"A level of violence unseen since the darkest days of the Troubles." "An orgy of aggression unparalled in recent memory." The headlines this week have been as depressingly predictable as the spiralling (and still continuing) scenes of open loyalist fury they attempt to describe.
A scenario that some of us thought we would never have to live through again has been unfolding this weekend throughout loyalist enclaves.
Burnt out cars, blockades, attacks on nationalist areas – all nightmare scenarios from what many thought was a bygone age.
On Monday, as workers and shoppers hurried to get home for fear of being caught up in even more loyalist violence, phone lines were temporarily jammed through panicked overuse and even cash machines had not been replenished. Those old enough to remember the impact of the Ulster Workers' Strike would have been struck with a certain dreadful sense of deja vu.
But should we really be so surprised? As the UPRG's Colin Halliday says in this week's paper, this has been a long time coming – the unionist community has been simmering over with resentment for a long time now and, it is argued, the NIO decision on that "innocent wee march" down Whiterock was the final straw.
This all may be true (and historically, unionism at its most vulnerable likes nothing better than to flex its considerable muscle to reaffirm its position) but is not the full story.
Fuelled by the aggrieved utterances of that old Machiavelli, Paisley, and the feeling of being left behind by the peace process, there is a genuine, if misguided feeling among working class Protestants that they have been forgotten or abandoned by the British government.
The irony of the massive escalation of loyalist violence following the IRA's historic July declaration must surely not be lost on those running the show.
The almost comical lengths to which the NIO will go to bury their heads over sustained loyalist paramilitary violence can surely not go on indefinitely, which leaves us all at a very dangerous crossroads.
As loyalist spokesperson Colin Halliday also warned the South Belfast News this week, any attempts by Secretary of State Peter Hain to review the state of the loyalist ceasefire could spell grave trouble for the future of peace in the North of Ireland.
