#followed by listening to five minutes of settlers close to Gaza

[northwest-by-a-train]

I think one of the reasons modern conspiracy theorists always include some sort of lotus-eater Überdrug that makes you unredeemably evil, whether that's adrenochrome or captagon or extended use of cocaine and various acids, it's because there are behaviours that seem so alien to what is normal human experience that drugs feel like the only plausible justification. The horrors of neoliberalism, war, casual human cruelties seem, I think, very alien to a majority of the population, who are unable to recognize that these "cruel" people just do believe in what they are doing. That this is something every human being has potential for. That they themselves have the potential for it. They look within themselves for the potential for these heinous crimes, whether real or imagined, and I genuinely believe most do not find it, or do not recognize it as such.

And if it's not within themselves, it can't be just within other people, it must come from the evil drug. This of course is one of the underlying assumptions of the war on drugs, that the drugs are the cause of whichever social ills, homelessness, mass shootings, petty crime, drug robberies gone awry, awful parenting, etc... And nowadays you see it has expanded to include mental illness. That the political enemy as well as the mass shooter and the homeless person down the street are all some flavor of insane. It can't be something whose potential resides in each and every one of us. It must be the fugue state of evil cast over their minds.

I say this because seeing videos of people in Israel filming themselves saying their Air Force is pummeling Gaza, that soon there will be nothing but bones and ruins, that they'll build a theme park there, that the land is being cleansed of evil, that the prophecy is being accomplished, that this is the land god gave them, that there are no civilians, that children there really do deserve to die... Who say this not with the somberness of realpolitik or ideology but in a kind of gleeful dreamy trance....

And I find that within me I can not believe a fellow human being could do that. I know intellectually that it's very possible that at a certain junction of ideology and personality, it's possible to say that and believe it. But watching some of these people my heart refuses to believe this isn't the result of some combination of cocaine, meth, undiagnosed personality disorders, periods or menopause, lead poisoning, gas leaks, black mold, toxoplasmosis, lack of sleep..... It feels impossible — and I do mean a profound feeling, something within that makes itself felt — that fellow human beings could have a heart this depraved. And here I'd rather feel a deep human connection with every wacko conspiracy person who has ever lived and grossly misapprehended the world, blaming it all on evil magic pills and unstable female hormones and whatever, than to feel for a second a shared human kinship with those profoundly hateful people. There is a limit to reason and thought and imagination within me and it has been reached. And I believe many, observing this conflict, have found this limit in themselves, on both sides of the conflict. And I cannot believe this will end well either.