I read the news today, oh boy!

...The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity...

What an awful week it has been for news. 

First, the Israel-Hamas War is going to be terrible. 

I can't help but be reminded of Gary Kamiya's 2003 Salon article Sleepwalking toward Baghdad where he talked about the difference between "politics" and "history":

...For we have gone from being in a political moment to a historical one.

I use the words somewhat eccentrically, to distinguish between events that are simple enough to be fully explicable ("political") and those that are too complex to be defined ("historical"). ...

The distinction also has a moral dimension. To exist in history is to have passed beyond the pieties and slogans of the political. History is tragic: politics is not. History is glorious. It is also fatal.

The two great competing ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism, were both self-consciously historical movements. As Czeslaw Milosz brilliantly noted in his classic study "The Captive Mind," it was precisely the abstraction of communism, its claim to have attained the summit of morality and to have incorporated into itself all possible contradictions, that made it so meticulously horrifying. In similar fashion, fascism contained a kind of blankness at its core: the self-glorifying violence of the state simultaneously concealed and revealed the emptiness of its founding concept, the national tribe.

The lesson every government should have learned from the bloody 20th century, one written in blood across the tortured soil of old, very old Europe, is very simple: Avoid history at all costs. History is too big, too abstract, too dangerous. Avoid men with Big Ideas -- especially stupid men with Big Ideas. Take care of politics: let history take care of itself. In a word, don't play God.

We are, right now, living through another historical moment. 

In the coming weeks, I expect neither Israel nor any other country will be able to find a way to negotiate with Hamas thugs to rescue any of the hundreds of hostages abducted by Hamas last weekend. They are lost now, martyrs to a evil cause.

And it appears Israel is going to invade Gaza - the Israeli Defense Force will perceive no other way to regain their tattered reputation. 

Here is a New York Times article which describes in terrible detail what happened: The Secrets Hamas Knew about the Israeli Military

...Hamas, the militia that controls the Gaza Strip, managed to surprise and outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East last Saturday — storming across the border, overrunning more than 30 square miles, taking more than 150 hostages and killing more than 1,300 people in the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history.

With meticulous planning and extraordinary awareness of Israel’s secrets and weaknesses, Hamas and its allies overwhelmed the length of Israel’s front with Gaza shortly after dawn, shocking a nation that has long taken the superiority of its military as an article of faith.

We have no idea how many thousands, or tens of thousands, will die, nor can we predict how Israel can avoid finding itself in an unwinnable quagmire,

The decisions being made now are going to impact millions of lives, reverberate for generations, and risk all kinds of escalation. The U.S. should have learned from 9/11 the profound cost of being guided by anger and fear. I hope that is what we are telling the Israeli government

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) October 13, 2023

Moving on, the news from here in Saskatchewan has been awful too. 

The Scott Moe government has now brought in its legislation to allow teens to be deadnamed in school unless their parents approve, and Moe is using the notwithstanding clause to avoid court challenges. Hundreds of people marched on the legislature to object:

Over 1000 people came out to oppose Scott Moe’s use of the Notwithstanding Clause, which will suspend Charter rights. Saskatchewan people are better than Scott Moe, and we deserve better. He’s gone too far, and we will do whatever it takes to stop him. pic.twitter.com/9DGCbkcRJZ

— 𝘒𝘌𝘕𝘛 (@SameOldKent) October 11, 2023

Welcome to Saskatchewan’s Legislature. The place where the Scott Moe Sask Party government keeps the trans kids and their allies at bay with barricades, bomb squads and snipers. Your group is next. #skpoli Scott Moe’s version of the Trudeau Emergencies Act. pic.twitter.com/Gpm0gMpdC6

— Larry Hubich (@LHubich) October 11, 2023

Sask. Premier Scott Moe barricaded the Legislature, put Snipers on the roof and a Bomb Squad vehicle sitting prominently, while he forced through his 'notwithstanding' clause. This, not because Trans/LGBTQ people are dangerous but because HE WANTS YOU TO THINK THEY ARE.

— Mike Morris (@1MikeMorris) October 11, 2023

Next, is everyone else as tired as I am when Poilievre and his CPC use national and international events only as an opportunity for drive-by smears of Trudeau?

We now fully understand that there is nothing that could happen in the world that Canadian Conservative politicians wouldn’t see as an opportunity to smear the currently elected government.

— John Wing (@JohnWing5) October 9, 2023

Canadian airlift from Israel?

Why are people being so obtuse?

Never mind, I know why 🙄

— David Brown (@OrbitStudios) October 13, 2023

International statement from US and Europe?

Also, the “Quint” was formed while Stephen Harper was PM. Maybe that’s why PP avoided answering your question.

— Marg Foot (@foot_marg) October 13, 2023

They don't care if some line of attack is proven to be untrue, or just doesn't work - they just move on to the next thing.

And journalists and pundits ‘just asking questions’ without a factual basis for their statements are little better.

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) October 10, 2023