War Crimes That Weren’t, Purported Participants As Spectators, Non-Shifting Shifts, Pseudo-Intellectual Wankery, and Baudrillard Vindicated Once Again

Niccolo Soldo

Nov 9, 2023

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It’s no secret that there’s money to be made on the internet as a content creator who traffics in sensationalism, hysteria, and other forms of obvious (yet often tantalizing) forms of clickbait. We are inundated with it on a daily basis, but if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Some people are cut out for this approach and do very, very well financially from it. Generally, it requires a very high level of dedication and a constant, rapid-fire reaction to the 24 hour news cycle. It also means sticking your neck out all the time, and being comfortable with being proven to be wrong…repeatedly wrong. The smartest of these types have built-in audiences who are very one-sided in their views and/or happy to consume content that plays on their fears, confirms their priors, and so on. The “luckiest” are those whose audiences don’t care how often the creator is proven wrong in the near (or even immediate) future. Entertainment has a value all its own, and credibility takes a back seat. This is the nature of our present media environment.

There are others (I count myself among these) who prefer to wait at least a day or two before reaching (tentative) conclusions, and formulating arguments and analyses. This is called “being prudent”. This type of individual prefers to inform and analyze more than entertain, cognizant of the fact that this does hamper revenue generation. I will only speak for myself when saying that I try my best to not sensationalize or hype-up events that are happening as they happen. The event itself should inform us how sensational and worthy of hype it actually is. But then again, I am not much of an entertainer.

On the other hand, we must strive to not be BORING. No one wants to read boring (unless it is a very, very niche area of interest/study). To not be boring requires that you sometimes must stick your neck out, knowing full well that it can get THE CHOP. This essay is an instance where I will be sticking my neck out, and where I will be engaging in a bit of pseudo-philosophical wankery. If I am shown to be wrong, I accept my responsibility for it, and expect that people put the dunce cap on my head from time to time. I have been wrong before, and will be wrong again….maybe as soon as I hit the “publish” button when I finish writing and editing this piece. Anyway, on with the show!

My contention is that this new war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is not going to substantively change a single thing in the Middle East or beyond. In fact, my pseudo-intellectual wankery take is that THE WAR IN GAZA IS NOT HAPPENING.

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