NO ONE LISTENED TO THEIR WISER ANGELS

No one listened to their wiser angels.
Evil done.
In trying to save the West, they had destroyed it.
For what they themselves had perpetuated, the leaders had no credibility, none whatsoever, as they stood and emoted over the deaths of their own citizens, in bars, stadiums, on the streets. 
The catastrophe was sinking in.
A spiritual stain.
They had unleashed a poisonous evil upon the Earth.
The Western media had been largely scrubbed of content on the fiasco of Mosul.
The diversionary tactic of saber rattling at Korea was actively in play. 
But fooling a populace was easier than fooling the gods.
The wave, that shock wave that was coming, was already mirrored in a thousand little ways, the jackboots that stepped across every tiny freedom, restricted every conversation, destroyed every impulse for freedom.
Humans were herd animals, now more than ever.
But even in the herd there were the disciples of the left, disciples of the right, and disciples of a different realm, chosen from the masses, unlikely sign posts, and these strange voices in a muffling dark reached beyond their times and their prisons; caught beyond the lives of the many.
There was always some well meaning person calling for more regulation, as if regulation could solve all the world's problems. Yes, it was a good idea that you could no longer throw your boots in the back of the ute after work. That dogs needed seat belts. That police were everywhere. That women selling cakes at charity stalls should have their kitchens inspected. 
No one defended the academics with their spurious research projects being gifted million dollar grants off the back of working people, or bureaucrats with multi-million dollar salaries, ten, twenty, thirty times the salary of the groaning proletariat.
But nobody knew.
The lash had scored its mark.
Public discourse dumbed down.

The people cowed. 

Noun(sociology) Normalcy Bias. The phenomenon of disbelieving one's situation when faced with grave and imminent danger and/or catastrophe. As in over focusing on the actual phenomenon instead of taking evasive action, a state of paralysis.

The Tables of Knowledge laughed at the quirks of their friends; exchanged video clips on the smart phones transforming the species into a hive, where the AIs were already stalking amongst the local fauna, taking what they wished. Lamented, or even ignored, the loss of a football match. Death by suffocation. 

It changed nothing. The deed was done. The crime committed. The crusaders, the henchmen unleashed. The warning posts. The warriors of the soul, the succubi of an impending transformation, an impending evil, were on the loose. 

They would perform their tasks in darkening times. Harvesting.

Here amidst suburban sprawl and beachside villages, characterised by a spawning, insignificant dread, a place where children ran and a new generation was already reaching for the rooftops. A tiny place in a lost pool of consciousness. Neither the jackboot nor the fear, smothered in the ordinary. 

There was nothing ordinary about what was about to happen, neither in the petite politics of the time, nor on the lava plains of consciousness.

THE BIGGER STORY:

MOSUL, Iraq — Sporadic clashes erupted in Mosul on Tuesday, a day after Iraq's prime minister declared "total victory" over the Islamic State group, with several airstrikes hitting the Old City neighborhood that was the scene of the fierce battle's final days. 

Plumes of smoke rose into the air as ISIS mortar shells landed near Iraqi positions and heavy gunfire could be heard on the western edge of the Old City. 

At times heavy, the clashes underscored the dangers still posed by the militants after Iraqi forces announced they retook full control of Mosul, the country's second-largest city, three years after it was seized by extremists bent on building a global caliphate. 

Meanwhile, Amnesty International warned in a report released Tuesday that the conflict in Mosul has created a "civilian catastrophe," with the extremists carrying out forced displacement, summary killings and using civilians as human shields. 

The report also detailed violations by Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition. 

"The scale and gravity of the loss of civilian lives during the military operation to retake Mosul must immediately be publicly acknowledged at the highest levels of government in Iraq and states that are part of the U.S.-led coalition," said Lynn Maalouf, the research director for Mideast at Amnesty. 

The report, which covers the first five months of this year, noted how ISIS fighters moved civilians with them around the city, preventing them from escaping, creating battle spaces with dense civilian populations while "Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition failed to adapt their tactics." 

The Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition "continued to use imprecise, explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated urban environments," Amnesty stated, adding that some violations may constitute war crimes.