To Remain Human

Hearing the Possible End of a Civilization and Choosing Not to Look Away

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

I remember when President Trump’s tweets felt shocking. Destabilizing. Even surreal. Back then, the shock had edges.

Now I find myself missing the days when “shocking” meant something smaller.

Today, driving and listening to The Daily, I heard a line read aloud from President Trump’s Truth Social account:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

I instinctively tapped the brakes. There was no one behind me, thankfully. I waited until the next light, then rewound it with my thumb, as if I might have misheard.

I hadn’t.

And then I kept driving.

A few minutes later, I was back inside the day, doing things that, not long before, had felt important. But I felt a question wrap itself around my throat, tightening just enough that I couldn’t quite ignore it. What could possibly be more important than the end of a civilization? And what does it mean that I could continue at all, as if that sentence were just another piece of information?

“There is no such thing as only words,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote in response. Words like these do not simply describe a possible future. They widen it. They make certain kinds of destruction imaginable, and therefore, over time, more easily justified.

Once spoken, an idea like this does not vanish. It lingers. It settles into the atmosphere like something alive. It waits, like a specter at the edge of the room. It does not force itself on us. It just stays long enough that the next time it is said, it feels a little less impossible.

As a Jew, I do not hear a sentence like that abstractly.

I hear how quickly language can expand and lose its precision. From confronting a regime to condemning a people. From naming a threat to imagining the erasure of a civilization. The categories blur. The scale shifts. And something essential is lost in the process.

Our tradition does not deny war. It does not pretend enemies do not exist. But it insists on limits, even then.

When approaching a city, we are commanded to call out for peace first. In the midst of a siege, we are forbidden from destroying fruit trees, preserving the conditions for life beyond the conflict. And in his laws of war, the Rambam warns against wanton destruction.

He is not only regulating behavior. He is guarding against a mindset in which anything becomes permissible. Because once that line is crossed, war no longer remains bounded. It becomes something else entirely.

We are a tradition that elevates life. Even in conflict. Even in the presence of an enemy. Especially then.

War may at times be necessary. Annihilation is not.

And something in the body knows this.

Language like this does not just register as information. It unsettles. It tightens the chest, or dulls the senses, or slips past awareness and leaves behind a quiet residue. Even when events are not happening here, they are happening in our awareness. And awareness consumes energy.

If we try to carry the full weight of a sentence like this, it will make us a little crazy.

We will refresh the news over and over again, as if the next update might restore some sense of control. We will find ourselves snapping at people we care about, or losing patience with a stranger in a way that feels disproportionate. We will feel spikes of fear or anger that have nowhere to go.

Or we will do the opposite.

We will scroll past it. We will pour another drink. We will reach for whatever takes the edge off, even for a few minutes. Friends of mine tease me for not keeping snacks in the house, but I know myself well enough to know that no amount of Cheez-Its is going to settle the kind of unease a threat to end a civilization creates. Though if they were here, I’d probably reach for them anyway.

This is what happens when the nervous system is overwhelmed. We either grip tighter, or we go a little numb.

Neither makes us more useful. Neither makes us more human.

So the work is not to carry everything. But it is also not to carry nothing.

There are things we can act on. Things we can influence. And things we must witness without pretending we can resolve them today.

And then there is the question of response.

For some, the response will be public. To speak clearly. To write. To name, without distortion or exaggeration, that language which imagines the destruction of entire civilizations crosses a line.

For others, the response will be relational. To check in on those who feel particularly vulnerable. To refuse dehumanizing language in conversation. To hold a boundary, quietly but firmly, in the spaces where we actually have influence.

And for many, the response begins internally. To notice what this kind of language does to us. To interrupt the drift toward numbness. To resist the slow normalization of what should never feel normal.

We will know more soon. Whether this was escalation in language, or something far more devastating in action.

But even before we know what comes next, something is already being asked of us.

Not to panic.
Not to turn away.
But to remain human in the presence of language that makes that harder.

Because steadiness is not indifference. It is disciplined capacity.

And the moment that kind of language no longer stops us, no longer catches in the throat or the body, we will have already lost something essential in ourselves, long before any civilization disappears.

READER’S NOTE:

If this piece stirred something in you, don’t keep it to yourself.

It helps me to know that these reflections are reaching people in real time and that we’re not each carrying this moment alone.

Subscribe to The Deep End for more writing that helps make sense of moments like this without numbing out or turning away.

And if you know someone who is feeling unsettled, overwhelmed, or quietly holding more than they’re saying, pass it along. Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can offer is language that reminds us we’re still human, together.