Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Dear Peace Diary,

It’s been too long since I wrote in you. Don’t take that personal. I’m still an activist, I still cry out for peace, I’m still slightly insane. But what’s totally insane is, I’m not sure how to cry out for peace these days without Western liberal democracy accusing me of antisemitism.

It’s soul-gutting, Peace Diary, being pressured to keep quiet about the ongoing extermination of Palestinians, out of fear of being strung up as a neo-Nazi (which would, PS, delight today’s actual neo-Nazis no end). The ironies continue, Peace Diary – I mean, you could be an award-winning anthropologist and still be considered an antisemite if you were to observe that, scientifically speaking, Palestinians are identifiable as human.

Yet I stay strong, Peace Diary! I raise my FIST! I wear my keffiyeh OUTSIDE the house; I go to Palestine PROTESTS: take THAT, Reality! But outside of the left-leaning pro-Palestine movement, I keep losing liberal friends. One by one…

So I try to reconnect with Western liberal democracy. I listen to NPR; I go to cultural events mentioned in the New Yorker; I have a Joan Didion tote bag. I also try to keep up with old writer friends I first met decades ago in the movement. WOOOPS – I’m late to see one of them on a panel at the annual Borough Book Fair – gotta run!

* * *

Dear Peace Diary,

Hold me. I am so sad. I went to this Book Fair to see my old friend speak on a panel. Since I last saw them, my friend has become nonbinary – also hugely successful and famous, partly by writing about activists. So I wanted to hear them talk about their latest book, Polycule This! – and how it deals with the amoral narcissism of........

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