With us or against us

Now with everyone talking about the warfare and overall situation in Israel and Gaza, a common topic has risen amidst that as well. That is, you always need to choose sides.

Not condemning war is not enough, but in public discussions one is yet again way too often expected to choose a side in a conflict and stick to that. The idea goes: "If you're not with us, you're against us." The same argument has been used often before, when speaking of racism, for instance. In the case of racism, you are a racist, if you are not participating in activity promoting anti-racism (which especially in the U.S. nowadays seems to mean rioting, looting stores, and destroying both public and private property; what all that has got to do with racism or anti-racism, I don't know).

In the current happenstance, I find both sides of the conflict appalling, even if in completely different ways. So I don't really care which side wins or loses, even though the outcome is quite obvious to everyone. All I know is that no matter the way this goes, this will cause harmful reactions in the western world as well.

This is all of course part of the big movement of polarization amongst people. If you're not an anti-racist, you're a racist. If you're not boycotting Russia and constantly reminding people that you are, you're on the side of Russia. If you're not sharing all these fancy posts about reminding people about the importance of masks and vaccines, you're a COVID denialist and a conspiracy theorist. The list keeps going on.

Maybe we should just stop caring all this much. I know I will try to.