It’s Time To Act Socially Responsible For A Change

Since the Eyjamafjalladjadoodadloekur started spewing its fancy ash all over the place, halting European air traffic and once again putting Iceland in the global spotlight, we have received many letters, messages and phone calls from concerned friends all over the planet. They are worried about the health and well being of Icelanders, they ask what they can do to help, and some of them even insist on praying for us.
Each and every one of those communications is touching, as they are heartfelt and emphatic missives that sorta make one believe there is hope yet. It is indeed a good sign that humans still possess the ability to feel for one another across oceans and continents, even though their lives, religious affiliations and everyday values might differ greatly. Empathy is good and should be encouraged—a global community of care and mutual understanding is what we should strive for (you can call me a fuckin’ hippie if you will, I still stand by this belief of mine).
Now, this doesn’t change the fact all this concern and empathy is completely unwarranted—we are all doing pretty-to-goddamn fine over here on our remote rock in the North Atlantic, regardless of what you might have heard.
Of course the Eyjafjallajökull area farmers’ plight is a great one; their livelihoods as well as their livestock being put at risk and all (read more about that in Anna Andersen’s moving piece on page 22), but even that sorta goes with the territory when you choose to live under an active volcano (not to mention when you choose to settle an island that’s pretty much one large active volcano). Not a single human life has been lost, and the daily lives and routines of the majority of Icelanders haven’t been affected one bit.
(In fact we all got sorta excited by the eruption, to tell you the truth. It looks really cool, it’s generally harmless and it’s nice to be in the news for other things than economic collapse and fraud for a change).
We kinda wanted to underline that with our cover for this issue, and send out a message: “WE ARE GENERALLY DOING GREAT, THANK YOU!” Please pass this message along if you can, readers, we need lots of tourists and their fancy currencies to be able to drink next winter into oblivion.
That out of the way, I have one final statement to put out there. Dear Politicians of Iceland: you are all dumb failures, you have no ideals, you stand for absolutely nothing, you make no attempts at acting socially responsible and you do not care about anything except for lining your pockets (and your friends’ pockets) and scoring a sweet pension.
This I infer from the way you conduct yourselves, and from what you say. From the way you consistently abuse your position to this effect, and how you do so in the most shame- and ruthless manner imaginable.
Nobody cares whether you broke the law or not, or whether your crimes count as crimes in the strongest technical sense. You have all been caught with your hand lodged firmly in our cookie jar with chocolate smeared all over your faces. You have offended our ideals—YOU WERE VOTED INTO PARLIAMENT TO REPRESENT AN ENTIRE NATION, YOU ARE THERE ON ALL OUR BEHALF AND YOU SHOULD THEREFORE REPRESENT OUR HIGHEST SHARED VALUES, IDEALS AND GOALS.
And you have consistently failed to do so. Please leave us alone already, go hang out with your campaign contributors somewhere and just leave.