The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting, a dialogue between Talia Lavin and Zach Rabiroff, is well worth a read in its entirety.
Zach quotes from a translation of Bertolt Brecht’s An die Nachgeborenen. Here’s the quote and the German original:
Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
What are these times, when A conversation about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many misdeeds!
This reminds me of a lot of social media chastising I’ve seen lately. How can you be posting about the Rugby World Cup when there’s an ongoing genocide in Gaza?
How can you keep going on and on about KPop Demon Hunters when Trump is deploying troops to Chicago?
And yet, here we are. Talia goes on:
The real truth of it is that life goes on and people go to work and it’s hot or cold and some people are dragged off to camps and the police stride through cities and some people are brave and some are scared and some people are baying for blood. That’s where we are, this horrible cusp, where the ship moves from listing to sinking. The banality and the cruelty juxtaposed. It’s hard to understand and contend with, let alone capture. It’s trying to capture a changeling creature that’s savaging you all the while. But it matters if people are brave, it matters to write it down,[…] so it can reach those who need to hear it.