rené’s Reviews > One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This > Status Update

I think the passages on forms of resistance were reassuring. I never feel like I am doing enough for Gaza, but the author says that these small acts of negation train a person for more. For larger. To spread across a population and disrupt the liberal order.

It makes me hopeful that, maybe if I talk to people about negative resistance, about its impact, there can be a real change. In attitude, at the very least.

The end part about the swastika, and then the talk— “I don’t think I scared anyone, but I’ll never know for sure.”
Earlier on he talks about his own fears— of children being killed, of the situation in Gaza worsening— as irrational.

To me, it is so much more irrational to assume antisemitism based on someone’s complexion, and let it scare you. As a mixed person I understand being wary. Not scared.

I was unfocused while reading today, it was heavily story-based and I wasn’t able to pay much attention.

But the words on terror, I agree they are true. What is one potential individual “terrorist” (Brown man) to a state that commits terrorism to sustain itself? A state that built its constitution through terrorism?

“…after decades of… respectful prodding… is it not at least worth considering that you are not changing the system nearly as much as the system is changing you?”

Exactly.

The exerpt about writers took me a while to understand.

There is a space for the acknowledgement of beauty and the acknowledgement of strife within art. The sole acknowledgement of beauty in the world is inadequate when it is constantly removed through genocide. The sole acknowledgement of strife in the world is inadequate when there is so much beauty in the world.

“Maybe there was never work, only a passing through time and consequence. Maybe we don’t read writers so much as become deeply acquainted with the sites of their passing, or their refusal to pass. What they thought beautiful or grotesque enough to document. Where they chose to expend their finite capacity for concern.”

Wow.

The anecdote about the courtroom in Guantanamo Bay was harrowing— to say that legal proceedings are not correct there, despite them being US courtrooms, is surprising, but is not at the same time.

The analysis of the American identity of “scrappy righteousness” was insightful and masterful— not a contradiction but a form of artificial self-interest. To me, that stems from their separation from Britain.

The comments on language are so insightful.

The inadequacy of language and the West’s “abilities” in general, despite always being portrayed as better than that of the Third World, will never accurately describe humanity. Be it through the language of technology, or the language of the press. There is always an oppressive power it exacts over the Third World but that simply shows its glaring weaknesses.

“Who sided with justice and who sided with power?”
I think that, to fascist voters, you need to side with power to side with justice. That is what they have been indoctrinated to believe.
The writer uses such beautiful and subtle turns of phrase to implicitly portray Western perspectives of foreign countries. I feel like I’m reading an unseen text for English Language GCSE.