Gaza was livestreamed.
That sentence should have ended the world as we know it.
A genocide, documented in real time, filmed by its victims, uploaded from phones in rubble, available to anyone on Earth with an internet connection, watched by hundreds of millions of people while it was happening.
And the governments of the world's self-described democracies continued to supply the weapons.
And the platforms continued to suppress the content.
And the people continued to scroll.
And the weapons continued to arrive.
We live in the first era of human history where it is possible to watch, in real time, the killing of a people, to see their faces, to hear their voices, to watch the moment the building falls, and for all that visibility to produce almost nothing.
Almost nothing.
No Nuremberg.
No intervention.
Hashtags. Protests that were permitted and then ignored. A ceasefire resolution vetoed. More weapons authorized.
If visibility alone could stop power, Gaza would have stopped it.
It didn't.
Which means we need to stop telling ourselves that awareness is the same as action.
That sharing is the same as solidarity.
That witnessing, even anguished witnessing, even enraged witnessing, is, by itself, a political act.
It is not.
The empire has made peace with being watched.
It has made peace with your outrage.
It factored your outrage into the plan.
And then it dropped the bomb anyway.