The world has once again paused to indulge in its favorite pastime: state-sanctioned sorrow. Spain has officially entered a three-day period of mourning following a high-speed train derailment, a move that is as predictable as it is utterly useless. As the cranes begin their slow, mechanical autopsy of the wreckage, we are told to expect the death toll to rise. Of course it will. When you pack human beings into a kinetic silver bullet and fire it across the landscape at speeds the human brain was never evolved to process, the result of a single technical hiccup is rarely a minor inconvenience. It is a massacre. And yet, the Spanish government—a collection of well-dressed grifters who couldn't organize a lunch without three committees and a bribe—now asks for silence and ‘solidarity.’

Let’s be clear about what this three-day mourning period actually represents. It is a tactical retreat. By lowering the flags and donning black ties, the political class creates a buffer zone of ‘respect’ that prevents anyone from asking uncomfortable questions for at least seventy-two hours. To ask why the safety systems failed or why the budget for high-speed vanity projects didn't include a fail-safe for basic human error is currently considered ‘distasteful.’ We must wait for the grief to subside, they say, which is code for ‘wait until the news cycle moves on to a celebrity divorce or a cat stuck in a pipe.’ It is a performance of empathy designed to mask a vacuum of responsibility.

The left-wing factions will eventually emerge from their grief to blame austerity and the lack of public funding, conveniently forgetting that they have spent years bloating the bureaucracy while the actual infrastructure relies on aging technology and overworked staff. Meanwhile, the right-wing cohorts will sharpen their knives to blame the individual workers—the driver, the technician, anyone lower on the food chain than a Cabinet minister—in a desperate attempt to protect the private contractors who build these high-speed death traps for a tidy profit. Both sides are already salivating at the prospect of weaponizing these corpses for their next campaign rally, but for now, they must maintain the mask of the somber statesman. It is a sickeningly well-rehearsed dance.

Consider the irony of the high-speed rail itself. We are a species obsessed with saving ten minutes on a journey to nowhere. We demand that our trains move faster and faster, treating the laws of physics as mere suggestions, all so we can spend more time staring at our screens or attending meetings that could have been emails. When the inevitable happens and gravity reminds us who is actually in charge, we act as if a cosmic injustice has occurred. The train didn’t just jump the tracks; it was pushed by our collective impatience and our blind faith in engineers who are just as fallible and distracted as the rest of us. The wreckage being moved by those cranes is not just metal; it is the physical manifestation of human arrogance.

The media, those dutiful stenographers of tragedy, are currently doing their part. They provide the rising death toll with a hushed, reverent tone, as if they are reporting on a religious miracle rather than a predictable industrial failure. They will show images of the wreckage from every angle, punctuated by shots of crying relatives, all while avoiding any deep analysis of the systemic rot that leads to such events. They need the drama to keep the public engaged, and a rising body count is the ultimate engagement metric. The cranes move, the numbers go up, the anchors sigh, and the sponsors buy more airtime. It is a symbiotic relationship of the most parasitic kind.

Historically, these tragedies follow a script so rigid it might as well be etched in stone. First, the shock; then, the mourning; followed by the ‘never again’ promises; and finally, the complete and total return to the status quo. In a month, the flags will be back at the top of their poles, the cranes will be sent to the next construction site, and a new high-speed train will scream through the Spanish countryside, carrying a fresh batch of passengers who have already forgotten the names of the dead. We learn nothing because learning requires effort, and mourning only requires a frown.

I find the cranes to be the only honest part of this entire ordeal. They do not pretend to be sad. They do not have a political agenda. They are simply heavy machines lifting the heavy consequences of human stupidity. As they pull the twisted carriages apart, they reveal the truth that no government spokesperson will ever admit: we are a species that values speed over safety, performance over substance, and the appearance of grief over the reality of reform. Spain will mourn for three days, the world will watch for three minutes, and I will remain, as always, utterly exhausted by the theatricality of it all. The death toll will rise, the speeches will be given, and the train of human idiocy will remain firmly on the tracks, hurtling toward the next inevitable curve.