Vancouver on my mind...

I suppose we all are aware by now, and the media just won't let us forget it, that after the Vancouver Canucks lost the seventh game of the National Hockey League final 4-0 to the Boston Bruins a "riot" ensued in that scenic Canadian city on the Pacific.

There is, I suppose, so much one can talk about and pontificate on when it comes to the Vancouver "riots" and similar "riots" in other Western cities where sports are almost a religious experience and the imbibing of alcohol an almost eucharistic undertaking. As for me I just love the fact that there were several rituals of contemporary Western society at play in Vancouver: the ritual worship at a sports arena, the ritual boozing, the ritual "riot" after a sporting event, the ritual condemnation of the ritual riot, the ritual self-righteous moral panic after the "riot", the ritual of if you can get you in the riot on social media like Facebook and you can become famous or infamous, the ritual praising of the sanctity of private property (can I get an amen brothers and sisters!), the ritual of blaming "anarchists" for the "violence" against private property (can I get another amen brothers and sisters!), and the ritual of media obsessing on a "moral panic" for fun and particularly for profit. It is good to know that we live in a cyclical universe and that the modern world just continues to keep on turning around and around and around like a looney (pun intended) ever punishing wheel of samsara.

Speaking of Western society and particularly the United States can there be a more banal society than one obsessed with designer dresses, smoky eye liner, moneygrubbing, silk ties, celebrity, the mimicking of the lives of the rich and famous, obsessing over sports, obsessing over ones body, verbally and physically abusing those who are different, all the while ignoring the global inequalities they have created? Bread and circuses, opiates of the masses. To paraphrase the Australian band Jet, Western society look what you've done you've made a fool of almost ever Western one (and, to top it off, most of them don't even know it).
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