People said the same thing about not having kings

What if it started with the equivalent of the George Floyd video instead of Oct. 7

I just said, for years before Oct 7th, Palestinians held peaceful protests and the response from Israel was violence and death. If Biden was just waiting for an excuse, why didn’t he do anything in 2021 or 2022, citing these shootings?

Our media and our leaders just don’t care about the humanitarian angle here, Israel represents too much of an opportunity to move weapons and keep the money flowing to the industrial complex.

You’re not wrong.

But also, a people can only retreat from a superior force for so long. When every olive branch is denied, when peaceful action is responded to with force, when people are too exhausted to know what else to do – violence becomes inevitable.

Oct 7th is a great case in point. For years, Palestinians protested Israeli settlements and soldiers with peaceful marches. And the IDF responded by sniping at the peaceful protestor’s kneecaps. All with little to no reaction from outside news outlets and governments.

When people’s back is against the wall, when their only choice is between a long, drawn out violence at the whims of others OR a sharp, intense violence with some semblance of agency – you really can’t blame them for picking the semblance of agency.

The biggest existential threat is still ecological destruction. Old growth forest are raised to the ground, the ocean is warming and acidifying as it absorbs CO2, and it’s all to make computers and toasters that don’t even last a decade.

All hardware becomes legacy hardware in time. Even if we assume they’re eventually able to deliver on all those great big shiny promises, I’d rather not have to schedule an outpatient surgery just to keep up on emails. Pocket touchscreens being practically mandatory is bad enough…