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Emmett Rensin, writing at Los Angeles Review of Books:

But if it is childish, if any of this—the outrage, the horror, the belief that something must be done—is childish, it is only because a child could see it. It is only adults who find comfort in the reassuring sobriety of pessimism. I keep reading that these protesters—like us, like the left wing of the Weather Underground—have been seduced by anti-American propaganda, by the nefarious infiltration of subversive “ideology” into feeds and articles and schools. If you believe that, you must imagine 9/11 with a twist: hours after the towers fell, as FDNY and NYPD officers swarmed the scene looking for survivors, a second wave of al-Qaeda hijackers brought another plane held in reserve, crashing it into the smoldering ground to kill the rescue workers they had lured there with the first attack. This is ordinary business in Gaza and Lebanon. What dastardly “ideology” is required to find this fact appalling? What far more common ideology is required to shrug, to accept that this is the way the world must be?

The United States commands the world from atop a mountain of skulls. That other empires have done the same—will do the same—is no more a defense than that of a murderer who tells the court that homicide is common, unavoidable. There is no nation we will not bomb; no children we will not incinerate; no civilian we will not maim; no people we will not turn to ash if doing so serves some minor interest; no persecution, surveillance, or exploitation we will not tolerate abroad or at home so long as we are not too troubled by it in our ordinary lives. Much of it does not even make the headlines. In the first months of 2026, the United States has bombed nearly 20 sovereign nations. I do not believe that you could name two-thirds of them without consulting your favored LLM.

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