“I thought about how the world can be anything and how sad it is that it’s this.”
– Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

When they are intentionally starving children in Gaza, what more does one need to know about Zionism? What conversations can be had? What legitimate disagreements can there be? Can there be a good-faith defense of genocide?

When genocide is livestreamed to every electronic device daily for 563 days (and counting), and it is still permitted to continue – not only permitted, but abetted and supported – what value is this world, its systems, its laws, its governments, its justice?

What does it mean when Democrats and Republicans can agree on nothing except for their shared desire for more dead Palestinians? What could be done with 17.9 billion dollars other than wholesale slaughter? What is the significance of bipartisan support for genocide facilitating the ascension of fascism in the last election? Does this nation-state, genocidal in its foundation and still committed to genocide 249 years later, merit anything other than opprobrium?

As a father, what do more than 17,400 dead children mean to me? When I look into my two-year-old’s eyes, what sense am I to make of the incomprehensible? Is there anything I would not do to keep him safe? Is there nothing I might not do to those who intentionally caused him harm? Does any parent feel differently? Is existence capacious enough for the pain of so many losses? Do we want it to be?

What does it mean when to be Palestinian means one’s life is disposable? What does it mean when to say “Palestine” means to be kidnapped, jailed, deported? What sense can be made of this world’s ontological hatred of the Palestinian? If its teleological zenith is genocide and fascism, is there anything worth salvaging? Why should we be loyal to that which would destroy us? Should we not seek to destroy it, instead?

What does it mean that genocide is but a symptom and the world is the sickness?

What if the answers did not scare us but guided us?