So after every terrorist attack now we learn of a “good news” story. After the attack on a café in Sydney a year ago the hashtag #illridewithyou became the good news story — the result of a story of a Muslim Australian woman on public transport allegedly removing her headscarf in fear after the attack. Australians tweeted “I’ll ride with you” to show that they would protect all of Australia’s Muslims from the other Australians who would otherwise brutalise them. The story of the woman taking off her headscarf turned out to be made up. Nevertheless, thousands of Australians tweeted “I’ll ride with you” and so the murder of, among others, café owner Tori Johnson (made to kneel on the floor and then shot in the back of the head) had a happy ending.

Three nights after the Commons managed to approve air strikes in Syria by the RAF, a man reportedly wielding a knife at Leytonstone Tube station in London and screaming that his actions were revenge for Syria allegedly stabbed a musician. Fortunately for the media worldwide and for social media in particular, one of the less traumatised passers-by was caught on camera shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv” at the man, who has now been charged with attempted murder. This immediately “trended” on Twitter and became a top story on most news sites and a front-page headline in the next day’s newspapers around the world, said to epitomise the wisdom and stoicism of Londoners. While the victim was recovering in hospital everybody else got to move on to the joy of Muslims condemning this now allegedly “non-Muslim” attacker.

Worst was in the wake of November’s atrocity in Paris when the story went around from the Wall Street Journal to the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail that one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France football stadium had been stopped and turned away by a Muslim security guard called Zouheir. The story was reported around the world and heralded across social media. Amid a night of bloodshed which allegedly had nothing to do with Islam here was a security guard who had everything to do with Islam saving hundreds of lives. This seemed such a good meme that it became one of the most popular “stories” of the night on Twitter. Except that it turned out — as the BBC was unusual in being good enough to concede — that the tale was fabricated. There was a guard in the stadium of unknown religion called Zouheir but he had been elsewhere on the night and had not seen any bombers. He had relayed part of a colleague’s story to a reporter. Why had this all become about him? For the simple reason that people wanted it to be.

The point is that all these things are varieties of self-distraction. They are things we have set up to stop us coming to the conclusions based on the evidence before us. Parliament discusses sending a few planes to bomb IS, but is aware that this minimal action could cause maximal pain at home. The media reports the terrorist attacks while scouring to find a news story that will show Muslims in a good light.

Many worthy sentiments may be mixed up in all this. But at the root of them, living through them and watching this doubt from the top to the bottom, it is hard not to reflect that we are living in the in-between years. At some point the atrocities will come here again and only then will we again be able to see that these years were largely wasted.