Words, words, words.
I was at the Boston Marathon bombing. I was walking through an alley towards the finish line with a large crowd when I heard a distant thump, a fact that feels simultaneously more and less real as the years have passed. As I was idly checking Twitter — which, congratulations to all companies like Twitter for capturing a part of our attention over the years; you sure have done a great job with it — I realized what had happened. As I was doing my best to pass information along, as things felt weirdly calm, quiet, and normal around me — even though I was mere blocks away — I felt two emotions that are worth noting: the first was compulsive frustration. Boston was my city. Like others with cities of their own, I know Boston well enough to have a list of several different memories attached to countless street corners. And, even though the bombing had nothing to do with me, I felt for a moment like I owned the situation. This was my city, and they were doing this here? The second noteworthy emotion was surprise and incredulity when I saw a few people on Twitter loudly noting that the shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin hadn’t received a comparable amount of attention. Why were folks bringing this up now, I thought. Something has just happened, we don’t even know the full extent of what’s going on, and we’re supposed to pivot to something that happened months prior?
I can’t recall if Charlie Warzel or Ben Collins recently said this, but we are not meant to be our own PR outlets online. We are not representing a country or a company when we speak, even though we are now frequently treated as such. We are doing our best to engage in whatever community we can and to be the best responsible actors we can in contributing to said community.
In the immediate aftermath of the election of the former President, a friend of mine — a teacher — asked for reading resources she could share with her students so that her students could get a better sense as to what was happening around them, and why. I signal-boosted her request. A relative of mine responded by suggesting that the place where she worked should dock her pay.
I once gave a rideshare ride to a retired army general who was spending his days working as the head of security for an international oil company in the Middle East. For a majority of the ride, we talked about the difference between ‘talking’ and having ‘skin in the game’ and what it might mean for our conversations to recognize that.
It didn’t take long — maybe an hour? less? Probably less — to realize that those speaking out about the murder at the Sikh temple had a point. And that the point they were making was perfectly reasonable and fine. Multiple things can be true at the same time.
Here are some things I’ve been reading over the past week that have struck me as helpful or useful: this piece from Arielle Angel (“We cannot cross until we carry each other”), this piece from Noga Tarnopolsky, this op-ed from Haaretz (which seems to overlap well with what Tarnopolsky flags in her piece), this piece from Ismail Abrahim, this piece of writing offering a glimpse into life in Gaza, this piece in The Nation, this piece from David Klion, and this piece from Sheera Frenkel.
Here are some things I would not like to be reading, that I don’t think help us in either the short or long term: a banner drop in Tel Aviv literally advocating genocide, Harvard students getting doxxed and having their faces displayed on the side of a truck, David ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ Frum suggesting that the words of students are ‘murderous,’ Biden lying about seeing pictures of decapitated children, a Stanford instructor going full anti-semite in the classroom, a Christian member of the House of Representatives coming to work wearing an IDF uniform, the President of Israel falsely claiming that all of Gaza is responsible for the attack, the State Department issuing internal warnings against using phrases like, "de-escalation/ceasefire," "end to violence/bloodshed," and "restoring calm" …
In an environment filled with bad information, good information — regardless of reach — is worthwhile.