Tensions

There are many things going on in the world right now that point to the fact tensions are rising: the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the Gaza tragedy to name but a few. It may seem like this accumulation is overwhelming, because it arguably is: we haven’t seen such a concentration of violent global events in years.

However, and no matter how hard that may be, we should very much try to remain cool headed. Otherwise, they win.

The Kirk assassination for one: the reason this act is having such an echo, despite the otherwise monstrous amount of shootings taking place in the United States on a daily basis, is the symbolic nature of a pro-gun activist getting gunned down by the very weapons he fought to keep in people’s hands. Whatever the motive, this obviously is a crime and the idea of an activist, no matter how violent their rhetoric, would get shot for that reason alone is incredibly ominous. My thoughts on this amount to a mix of fear and anger: it is because of the likes of Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes… that we currently see growing tensions in the overall discourse. And this episode will only worsen the divide. The fact that we have political leaders like Donald Trump doesn’t help.

Meanwhile, the ongoing attack against Ukraine remains essentially unresolved. The aforementioned Donald Trump obviously failed in reaching an end to the conflict, even though he resorted to the most morally reprehensible tactics in the book: publicly shaming the president of the smaller, invaded country (Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy), meeting with the president of the larger, invading country (Putin) without inviting the former, posting a host of contradicting statements… At this point in time, we stand in a deadlock between a valiant, invaded nation that fights with all its strength despite limited — and fluctuating — support and Putin’s Russia, which still aims to conquer significant parts of a sovereign European nation. And we still don’t know if international law and political reason will prevail.

Then we have Gaza. Arguably the most traumatic event unfolding before our eyes, even if there are numerically worse tragedies out there, because it cristallises virtually every facet of our worldview: religion, politics, history, sociology, psychology… I wrote about this before, and recently reposted the same with surprisingly high amounts of negative reactions (from Jewish friends), so I don’t really see the point in repeating myself. Instead, I will let more expert voices condemn the current situation for the crime that it is, whether or not we call it a genocide: international legal scholar Philippe Sands as interviewed by New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein.

In the years I spent reading and listening about this topic I admittedly did not know enough about before 2023, this is perhaps the finest exchange I found regarding a tragedy that we are very much still letting happen.

Again, I remain hopeful. We as a species are capable of terrible and great things. So far, in humanity’s history, I contend the great outweighs the terrible. Let us all work towards keeping it that way.