On the Liverpool tragedy and failed attempts to light rhetorical fires
This “the public deserves to know the truth” trope should be called out for what it is.
Most Tuesday mornings, I sit down and try to make sense of the rhetorical fires being lit in America. Today, I find myself thinking of rhetorical fires being lit much closer to home.
The scenes from Liverpool yesterday were appalling—videos that testify to the nature of fear in large crowds and, it might yet emerge, fear in an individual. It was shocking, too, to see streets I know only too well. That part of the city is one of the few in the North West that matches London in scale and history. The incident happened in the shadow of the Liver and Cunard Buildings, in an area of Liverpool that makes little effort to hide its imperial roots. The streets are relatively narrow, but the buildings overwhelm. There’s a reason Hollywood often uses them to double for New York.