Another day, another round of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Six dead, including, one must assume from the pattern of such events, a journalist or two. The British government, with all the predictability of a clockwork automaton, issues its solemn demand for an immediate ceasefire and protection for the fourth estate.
This is the ritual we have perfected: violence, then condemnation, then nothing. We have become a civilisation addicted to the theatre of indignation without the stamina for action. The Victorians at least had the decency to pretend their moral outrage meant something.
We just tweet and move on. The Fall of Rome was not a single cataclysm but a thousand small failures of nerve. This is one of them.
