bombings have been altered by living amongst this remarkable people for the past 11 months.


Postscriptum: Perhaps I have gone too far. Just a moment ago the sirens from emergency vehicles (a perfectly normal occurrence here in Hackney) rang outside the internet cafe, and a few worried heads turned and furtively looked out the window. Oh well, at least I'm not scared.