The Enshittification of Politics and the Hope We Find
As the year ends, a reflection on the global degradation of politics and the choices it leaves us with.
This is the last post of the year, and the last one before Christmas. It feels dishonest and irresponsible to end it with a gesture of closure, resolution, or uplift. The year itself has resisted all three with remarkable consistency. As the famous Turkish football coach Fatih Terim puts it, in his inimitable Turkish-English: “What can I do, sometimes?”
A Global Condition, Not a Regional Pathology
Gaza, in particular, has functioned over the past year or so as a site of moral exposure, revealing not only the limits but the exhaustion of international law as a meaningful constraint on state violence.
Elsewhere in the region, crises persist in quieter but no less consequential forms: the long-stalled question of Hezbollah’s integration into the Lebanese army continues to hollow out the Lebanese state from within; in Egypt,…
