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The London Olympics opening ceremony: a moment of optimism that destroyed the decade

The show of humour and hope – featuring the Queen and Dizzee Rascal – lulled us into a false sense of security, ill-preparing us for the bleak years to come

We are about to be expelled from the loosened sphincter of the 2010s and, quite frankly, it cannot come soon enough. This has been a terrible decade, full of fury and disaster at every turn. But where exactly did the 2010s go wrong? The most sensible answer would be 2016, a year so catastrophic that you can still smell it from here. The United States elected Donald Trump in 2016. David Cameron called the Brexit referendum in 2016. David Bowie died in 2016, and people responded to it by singing Hey Jude in the streets. Surely, any rational mind would correctly identify this year as the moment the decade went sour.

Well, you’re wrong. Because the slide began back in 2012. Because that is when the opening ceremony for the London Olympics took place. Now, bear with me. The notion that something as objectively perfect as the opening ceremony caused everything bad about an entire decade might sound ridiculous. But ask yourself this: would Brexit have happened without it? The ceremony was a four-hour show of might declaring that Britain stands alone as the envy of the world. And now Brexit is happening. Do you think these two things might be related?

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MwnFqO
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