The Time of the Destroyer
Destruction, pain, and wisdom since 2015
Destruction and clarity
The Trump-MAGA years and the genocide in Gaza have pushed me and many of us into an intense period of loss, re-examination, and learning.
Some of this has been painful. Some of it has been poignant and inspiring. All of it has been clarifying.
Here are some of the things I didn’t know and didn’t see coming before Trump first ran for the presidency and since October 7, 2023.
Despite a lifetime of exposure to some fairly radical politics, I did not know that I was still attached to a lingering belief that the United States is an actual democracy.
I also experienced, after 60 years of reading and watching science fiction, a certain degree of shock when I realized that we signed up for the dystopia not the utopia.
I knew Israel was an apartheid, colonialist state, but I had never heard of the Nakba. I knew very little of the history of Palestine prior to the 1967 Six Day war.
I did not know that 25% of my DNA is from southern Italy where successive generations of Middle Eastern Jews living during the Roman Empire were taken in slavery and indentured servitude. Growing up, we used to joke that my mother’s side of the family looked Mediterranean. Guess the joke was on us.
Despite my Jewish ancestry, prior to October 7th I had zero knowledge of the fact that Jewish Americans are subjected to intense Zionist grooming and that the majority of otherwise progressive Jews in this country are deeply attached to Israel. This surprised me more than anything else. Israel was not a point of reference for my birth family.
I barely knew what Zionism was, and I knew nothing of its real history.
I didn’t know about AIPAC.
I had never heard of Project 2025.
I didn’t understand how pernicious U.S. liberalism is.
I had never before used the word “corrupt” to describe most of the people in Congress and the entire U.S. executive branch.
I never would have predicted that spiritual friends who teach compassion and political friends who urge solidarity would remain scared and silent, or numb and silent in the face of the overwhelming death and suffering in Palestine at the hands of our governments.
I never could have anticipated that so many educated, intelligent people and all of the mainstream media would be so susceptible to such obvious propaganda and lies.
I didn’t know the special pain and poignancy of experiencing the widening gulf between those who are moved to try to stop the atrocities in Gaza and those who, unaccountably, are not.
I did not know how deeply and widely entrenched our elite universities are in brutally supremacist narratives and aims.
I did not know that the Palestinian resistance has been serving for decades as mentors to other resistance movements around the world, including the civil rights and Black power movements in the U.S.
I did not know about Palestinian food, art, literature, dance, or music.
I did not know that Palestine would become the heart and mirror for the world as we experience a group of people cleaving to their faith and each other in the face of one of the most intense and cruel holocausts in history.
I could not have foreseen that millions of people around the world would begin to make the connections between their own situations at home and what is happening to Palestinians.
I didn’t know the sweetness and astounding generosity of the Palestinian people.
I didn’t know what it was to witness a genocide every single day for two years, and how that would change all of us.
How about you? What didn’t you know? What took you by surprise? And what re-examination, learning, and recalibration have you experienced?
with infinite love,
Shambhavi
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Thanks for this, there was a lot that I recognised. But would not stated it this way. So that is one more extra thing to add to my list if I was a person to make lists, which I am not. But very thankful you did 😁
And what a heavy almost two years these are😓 I can’t shake it off and it looks like that is the one thing that is changed the most in me. The feeling of responsibility towards the Palestinian people to help with the change they so very much deserve 🤲🤍 Because it is intertwined with ours and the change the whole world needs if we want to survive, thrive and live in peace ✌️
I think one of the biggest recalibrations I've done in this time, mainly since 2020, has been losing the idea that anyone or anything external would 'save' us from the messes we're in, and losing whatever concept I had that things couldn't get as 'bad' here as they have in many other places throughout history. I've been able to shed some US-centrism and develop a more global perspective through the help of immigrant and refugee friends, as well as reading novels by artists from other lands. I've gotten to learn about histories and liberation movements across the globe and learn more about the incredible extent of US and European imperialism.
I knew a little bit about the Nakba, the occupation, and apartheid just from having known Palestinians since my childhood. But it wasn't until after October 7, 2023, that I started doing serious research. I started learning about the extreme vested interest so many nation-states, corporations, and other political entities have in maintaining the occupation of Palestine and supporting this genocide. I didn't know the US's role, and therefore my own role as a US citizen. I had also never looked closely at Zionist propaganda and the explicitly settler-colonial, antisemitic ideologies of the early Zionists.
I didn't know that it would become an incredibly controversial, potentially career-ending move to call a genocide a genocide. I didn't know how many people in my life would be capable of going about their lives during this genocide without holding it in their heart every single day. Especially since the most recent inauguration, seeing people who were perfectly happy under Biden suddenly start sounding the alarm about fascism, Palestine continues to feel more and more like the definitive...something. Like it's THE issue that folks need to grapple with in order to come into clarity.