So the grotesque direction the outrage machine took after a suspect was arrested and his identity revealed shocked, but it should not have surprised.Because it’s not. The one of her in a brightly coloured sweater with a pink jacket on top.The winter sun bounces of her brown hair. At some point or the other.All the details in the Kasur abhorrence contributed to the national revulsion.But the rage — total rage — once activated was only going to go in ever more dangerous, more unhinged directions. Build a new stadium if there isn’t one big enough. The biggest one you can find.The picture that has become grimly iconic. Hang him in a public square. Or maybe some of the standard methods borrowed from friendly, like-minded states. The girl in the photo looks like she could be from anyone’s home — your home.It was what appeared to have been done to her.Those gasping for sense may have wanted the court to handle the issue more responsibly, but that’s just clutching at straws. And only the woolliest of optimists can believe it’s about to get better. A picture of a confident young girl looking calmly into the camera.Who, really, has both the power to stand up to the outrage machine and possibly a prayer of getting it to amp down? One does comes to mind, but the silence from that quarters has been deafening. Because at some point or the other, we’ve all been a part of it.Hang him in the street outside her home.By arrangement with Dawn.Everyone, absolutely everyone, climbed aboard the outrage machine because she was revealed to be a girl who could have been anyone’s daughter. We can only know that the suspect has now been caught.

Even, depressingly, in the little girl’s case.Among psychopaths, outrage and clowns the rest of us appear to have been condemned to live. And it was the troubling memory of something vaguely similar having floated out, miasma-like, from Kasur in the recent past. Once the machine was firing on all cylinders, some have been shocked at the bloodlust it has revealed.Not some child brought up in urban squalor or in rural misery. It was where she was found and the numbing image that rocketed around the country.It was a little girl — society reacts viscerally to crimes against children, especially little girls. Her light complexion radiates health, her cheeks are full and her mouth maybe on the verge of a smile.We will never know if she was going to be the Metallographic Cutting Accessories Suppliers last victim or not. The biggest one you can find.Because she looks like she could be their daughter.But the only thing the rage won’t do is go away.The rage, the outrage, really kicked in and was sustained with that photo. Even when they think they are not. Her eyes are clear and bright.Take insidious propaganda behind the scenes, add a clown on TV, throw in a political government to attack, and the outrage machine is reloaded and turned around and ready to go in an instant.And if you can understand that, that that single, grimly iconic photo helped build and sustain the rage and why it did, you may realise the next miserable, horrifying steps of the outrage machine were inevitable.Islamic State has demonstrated some of the more unhinged methods in recent years.Look away now if squeamish or disinclined to hear more terrible stuff in the midst of already numbing tragedy and despicableness and opportunism. Not one of the countless kids of countless maids who have marched in and out of your home over the years. And the problem is everyone’s a part of it.

Is that — is that a tiny body, a little girl, tossed into the garbage and lying on a pile of rubble? The stomach churns every time. Perhaps without the public rage, the police would have finally done their job.But it was also that image of her alive. The outrage machine has already savaged the court, causing it to lurch in one direction and then the next.The outrage machine is on fire and in overdrive.But the outrage machine is here to stay. Hang him in a stadium. Especially when they think they are not. Maybe an Afghan Taliban-type hybrid violence.In the pink-jacket photo — of a confident, healthy, cheerful girl with light hair and light eyes and light skin — she looks like a girl who could be sleeping in your child’s bed.The outrage machine is here to stay because everyone is a part of it.So on and on it will go. Army Public School brought hangings back.Squeamishness prevents from really guessing where the rage could go next. So this time it had to be a hanging plus.You can almost hear a million grandmothers say Mashallah as they first see that picture and mothers and fathers everywhere nod in approval.And now a few are shaking their heads at the inevitable politicisation of it all. Not some child of another faith or coming from the lowest stratas with dirty or dangerous jobs.Then again, if you really think about it, if you were in his boots, better to let the outrage machine consume others than to suddenly find it firing back at you. In some way or the other. Whether we want to admit it or not.Not a wretched Afghan child we’re used to seeing in bazaars and at traffic stops