Autumn, revisited

Back in Kalmar for a couple of days. More than 1.5 years have passed since my last visit, which is longer than I have ever been away. Living in the High North, coming back down here meant reliving autumn, with yellow trees and temperatures well above ten degrees.

On Sunday night, Eddie and I are flying back to Umeå for more of the same crazy rush.

That was as far as I got with my blog post, as I still had to take a picture. Yet today, waking up shortly before 5 a.m. and reading the news on my phone, all of that suddenly felt irrelevant. More than 120 people are dead in a new terror attack, and we are in for another cycle of violence, fear, and repressive politics. As before, I am as frightened by the political reaction as by the terror itself. There will always be insane people committing heinous acts; the important question is rather who we want to become in our efforts to stop them. Already, the veneer of civilization was beginning to look strikingly thin. In Denmark, the government has just suggested that the police should search asylum seekers for any valuables they may be carrying and confiscate them in order to cover the costs of migration. Borders are once again going up across Europe, and in Sweden refugee centres are being torched by right-wing extremists. While it is still too early to say anything about the motives behind the Paris attack, it is clear that the long shadow of the Algerian war is still very much with us. Ultimately, I remain confident that democracy will prevail, but the road we are on right now is not a good one.