Letter from New York
Where are we? The question is historical not geographical.
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“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
—Peter Ustinov
I can’t help but casually spy on people using their phones on public transit. Usually this just means getting a glimpse of someone else’s social media, but in the last month our feeds have been more disturbing.
Something—at least from my vantage point— feels different about the way we’re listening to the distant thunder of this demented war.1 Maybe it’s just my warped point of view.2 I was almost completely offline when Russian invaded Ukraine last year, and now that I’m very much online and in Manhattan, I might be more sensitive to the way that the people of New York— various and connected as we are— digest the bleakest news.
Weeks ago on the F train I watched a woman double-tapping her way through Instagram until a video about the war— seemingly from a Zionist stance— visibly altered her posture. Then she scrolled away to an ad for a ballgown.
More recently I noticed someone open a link to a New Yorker article about Gaza which she did not read, but rather scrolled as quickly as possible to the bottom, closed the browser, opened TikTok, and proceeded to swipe from video to video, watching nothing for long enough to see anything. (Her frantic phone transitions were so familiar they were almost comforting.)