I awoke this morning to the dead in Maine after one more mass shooting, to the dead in Gaza and Israel and Ukraine, to a MAGA anti-democracy fanatic becoming third in line to the Presidency, to a dramatic increase in antisemitism after the worst pogrom since the Holocaust, to an article in the Times about climate destruction, to Trump the destroyer of everything decent and good, always to Trump, since 2015, to Trump.
At breakfast a few days ago, a good friend spoke icily about the moral confusions of the moment. He asked which babies he was supposed to be most concerned about now – babies being aborted, babies being decapitated by Hamas, babies being blown apart by Israeli 500-pound bombs in Gaza. All babies I thought, but that answers nothing really. The spaces where children are safe is being diminished as I type this – either through climate change or pogroms or mass violence or tyrants seeking to smash other countries or resurging ideologies that make others into things. You know that I could keep going on with that list. Stopping at five examples is merely an acknowledgement that the list would become exhausting.
I am trying to make my reactions, my answers, personal. What would I do? Strengthen gun laws, vote to ensure the well-being of children, destroy Hamas, preserve the lives of the innocent in Gaza and the West Bank, support Ukraine, support Jews, vote against every MAGA candidate, oppose Trump in every way, vote for efforts to save the planet.
When I read that paragraph, I see its implicit contradictions, its moral hedges, its weaknesses.
This is a very bad day and worse is to come, and I have no answers but these.
