run out of gas out of time out of money
I hate my enemies and I wish them ill. I thought someone might be laughing at my kid yesterday and I wanted to throttle them. I still think about people who came after my wife decades ago and want to serve them the coldest possible revenge. I remember the state terrorizing my juvenile clients years ago and want their buildings to burn.
From my couch, I dream in guillotines and molotov cocktails.
I’m no better than anyone and you’re probably better than me.
Past this line the pure of heart should not tread.
During my brief, failed legal career, I spent most of my time with murderers and thieves. I liked a lot of them. And the one I liked the most ended up doing something as unspeakable as anything we’re seeing today.
I am a poor judge of character.
Caveat emptor.
All of which is to say: I’d be an easy recruit for Hamas, or the IDF, or anyone who promised me a path to avenge the people I love.
My least favorite thing people say: “If I were them, I wouldn’t have done that.” No. If you were them you would’ve done exactly as they did. That’s what it is to be them.
Concocting fantasies of righteousness is the religion of clean-handed zealots.
I’m no romantic, but I will say this: we rebuilt Germany and Japan after they visited atrocities on the world we cannot begin to comprehend. In a brief moment of clarity, brought on by world-historic horror, we figured: people are people and they will respond to the incentives and material circumstances before them.
So, in a sense, Yoav Gallant was right. I’m certainly a “human animal.” I’m not above any response to extremity. I’ll take a quiet life, but if you won’t let me have one, I can’t tell you how I’ll respond except to state the obvious: I’ll probably do something fucked up.
At it’s core, the idea of the post-war order is simple: as individuals, in the heat of the moment, ennobled by grievance, propelled by rage, we simply cannot be trusted. Certainly not in the age of air superiority and atomic weapons.
And why not?
Because it will never be enough. All the blood, all the carnage, all the suffering, if it’s your kid who they butchered like livestock, it will never be enough. You will never be satisfied.
For a moment it seemed like we knew this, but then we forgot and forgot again. Now it’s modernity itself that’s on trial. Things are not looking good.
And underneath all this carnage, what do I see? Exhaustion. Complete and utter despair. We’ve given up. I feel it too; this, all of this, is no judgment. The possibility of a better world has never felt more remote, at least in the darkest moments.
Maybe you didn’t heed my warning. You read this far, you, my moral friend. If you did, tell me this: what is the alternative? What is the military solution? How much is enough? What do we know now that we didn’t know then?
Because if you don’t believe in the modern project, and you don’t have an alternative, then Netanyahu was right: it’s the law of the jungle, but for everyone. And then we’re all Phoebe Bridgers, full of violence and hunger and rage, screaming into the void. At least I am. Aren’t you too?
This might be my favorite thing you've written and the best thing I've read on the war. The undercurrent of ennobled rage comes through much more strongly in something like Thumbs or $20 to me than it does in cinema like In the Fade. Music leaves more space for it to be unresolved, which it always will be.