One Day

One day there will be no more looking away.  Looking away from climate disaster, from the last rabid takings of extractive capitalism, from the killing of the newly stateless.  One day it will be impossible to accept the assurances of the same moderates who say with great conviction: Yes the air had turned sour and yes the storms have grown beyond categorization and yes the fires and the floods have made of life a wide careen from one disaster to the next and yes millions die from the heat alone and entire species are swept into extinction daily and the colonized are driven from their land and the refugees die in droves on the borders of the unsated side of the planet and yes supply chains are beginning to come apart and yes soon enough it'll come to our doorstep, even our doorstep in this last coddled bastion of the very civilized world, when one day we turn on the tap and nothing comes out and we visit the grocery store and the shelves are empty and we must fully face the reality of it as billions before us have been made to face the reality of it but until then, until that very last minute, it's important to understand that this really is the best way of doing things.  One day it will be considered unacceptable, in the polite liberal circles of the West, not to acknowledge all the innocent people killed in that long-ago unpleasantness. The truth and reconciliation committees are coming.   The land acknowledgements are coming. The very sorry descendants are coming. After all, grief in arrears is grief just the same.  Entire departments of post-colonial studies will churn out papers interrogating the obliviousness that led us to that very dark place, as though no one had seen from the beginning exactly what that place was, as though no one had screamed warnings at the top of their lungs back when there was time to do something.  One day the social currency of liberalism will accept as legal tender the suffering of those they previously smothered into silence, turned away from in disgust as one does carrion on the roadside.  Far enough gone, the systematic murder of a people will become safe enough to fit on a lawn sign.  There's always room on a liberal's lawn. 

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Omar El Akkad 

 ...who once was, then was no more, and would never be again.

 Vigil

George Saunders 

You could never read everything. Completion or mastery were beside the point. All that counted were those occasions when you picked up a book and opened it and its words attached themselves to that moment and transfigured it, and then the moment passed.

Tessa Hadley

The Quiet House

The New Yorker 

February 2, 2026

Death is the moment when somebody comes and says: You know those three things that you’ve always thought of? They’re not true. You’re not permanent, you’re not the most important thing and you’re not separate. 

George Saunders

The New York Times

January 10, 2026