I wonder if politicians or politicians’ strategists have a kind of index above or below which they acknowledge that the electorate registers an idea or a feeling in their deep vote-bearing being. As we speak, it looks as if the Saudi journalist Jamal Kasooghi has been murdered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul by agents of the Saudi regime. This barbaric act looks to have registered on the collective consciousness more than the killing of some tens of thousands of innocents in Yemen, mainly because it represents a personal narrative. Personal story scores higher than abstract statistic on the resonance scale. The question is whether there is a statistical way for politicials to appreciate this and integrate this disparity of perception into their machinations, some algorithm of dreadfulness. What is clear, though, is that some clever imaginer needs to find a way of talking about abstract figures of deaths in wars and bombings that can strum the heart strings or nervous systems of your everyday member of the public to gain the same reponse as the single, albeit bloody and awful, death of one person.

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