This is so well written. It puts words very beautifully to what I've been feeling in the decades of living in this dreadful place and the horrendous inhumane things it does to us. I'm just tired....
This is so well written. It puts words very beautifully to what I've been feeling in the decades of living in this dreadful place and the horrendous inhumane things it does to us. I'm just tired. And so so angry. I hate this fucking place and what it is doing to itself and its citizens on both sides. I'm tired of losing friends and loved ones to this neverending disaster of a country and tired of feeling I have absolutely no control over this. I'm tired of the know it alls and the moral absolutists who think they have this whole complex mess figured out and if only they did this not that. Mainly I'm tired of all this pain.
In response to an exhortation to share my opinion on the Hamas/Israel massacres, I'll let this essay speak for me because I'm too sick at heart to do otherwise. A. R. Moxon's writerly insight is...
In response to an exhortation to share my opinion on the Hamas/Israel massacres, I'll let this essay speak for me because I'm too sick at heart to do otherwise.
A. R. Moxon's writerly insight is general and idealistic, but above all, humane.
How do you cope with a sense of powerlessness and rage at the people who make terrible choices in your name? How do you make sense of cruelty piled onto cruelty?
Terrible things happen in the world all the time. You are only one person. Avoid taking a zoomed-out perspective where you feel somehow responsible for the actions of millions of strangers in...
Terrible things happen in the world all the time. You are only one person. Avoid taking a zoomed-out perspective where you feel somehow responsible for the actions of millions of strangers in distant places. (Unless through some weird turn of events you somehow are.)
Be a little suspicious of statements starting with "we." It's often a trap. Is "we" really a coherent group, or is it just a bunch of strangers being lumped together for rhetorical purposes, to create a myth of collective responsibility?
Powerlessness? Yes, your power is small compared to the world. You can see things happening without being able to stop them. But why did you think otherwise? You're not a superhero.
You likely have enough power to deal with many things that happen in your own life, and to give a bit of support to other people doing good things. Focus on what you can do rather than all the things you can't. If there's something big happening that affects you, try to get out of the way, and maybe help others get out of the way if you're in a position to do that.
What do you think is being done in your name? Are other people really blaming you or are you imagining it? People on the Internet make all sorts of wild accusations, but that doesn't mean they're fair or realistic.
If you click the link in the post you replied to, they share they have Israeli relatives. It is more personal to them than to the average American wondering if the world is better or worse off...
If you click the link in the post you replied to, they share they have Israeli relatives. It is more personal to them than to the average American wondering if the world is better or worse off because of how our government has distributed military and humanitarian aid.
I wasn't being particularly articulate, and those were at least partially rhetorical questions brought up by the Moxon essay. But there are actions taken in the name of "America" or "Israel" which...
I wasn't being particularly articulate, and those were at least partially rhetorical questions brought up by the Moxon essay.
But there are actions taken in the name of "America" or "Israel" which implicate me as an unwilling participant, as a U.S. citizen and a person of Jewish heritage. I do not condone Israel's enclosure and occupation of Gaza, and de facto colonization of the West Bank. I do not condone unquestioning U.S. support for an apartheid regime, including our shipment of white phosphorus munitions. I can hold these positions without also assenting to Hamas' acts of terrorism and unrelenting refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.
Israel is committing collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and the Netanyahu coalition is proceeding as if that's a just retribution for Hamas' indiscriminate slaughter. There will be no restraint on others' extension of that logic to anyone else (including non-Israeli Jews) unless we protest. [And I was in fact out on the streets to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, for all the good that did.]
It's a really well written piece and deconstructs the issue with clarity, but judging from the comments on the article page even when someone goes to these great lengths to unpack things, people...
It's a really well written piece and deconstructs the issue with clarity, but judging from the comments on the article page even when someone goes to these great lengths to unpack things, people still aren't quite willing to take the central lesson.
I'm always a bit hopeless after reading this kind of stuff. It just so often reminds me how little faith I have in the majority's ability to hold a nuanced belief for any useful length of time, the older I get the more instances I see of those higher ideals being collapsed back into tribal stupidity with rhetoric and lies that take far less effort to get people to accept over the truth.
A few years ago, a controversial far right demagogue right here in Portugal famously opined, in what I expect was meant to be a reassuring way: (translated) "The only dictatorship I want is a...
A few years ago, a controversial far right demagogue right here in Portugal famously opined, in what I expect was meant to be a reassuring way: (translated) "The only dictatorship I want is a dictatorship of the good people."
I wouldn't have been more creeped out if he'd said he meant to send the national guard to set fire to my entire town.
Part of my cynical stance on people in general is that there are no "good people". Or rather, we're all of us "good people". Human beings like to think of themselves as good, and to tell their peers "look how good we are, we're doing good things," and they pat themselves on the back and keep on, I suppose, hurting only the right people.
You can always ferret it out. The more a group sees themselves as good people, the worse it is. The hypocrisy may be buried deep, but it's there. And the harder it is to uncover what the collective is emotional about, the more intense you'll find that smoldering hatred, when it's finally revealed. It's mind blowing how blind people can be about this duality.
I challenge each and every one of those among you who read my comment to give a few minutes of thought to people, or groups of people, you hate and despise. Try to put yourselves in their shoes and consider how they're just good people, just like you and I. Like us, they're only hurting the right people, likely with the best of intentions. It's just that, you know. They're the wrong right people.
This right-wing political leader - a stable genius if I may say so, with significant popular support - has spoken in praise and support of Donald Trump. Then again, our far left-wing political leaders have spoken in praise and support of Vladimir Putin. Hell of a thing, that we have such good people on both ends of the political spectrum.
I see nothing cynical in your stance. It gets to the heart of the matter. Political populism (maybe mostly on the right side of the spectrum these days, but not exclusively so, as you observe) is...
I see nothing cynical in your stance. It gets to the heart of the matter. Political populism (maybe mostly on the right side of the spectrum these days, but not exclusively so, as you observe) is thoughtless and tribal. It hammers on a simplistic good-vs-evil paradigm without considering what, if anything, good and evil mean, so it becomes equivalent to us-vs-them. It banishes empathy. It may be human, but it is deeply inhumane and destructive.
I do not agree that people who physically attack and destroy another group of people out of some decades old conflict (in terms of physical actions), are good people. Would you say, the Hamas who...
I do not agree that people who physically attack and destroy another group of people out of some decades old conflict (in terms of physical actions), are good people.
Would you say, the Hamas who attacked Israeli people, are good people?
I don’t think the retaliation with civil victims on the Palestinian side was good either.
Neither are the Russian people raping and mass-bombing Ukrainians.
You might be missing the point of my comment. The term "good people" is used ironically; there are no good people who don't define themselves as good by contrasting themselves against people they...
You might be missing the point of my comment. The term "good people" is used ironically; there are no good people who don't define themselves as good by contrasting themselves against people they deem acceptable to hurt, at some level.
You can make absolute moral judgments against others, but you have to keep in mind those others are all human beings making absolute moral judgments against you. You can't make a better world by dismissing people in such broad strokes. How are we better people if we, too, are willing to hurt the right people? How are we different?
I like to envision the problem as this massive tangle. You can't make the world better by brute forcing it (gordian knot jokes aside). You need to tease it apart with empathy and understanding.
Or I guess we could all just kill each other and hope for the best.
And yet the Ukrainians are no perfect angels either. They've employed cluster munitions despite all the long-term risks and international bans. Ukraine's actions might be justified because they're...
And yet the Ukrainians are no perfect angels either. They've employed cluster munitions despite all the long-term risks and international bans. Ukraine's actions might be justified because they're defending their country's borders, but they really do have a Nazi problem too. It was true before the war, and it's true now.
Obviously Russia is lying about de-nazifying Ukraine, but the "good guys" like the heroes of Azov contained a significant number of unapologetic Nazis. Human conflict is messy. War has no white knights. This is the reality of violent revolution and war. Everyone feels like their actions are justified.
People seem to feel a need to whitewash a country and its military even if it has moral superiority. I'm not sure why we need to pretend like Ukraine's military is purely a force for good. I'm...
People seem to feel a need to whitewash a country and its military even if it has moral superiority. I'm not sure why we need to pretend like Ukraine's military is purely a force for good. I'm sure they've committed many war crimes of their own. Killing people is wrong anyway - there are no "good guys" in a war.
The general public's inability to handle nuance necessitates such propaganda to manufacture consent — which in itself is sometimes necessary in order to get things done, because people have a...
The general public's inability to handle nuance necessitates such propaganda to manufacture consent — which in itself is sometimes necessary in order to get things done, because people have a tendency for discord.
This is so well written. It puts words very beautifully to what I've been feeling in the decades of living in this dreadful place and the horrendous inhumane things it does to us. I'm just tired. And so so angry. I hate this fucking place and what it is doing to itself and its citizens on both sides. I'm tired of losing friends and loved ones to this neverending disaster of a country and tired of feeling I have absolutely no control over this. I'm tired of the know it alls and the moral absolutists who think they have this whole complex mess figured out and if only they did this not that. Mainly I'm tired of all this pain.
In response to an exhortation to share my opinion on the Hamas/Israel massacres, I'll let this essay speak for me because I'm too sick at heart to do otherwise.
A. R. Moxon's writerly insight is general and idealistic, but above all, humane.
How do you cope with a sense of powerlessness and rage at the people who make terrible choices in your name? How do you make sense of cruelty piled onto cruelty?
Terrible things happen in the world all the time. You are only one person. Avoid taking a zoomed-out perspective where you feel somehow responsible for the actions of millions of strangers in distant places. (Unless through some weird turn of events you somehow are.)
Be a little suspicious of statements starting with "we." It's often a trap. Is "we" really a coherent group, or is it just a bunch of strangers being lumped together for rhetorical purposes, to create a myth of collective responsibility?
Powerlessness? Yes, your power is small compared to the world. You can see things happening without being able to stop them. But why did you think otherwise? You're not a superhero.
You likely have enough power to deal with many things that happen in your own life, and to give a bit of support to other people doing good things. Focus on what you can do rather than all the things you can't. If there's something big happening that affects you, try to get out of the way, and maybe help others get out of the way if you're in a position to do that.
What do you think is being done in your name? Are other people really blaming you or are you imagining it? People on the Internet make all sorts of wild accusations, but that doesn't mean they're fair or realistic.
If you click the link in the post you replied to, they share they have Israeli relatives. It is more personal to them than to the average American wondering if the world is better or worse off because of how our government has distributed military and humanitarian aid.
I wasn't being particularly articulate, and those were at least partially rhetorical questions brought up by the Moxon essay.
But there are actions taken in the name of "America" or "Israel" which implicate me as an unwilling participant, as a U.S. citizen and a person of Jewish heritage. I do not condone Israel's enclosure and occupation of Gaza, and de facto colonization of the West Bank. I do not condone unquestioning U.S. support for an apartheid regime, including our shipment of white phosphorus munitions. I can hold these positions without also assenting to Hamas' acts of terrorism and unrelenting refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.
Israel is committing collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and the Netanyahu coalition is proceeding as if that's a just retribution for Hamas' indiscriminate slaughter. There will be no restraint on others' extension of that logic to anyone else (including non-Israeli Jews) unless we protest. [And I was in fact out on the streets to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, for all the good that did.]
It's a really well written piece and deconstructs the issue with clarity, but judging from the comments on the article page even when someone goes to these great lengths to unpack things, people still aren't quite willing to take the central lesson.
I'm always a bit hopeless after reading this kind of stuff. It just so often reminds me how little faith I have in the majority's ability to hold a nuanced belief for any useful length of time, the older I get the more instances I see of those higher ideals being collapsed back into tribal stupidity with rhetoric and lies that take far less effort to get people to accept over the truth.
A few years ago, a controversial far right demagogue right here in Portugal famously opined, in what I expect was meant to be a reassuring way: (translated) "The only dictatorship I want is a dictatorship of the good people."
I wouldn't have been more creeped out if he'd said he meant to send the national guard to set fire to my entire town.
Part of my cynical stance on people in general is that there are no "good people". Or rather, we're all of us "good people". Human beings like to think of themselves as good, and to tell their peers "look how good we are, we're doing good things," and they pat themselves on the back and keep on, I suppose, hurting only the right people.
You can always ferret it out. The more a group sees themselves as good people, the worse it is. The hypocrisy may be buried deep, but it's there. And the harder it is to uncover what the collective is emotional about, the more intense you'll find that smoldering hatred, when it's finally revealed. It's mind blowing how blind people can be about this duality.
I challenge each and every one of those among you who read my comment to give a few minutes of thought to people, or groups of people, you hate and despise. Try to put yourselves in their shoes and consider how they're just good people, just like you and I. Like us, they're only hurting the right people, likely with the best of intentions. It's just that, you know. They're the wrong right people.
This right-wing political leader - a stable genius if I may say so, with significant popular support - has spoken in praise and support of Donald Trump. Then again, our far left-wing political leaders have spoken in praise and support of Vladimir Putin. Hell of a thing, that we have such good people on both ends of the political spectrum.
I see nothing cynical in your stance. It gets to the heart of the matter. Political populism (maybe mostly on the right side of the spectrum these days, but not exclusively so, as you observe) is thoughtless and tribal. It hammers on a simplistic good-vs-evil paradigm without considering what, if anything, good and evil mean, so it becomes equivalent to us-vs-them. It banishes empathy. It may be human, but it is deeply inhumane and destructive.
I do not agree that people who physically attack and destroy another group of people out of some decades old conflict (in terms of physical actions), are good people.
Would you say, the Hamas who attacked Israeli people, are good people?
I don’t think the retaliation with civil victims on the Palestinian side was good either.
Neither are the Russian people raping and mass-bombing Ukrainians.
You might be missing the point of my comment. The term "good people" is used ironically; there are no good people who don't define themselves as good by contrasting themselves against people they deem acceptable to hurt, at some level.
You can make absolute moral judgments against others, but you have to keep in mind those others are all human beings making absolute moral judgments against you. You can't make a better world by dismissing people in such broad strokes. How are we better people if we, too, are willing to hurt the right people? How are we different?
I like to envision the problem as this massive tangle. You can't make the world better by brute forcing it (gordian knot jokes aside). You need to tease it apart with empathy and understanding.
Or I guess we could all just kill each other and hope for the best.
And yet the Ukrainians are no perfect angels either. They've employed cluster munitions despite all the long-term risks and international bans. Ukraine's actions might be justified because they're defending their country's borders, but they really do have a Nazi problem too. It was true before the war, and it's true now.
Obviously Russia is lying about de-nazifying Ukraine, but the "good guys" like the heroes of Azov contained a significant number of unapologetic Nazis. Human conflict is messy. War has no white knights. This is the reality of violent revolution and war. Everyone feels like their actions are justified.
People seem to feel a need to whitewash a country and its military even if it has moral superiority. I'm not sure why we need to pretend like Ukraine's military is purely a force for good. I'm sure they've committed many war crimes of their own. Killing people is wrong anyway - there are no "good guys" in a war.
The general public's inability to handle nuance necessitates such propaganda to manufacture consent — which in itself is sometimes necessary in order to get things done, because people have a tendency for discord.
This is maybe one of the best essays I have ever read. I don't think I can say more than that right now.