And so for two years the worst people in the world have played out the script that was written on October 7, and everything is worse for the Palestinians. Everything is worse for the Iranians, and everything is worse for Americans, too; one need not invest too deeply in the factional conflicts around “Genocide Joe” or the continuing debates on swing-state polling to recognize that the Democratic coalition was badly fractured by October 7 in ways that were difficult to redress by November 2024. And today horrible people are in charge in Jerusalem, deep in the tunnels under Gaza, and in Washington DC.
I looked at my archives to see what I wrote about the attack two years ago. The first post I wrote after it was this one, which ended with this:
I don't know how this new war (or new iteration of an old war) is going to play out, but I do know there is no plausible scenario where it isn't awful.
This is less about my prognostications than the fact that "this will lead nowhere good" was obvious two years ago. And yet, the world marched right into nowhere good without much hesitation.
