"Crises teasingly hold out the possibility of dramatic reversals only to be followed by surreal continuity as the old order cadaverously fights back."
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news @hexbear.net FeaturedBulletins and International News Discussion from April 27th to May 3rd, 2026 - The Pause Continues; Third Aircraft Carrier Arrives
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from April 8th to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - You Cease Fire, We Keep Attacking
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from April 1st to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - Keeping It Rial In Hormuz
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from March 11th to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - The Fourth Iran VS US+Zionists War Megathread
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from March 6th to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - The Third Iran VS US+Zionists War Megathread
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 23rd to February 28th, 2026 - Schrödinger's Nuclear Program - COTW: Iran
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 9th to February 15th, 2026 - The Return of the Special Period - COTW: Cuba
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 2nd to February 8th, 2026 - The European Satrapies Are Revolting
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 26th to February 1st, 2026 - A Powerless Ukraine
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 19th to January 25th, 2026 - Squaring the Arctic Circle
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 12th to January 18th, 2026 - Abolish ICE - "C"OTW: USA
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 22nd to December 28th, 2025 - The War on Christmas - De-Decemberization
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 1st to December 7th, 2025 - LIBRE vs Fascism - COTW: Honduras
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from November 10th to November 16th, 2025 - The Trials and Tribulations of Tinubu - COTW: Nigeria
news @hexbear.net Bulletins and International News Discussion from October 27th to November 2nd, 2025 - The War on Health + Further Latin America Escalations

It's always been a thing to a greater or lesser extent; there's always a detachment to some degree to mass death/suffering abroad and there's levels of justification and excuses at every level of the chain. At the top it's that they genuinely don't give a shit about large numbers of poor people dying and even when they say they care (e.g. the Uyghur genocide allegations) they don't actually give a shit and it's purely for propaganda purposes. For the average soldier or worker invested in the military, it's "it's not my fault, my contribution is minimal, I'm just following orders from above, it's their fault for commanding me to do this." For the average citizen, the genocides only exist in their nightmare rectangles and they either excuse it ("Hamas shouldn't have provoked Israel, FAFO") or denounce it with necessarily pointless actions because useful ones will make you face consequences - sending money directly could get you investigated, public shows of support could get you fired or even a knock on your door from police.
So everybody's just trying to survive and forming justifications for their ideology after the fact. There's almost never an avenue to help a large group of people in very difficult situations that wouldn't a) bankrupt you and your family, b) take up a lot of time that you're too tired to spend because you're working, and/or c) make you face punishment, so what's left is stochastic violence (complete with a manifesto!) that achieves nothing, or extreme acts of individual protest like setting yourself on fire which also achieves nothing (in a vacuum; sometimes it can be effective if there's an organisation behind you to take advantage of the publicity). This is certainly amplified by the West's propaganda but propaganda doesn't work unless you have some other reason to believe it.
I wouldn't even call it "acceptance" - nobody would say that they "accept" that tons of people die from cancer every year. That's not to draw equivalency between relatively random biological phenomena and humans making a decision to drop bombs onto civilians, it's just that for the average person - even here in this thread! - we can no more miraculously cure a terminally ill person of cancer as stop a bomb from being dropped by an Israeli plane onto a school full of children. It all gets sorted into the same compartment of "terrible things that are happening reasonably far away from me". There is no democratic input into what is going on in Gaza or Lebanon. The only conceivable possibility would be Jill Stein winning, but everybody's too caught up in the prisoner's dilemma to shift their vote from the Democrats to her, and even if they did, Stein would get Kennedy'd by the feds before she could put her signature on the bill to stop weapon shipments to Israel. Inside Israel, there's literally nobody else to vote for, and the overwhelming majority of Israel is only angry at the current government because the genocide isn't happening fast enough and they're confused why there wasn't a dozen nukes dropped onto Gaza on October 8th - and also, of course, they're angry that they're facing consequences for their actions.
I do think that Westerners are uniquely selfish due to their material position over the rest of the world, but I don't think coronavirus had anything really to do with it. All it proved is that they're not even willing to do much of anything even if many of them die, but the "acceptance" - such that it is - of mass death is, in my opinion, a) a phenonemon which dates back centuries, and b) kinda neither here nor there, because Western societies are already profoundly undemocratic and are highly surveilled police states, so there's little opportunity for genuine, shaking-the-foundations revolutionary anger to go anywhere, as 2020's BLM protests and the Iraq War protests indicated. So sure, you could vote for XYZ candidates or join anti-Israel orgs, but until material conditions significantly change, it won't be allowed to influence policy significantly. There's millions dying abroad, that's what's given to you as a fait accompli - all the average Westerner can do is "decide" what emotional response they will have to that, and then go off and do the laundry and dishes and then go to work tomorrow.