Something Else Works

We need a way to bring problems to a wider awareness without murder and terrorism. We are overloaded with information but that’s been true for a long time. We spend a lot of time on platforms that focus in on conflicts, on anger, on division. Social media might be supercharging that mission, but foregrounding tension and conflict has been part of the media landscape for a century plus.

I learned of the events of October 7 in Israel with a quickly sickening stomach. The purposeful slaughter of civilians sickens me. Young people, babies. Old people. Murdered. No good should come of it. These actions should be an absolute dead end. They are reprehensible. What did happen though is that the journalists I listen to and read starting covering Israel and Palestine with a focus and intensity I haven’t witnessed in the past decade. This focus and intensity brought me voices from many sides of the conflict. I learned of veterans of the IDF who believe Israel is on the absolute wrong path. I heard from centrist thinkers who critique Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas inside of Gaza at the corners but generally support it. I heard from Palestinians, both from the West Bank, Gaza and from the larger diaspora who offered tragic first person narratives of their lives in war and also offered ideas for the future. Why do these conversations sprout from murder? Where was the appetite and offerings of these conversations beforehand? It existed. But I didn’t put my eyes on it. I didn’t hear about Jewish Currents, I didn’t see these episodes in my feed from the NYT, from Plain English, from The Gray Area. I didn’t read articles about Palestine in The Atlantic, NYT and the other places I read. My media diet is full of blind spots and it would be arrogant to simply say “the conversations started after October 7”. But it became impossible for me to ignore after October 7. I didn’t digest the Great March of Return protests happening in 2018-2019. What made the journalists I read and myself turn my head was October 7. I feel guilty about that. A reprehensible slaughter brought me to look at issues I had willfully ignored, issues I misunderstood, injustices I muted without realizing I had. The March of Return protests were largely peaceful. This news of peaceful protest didn’t reach my feeds. I am reminded of the folks in my Facebook feed 2013-2020 who seemed to think that the very first think any Black Lives Matters protesters decided to do was to block a highway, the Mall of America, the marathon. As someone who followed the developments of individual chapters of Black Lives Matter more closely I wanted to shout out “they’re trying all sorts of shit, this is not a one approach movement, it wasn’t a block the highways on day one situation. Read more! Learn more!”

It can’t be murder. Cause when it’s murder I can’t remove the cause or the righteousness from the murderous actions. And it can’t be murder cause someone else chose murder. Apartheid is repugnant. You can’t justify it. There isn’t a set of circumstances that will make me think “obviously you had to resort to apartheid, obviously you had to resort to 2,000 lb bombs in crowded areas with children, obviously you shouldn’t do everything in your power to feed starving people”. These go against my moral fiber. These are actions I won’t be forced into. These are actions that you must acknowledge weaken your moral fiber, weaken the potential for you to be regarded as a moral actor. And maybe being regarded as a moral actor doesn’t matter to you anymore. And if that’s the case you’ve lost already. And when you murder to push your agenda, when you murder indiscriminately and viciously, I can’t remove those actions from your cause. Your cause is stained.

Flash forward to Luigi Mangione presumably killing Brian Thompson from United Health Care. Thompson was a father, a husband, a human. He’s gone. The kids don’t have a daddy anymore. It’s reprehensible. It can’t be defended. But here I am again, hearing podcasts that haven’t said shit about healthcare in months dedicating multiple episodes to the topic. And they’re telling me about new ideas. Talking about ways in which health insurance companies might be the easiest entity to point a finger at, but not being the only party culpable for the horrendous health care offerings in the US. I’m hearing talk of solutions, of some of these companies changing their behavior, the government taking a more concerted effort to limit some of the BS these companies offer. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Derek Thompson from Plain English to have two health care economists on his podcast. Brian Thompson didn’t have to die for Ezra Klein to do the same. But, it’s clear that it is Brian Thompson’s killing that has put these issues on the front page. Murder is sticky, we look at it, we read about it. I contemplate a murder in a way I don’t contemplate a protest. The protests don’t rise to that level. They don’t stick.

It’s terrible. These murders are a stain, a tragedy, an act that hurts everyone, not just the murdered. But I stand back and wonder what else rises above? What can get the podcasters to not just talk about efficient work habits and micro-dosing and re-litigating our election? What can get us in our easily distracted world to not be distracted? To not keep on scrolling, to not let the status quo win. It can’t be murder. It won’t be murder. What will it be?