Is It Getting Real Yet?

I've been pondering the Grenfell Tower fire in London as possible arson, or a deliberate "let 'em burn" incident.  Once I saw that many/most of the residents and victims were of the Muslim persuasion, I couldn't shake the idea that somehow the fire was revenge for the Manchester incident and the London Bridge incident.

I've seen Teresa May on the teevee stumbling and bumbling through her talking points, points which she repeats by rote no matter what the question is. That says to me she knows something she dare not state. She's too frightened to state it.

Or something.

The Grenfell Tower fire was awful but very evocative too. It reminded me of the World Trade Center fires after the planes hit in 2001; it reminded me, too, of the Odessa Trades Union House massacre in 2014.  Both were deliberate -- and opportunistic.

They were meant to inspire fear and terror, which they did. But they took advantage of weaknesses and unknowns to full effect as well. Did the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks know that the World Trade Center buildings would collapse causing far more damage, death and destruction than if only parts of the buildings had burned but the rest had remained standing? I doubt it. But they knew how to take full advantage of the situation.

The cause of the fire at the Union House in Odessa is pretty well understood; the mob outside was using Molotov cocktails which started a number of small fires inside and outside the building. It is said that those holed up inside also had access to and used Molotov cocktails against the mob outside.

Somehow, it's not exactly clear how, one or more cans or barrels of gasoline or other petroleum in the lobby of the building exploded sending fire up the stairwell, incinerating dozens of people.

The effect of the fire was to shut down the Odessa resistance to the Nazi coup in Kiev. Worked like a charm by taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances. I doubt the mob outside the Trades Union House in Odessa had any idea they would be able to spark such a level of death and destruction inside. But once they did, they made the most of it.

And so it goes.

Which is why I wonder about the Grenfell Tower fire in London. There had been a number of attacks, after all, against soft targets in London and Manchester, leading to several dozen deaths and injuries. These attacks were said to be the work of "ISIS" or whatever the most current iteration of Islamic Terror is. While the death toll and destruction was quite low comparatively speaking, and in each case the perpetrators were dispatched (either self-dispatched or shot by police) the incidents inspired an enormous level of shuddering terror in the British public -- which I assume they were intended to do.

It has become the custom to take revenge after a terrorist attack against targets in the West. But in the case of the recent British attacks, there was no one to take revenge against.

The pent up rage could easily lead to something like the Grenfell Tower fire or to what appears to have been an attack by van on Muslims worshiping in North London last night.

Tit for tat, don't you know?

Of course I don't know that's what's going on, but that's what it feels like.

There have been any number of relatively small scale attacks on Muslims in this country. Some of it is just silly, like the recent March Against Sharia. But some of it is deadly, too -- such as the apparent murder of a Muslim girl in Virginia.

Trump and his minions opened the Pandora's Box of violence against the Designated Others (including Muslims) during the campaign last year, and we are witness to or victims of the consequences. Random acts of violence which had been routine are becoming focused on certain targets.

Nothing quite like that had been common in Britain, though the Brexit campaign had opened a Pandora's Box of violence against the Other there as well. Thus, something like the attacks we've seen -- tit for tat in a way -- was almost inevitable, and so was something like the Grenfell Tower fire (even if it wasn't deliberate.)

This sequence of violence is far from over. I see no desire among Our Rulers to end it in any case. What they want, of course, is protection for themselves. The rest of us, as far as they're concerned, can disappear tomorrow and they wouldn't care.

Is it getting real yet?

More to come, no doubt.