Cruelty, courage and love
The joy in Gaza at the announcement of a cease fire agreement has dominated the news. Announced on January 15th, the 96th birthday of Martin Luther King, the Biden administration said a cease fire would begin Sunday, January 19. Immediately people danced, hugged, sang, cried, and cheered at the possibilities of peace. It was an outpouring of relief at the end of a nightmare.
But these sounds of joy were quickly drowned out by the intensification of bombardment by Israeli forces. More than 100 Palestinians were killed as helicopters and drones dropped explosives. Palestinians braced for more death, as Israel attempts to advance its positions prior to the effective date of the cease fire. UN officials reported that they were already picking up signs of Israeli efforts to thwart the promised humanitarian aid.
Even as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu affirms a cease fire, people are living with fear and death.
There is a particular cruelty in this moment, when hopes, still possible in the midst of such destruction, are again crushed by violence. This assault on the spirits of people is even more intense when we realize that this “deal” is substantially what was discussed in May of last year. So much death could have been prevented, so many lives left whole.
We are living in a time when such cruelty is commonplace. Our collective capacity to ignore the human consequences of our actions is the hallmark of public life today.
Such ignorance is vividly on display throughout the background noise of the Senate hearings on the Trump nominees to assume responsibility for running the agencies of government. Seldom have so many people been so poorly qualified to assume so much responsibility for major areas of lives.
The Senate Finance Committee interviewed Scott Bessent for Secretary of the Treasury. He embodies the children’s story of the fox guarding the hen house. The Judiciary Committee interviewed Pam Bondi for attorney general. She is most known for echoing the Trump-world belief that the 2020 election was stolen. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is slated for the Interior Department. He proclaimed his intention to increase gas and oil drilling on protected lands.
The combination of conflicts of interest, lack of experience, and unquestioned loyalty to the person of the president rather than to the principles of the constitution is unprecedented. Yet all of it pales compared to the appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. He is astonishing unqualified. As Senator Tammy Duckworth said, “the manager of your local Applebee’s has more experience managing a bigger budget and more personnel than Pete Hegseth.”
What Trump, Musk, and Hegseth will do is clear. The Guardian summed up the policy implications:
Hegseth leaned hard into the Musk project of ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and reducing the number of women and minorities in positions of leadership. “This is not the time for equity,” he said, repeatedly casting women’s presence in the military as a threat to readiness. He seems determined, too, to loosen American soldiers’ obligations to international law in ways that would enable them to kill more civilians and torture more prisoners. He said he would use the military to facilitate mass deportations; he said he would not give soldiers stationed in Republican-controlled states funding to travel for abortion care.
Hegseth brings a history of white, male, narrow Christian Nationalism to the most lethal fighting forces on the globe. He celebrates the Christian Crusades, the death of Muslims and the subjugation of women and people of color. He uses religion to justify cruelty and killing.
Our own capacities to care for each other, to find ways to protect life and our earth will require much more of us. Our courage and love need to be bigger than the petty cruelties of those who assume the authority to rule.