The response to 9/11—the wars in the Middle East and the Patriot Act in particular—were a low point, not a high point, for the West. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:
People are going insane, in the same way they went insane after 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks there was this shrieking emotional intensity which saw critical thinking go out the window and saw people’s minds consumed with a rabid lust for Muslim blood.
I had to take a short break from reading about what’s happening in Gaza. I saw one too many images of dead kids on Twitter and just had to lie down for a while.
It was like running out of health in a video game. I was still trucking along, and then I saw this one particularly gruesome image on Twitter of a dead Palestinian child which I won’t even describe here and my nervous system was like, “Nope, that’s it, we’re done,” and I just felt all the energy go out of me and slumped over.
And that was just me sitting in the comfort and safety of my own home. I can’t imagine what it’s like to actually be there, under siege with all energy and supplies cut off, while it gets harder and harder to get information to the outside world as military explosives rain down relentlessly.
It’s so, so bad, and it’s going to get so much worse. Israel has already taken more lives than the 1,200 it lost in the Hamas attacks, with the official death toll from the Gaza bombings now having passed 1,200 as of this writing, on top of the 1,500 Hamas militants who were killed during the attack. But the killing is going to continue far beyond this point. One gets the sense that the IDF is barely even getting started.
Robert Bolt for Sir Thomas Moore’s character in his play A Man for all Seasons.
“I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.”