Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

It’s maddening, isn’t it? To watch all these establishment politicians and media figures scatter to their personal accounts and feign moral outrage over Gaza… now, after nearly two years. As if this genocide just sprang out of nowhere. As if it wasn’t always leading here.

And why the sudden shift? I think it’s because they made the grotesque calculation that it’s going to be more difficult to sell and justify images and video of people and children starving to death than it has been to sell and justify images and video of people and children blown apart by bombs and bullets, shot and dropped by the Israeli military using American weapons.

They’ve mastered the language of mass murder (“collateral damage,” “self-defense,” “human shields”) to sanitize the spectacle of slaughter. But famine? With aid trucks parked at the border? That narrative can’t be spun.

It’s despicable. It’s craven. Because even if aid started flowing into Gaza right now (and we must demand it does), thousands would still die from this man-made, entirely preventable famine. You can’t hand a starving person a meal and expect that to save their life. Starvation at this stage requires urgent medical care. And yet, I don’t see this shameless political class advocating for that. All I see is damage control, a scramble to save face before their propaganda collapses entirely.

You know who was right from the start?

The students. The same ones these politicians and pundits vilified, smeared, and begged to see brutalized.

The students saw the truth from the beginning, as they often do, especially when it comes war and crimes against humanity. In fact, this country has a long tradition of celebrating its young dissenters… decades after attempting to silence them. And I bet that all these universities will one day brag about their “brave” student protesters, the same ones their administrators sold out, expelled, and ushered in the cops to beat and arrest.

I visited the Portland State University Library a few times while students occupied it, protesting their school’s complicity in funding this genocide. And while there, I spoke with a lot of onlookers, including staff, and I was often met with more outrage at the students’ actions than by what was happening in Gaza. My response was always the same: You should be proud of them. Proud that there are young people in your city, at your school, with the courage to stand against such an atrocity, and the guts to confront the powerful political machine enabling it.

One of the most valuable things college can offer is the chance to uncover the world’s manufactured cruelties, to trace the roots of its brutal inequalities, and to recognize your country’s hand in them… and then rage against that.

What else is college for these days, besides acquiring crippling debt? A degree? Most people have one now; they’re practically useless, ask anyone currently searching for steady employment. But you can walk away with something more enduring: an unwavering sense of justice, solidarity with your peers, and an unshakable moral core. That will be useful for your entire life. And it’s the only thing that’ll make a better world possible.

The beauty of it? You don’t need college to find that.

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