Well, the feeling of love and candy floss I wrote about here lasted about 3 weeks, until the Charlie Hebdo day. I guess if I would have been on the other side of the world, this would have been still horrifying and sickening, but being in Paris it ended up being one of these days that you spend stuck in front of television, being not too sure whether this is for real or not. Most unfortunately, it was.
So it was a day of "this is insane", "I can't believe this is happening", "how fucked up is this world", etc.
I will not lie and say I used to buy Charlie Hebdo every week, I probably did twice over the course of the last 10 years, weeks when the cover made me laugh. Did I ever think sometimes they were going too far, being out of line or being provocative? Maybe.
However, nothing justifies killing people for their opinion and a few cartoons, here in Paris or anywhere for that matter, yet it happens all the time.
The "national unity" that all political figures called for lasted about 24 hours, and the next day some sickening and nauseous comments are starting to emerge from the thousands of statements and reactions and press coverage all over the world: "this is a consequence of the immigration politics for the last 20 years in France", "they had it coming because of these insulting drawings", "this is why death penalty needs to be reinstalled", etc. Endless debate about the meeting planned on Sunday, political little narrow-minded comments. Mockery about police forces.
Really? Is this really the time for this? Nothing justifies death penalty, just like nothing justifies shooting men in the head because of silly cartoons. Yes policemen are not always the most loved persons in the country, but several of them are dead, injured, they worked their asses off for the last 3 days and they finally put an end to this, sort of. To the 24 hours stream of news probably not, it's still going on. To the trauma, probably not either.
Unlike a lot of people, I wish these guys would have been caught alive and would face the law, a proper trial and endless years roting in jail.
I had to delete a couple of Facebook friends from my account yesterday. There are limits to my friendship, people. You can all express your opinions freely (or at least that is what I want you to be able to do), but I do not have to deal with them if I don't want to.
But most of these were drawn in the gigantic feeling of support, of sadness, of anger, of indignation, of hurt, all over the country. And to some extent, of pride. Charlie Hebdo will be published next week, people are walking down the streets ignoring the feeling of phsycosis and fear and smiling to the cops who are everywhere, people buy newspapers, people stand up and say "Je suis Charlie" with pride, ignoring the debates and the nasty comments and the political fights or trying to bring actual brains to the endless talks going on all over the country.
For the last few days, despite the horror, there is joking going on. I was saying to friends the day before I was all "joy and love" to start the year, so for the last 3 days we are trying to keep the joy and love going on. It's not easy, mind, joy has been pretty rare the last few days, but by going out on the streets and carrying on with our lives as usual I feel like we are saying to these fucking crazy cunts that fear is not winning.
"If you get the Chinese to believe that jihadists have aphrodisiac qualities, in 10 years they are all gone!"