The western Christmas spirit has died somewhere in the Gaza ruins, not with a bang but with a long, televised whimper. It did not vanish overnight. It suffocated slowly under layers of rationalizations, press briefings, festive discounts, and carefully worded condolences that mean everything and nothing at once. While lights flicker in European squares and shopping malls pipe in carols about peace on earth, a different soundtrack plays in Gaza, drones, collapsing concrete, and the quiet arithmetic of counting the dead.
Christmas, at least in its western civic form, has long stopped being strictly religious. It became a moral season, a ritualized pause where societies pretend to remember compassion, mercy, and the value of innocent life. That pretence now lies buried under rubble. You cannot sing about goodwill to all while explaining, with straight faces, why thousands of children are acceptable collateral. You cannot hang ornaments shaped like stars while excusing the erasure of entire neighbourhoods beneath real ones exploding in the sky.
What is most striking is not the violence itself, which history reminds us is never new, but the emotional choreography around it. Western governments perform grief like a rehearsed play. There is sadness, yes, but never enough to interrupt arms shipments, diplomatic cover or strategic silence. There is concern, always carefully balanced so it does not tip into accountability. The message is clear, some lives are tragic losses and others are unfortunate statistics.
Christmas once symbolized a temporary suspension of cruelty, a ceasefire of the soul. Even during world wars, stories were told of soldiers laying down arms for a night. Today, the idea of a moral pause feels quaint, almost embarrassing. The bombs do not slow for holidays. The algorithms do not rest. Outrage itself is scheduled, optimized, and quickly replaced by the next trending distraction.
In living rooms across the West, families debate whether it is appropriate to bring up Gaza at the dinner table. It is uncomfortable. It ruins the mood. It makes people defensive. And so the conversation is postponed, diluted, or redirected toward safer abstractions. Peace, everyone agrees, is nice. But specifics are messy. Specifics demand choices, and choices demand responsibility.
The modern Christmas aesthetic thrives on selective vision. We curate what we see and what we refuse to see. A nativity scene with a brown-skinned baby is displayed proudly, while real brown-skinned children buried under debris are framed as regrettable but inevitable. The contradiction is so glaring it requires constant noise to drown it out: sales, slogans, patriotic language, and the comforting myth that power, when wielded by us or our allies, is inherently moral.
This is not about one conflict alone. Gaza has simply become the clearest mirror. It reflects a broader collapse of western moral confidence, replaced by transactional ethics. Values are now conditional, activated only when convenient. Human rights are invoked like seasonal decorations, brought out for some crises and packed away for others.
Many will argue that Christmas spirit is personal, not political. That kindness exists in charity drives, donated toys, and warm wishes. But charity without justice is anaesthetic, not healing. Sending aid while endorsing the conditions that make aid eternally necessary is not compassion; it is management of suffering. It allows people to feel good without asking hard questions about why the suffering persists.
The ruins of Gaza are not just physical. They are symbolic wreckage, exposing how hollow western moral rituals have become. When a society can compartmentalize slaughter and celebration so efficiently, something essential has eroded. The carols still play but they echo strangely stripped of meaning, like songs sung in a language no longer understood.
Perhaps the Christmas spirit is not dead forever. But if it is to mean anything beyond nostalgia and consumer comfort, it will require more than candles and hashtags. It will demand the courage to see clearly, to name injustice even when it implicates allies, and to accept that peace on earth is not a decorative phrase. Until then, the lights will shine brightly in the West, and somewhere under the dust and debris, the spirit we claim to cherish will remain unaccounted for.
History will remember not only what was destroyed, but who looked away and why. Future generations may ask how a season devoted to hope coexisted with indifference so disciplined it resembled policy. The answer will not be found in speeches, but in the silence we normalized, rehearsed, and defended together while calling it realism, balance, or unfortunate necessity.
I ride the wind at Christmas time Across a black and wintry sea Strapped to a chair High in the air Deep in the dark, no Moon to see.
Before I am allowed this trip Officialdom X rays my grip. I must be closely scrutinized, My pockets scanned, routinized While my heartbeats do a flip.
And then, aboard, we must be fed With mini portions, snips of bread. We sit and wait and drowse with strain Squashed into this aeroplane Emitting groans for home and bed.
Finally, at dawn we see The snowy hills of Helsinki, The land where Santa Claus resides (So the Christmas ad confides) But we just pray to land safely.
With creaking joints and bleary eyes We greet the cold Finnish sunrise, We hug the wife, the family And stagger to the Christmas tree. "I made it, kids!". Big surprise!
Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born at 7th of February 1812 and died 9the of June 1870. He was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
First published 1843 Ovi eBook Publishing December 2023
A Christmas Carol
Read it online or download HERE! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDFHERE! All downloads are FREE!
“I’m just as confused too. Just processing it. It’s like abracadabra. Government magic.” That was my friend and editor, Kola King, to whom I had expressed confusion on an editorial the Punch newspaper wrote on the news that it had cost the NNPC 17.5 trillion naira in oil subsidy and oil pipeline security. How can it be? The average man like me in Nigeria has accepted his fate that the petrol price has been deregulated and can sell for any amount that Dangote and Tinubu want. President Bola Tinubu and his spokespersons, who can number up to twenty, depending on what subject you are talking about, have boasted about the economic magic their principal had performed on the economy that Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, brought down the cliff in his eight years of misrule. Those who can walk are walking, and those who cannot have been staying at home, going only to places that are necessary. So how come the financial statement of NNPC for 2024 is reading that explosive figure again on subjects that Nigerians had thought were done with?
That is Nigeria for you; the more you look, the less you see. Government is magical; this Tinubu administration much more. Up to the time of writing, I’m still looking for a person, an accountant perhaps, who will explain the issue to me. The only functioning refinery at Porthacourt has been shut down, and so the nation is back to the era when, during Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, thousands of workers collected salaries for eight years without doing anything. Even that is understandable, but what about subsidy? What then is the meaning of Dangote Refinery, a private refinery in Lagos, which the Tinubu government is reported to have conceded many things to and which is said to have enough capacity to meet our domestic needs? But in Nigeria, the more you look, the less you see. The summary is the nation is back to square one, with ever-increasing prices, and the government is still claiming it is subsidizing the petrol price. If you remember, the issue also was there before President Tinubu’s magic.
The president said the issue of turning the economy around has engaged his attention so much that he has had little time for the gaping insecurity in the nation. His lieutenants have been quoting GDP figures, which economic illiterates like me have been marvelling at. If the GDP has been rising as they said, we should be having foodstuffs at reduced prices on our tables. But we are not. So what is the effect of the rising GDP and the rising foreign reserve? Since Magic shaving powder became N21,000 about two months ago, I have reverted to a blade to keep my beard trimmed. Again, the more you look, the less you see. Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele boasted about his good work on the economy until he was forced out of office, and we began to see how much he is said to have stolen and the estates he alone built in Abuja. The more you look, the less you see. The economy has not improved; somebody is cooking figures, and there is some international conspiracy to put Nigerians to sleep, believing that all is going well. The more you look, the less you see. Nigeria is dancing round in circles; President Tinubu is receiving accolades he does not deserve. Who will help ordinary Nigerians decipher these lies?
The economy is not improving; the president and his team are telling lies to Nigerians in collaboration with international agencies. But thanks to Donald Trump of America, who shouted at our president like a stern teacher scolding an erring pupil. That woke the president up. That took his attention away for a while from the lies about the economy to the reality of unwarranted deaths that have become the lot of Nigerians. But that has helped Nigerians to know a little about the insecurity problem, especially about the origin of banditry. Only God can decipher the tons of lies that have been told here too. It is beyond the capacity of mortals. I met a politician who told me the origin of banditry. Who else should know? They know things we, the ones that elect them every four years, do not know and may never know. Tinubu is in the know of the origin of the banditry, this gentleman told me. How? The more you look, the less you see. In 2015, when the APC of Buhari and Tinubu knew they would win but suspected that the sitting government of Goodluck Jonathan may not quit, Nasir El Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State; Usman Bugaje, a chieftain of the APC who had crossed there from the PDP; and Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC for that year, had allegedly recruited, through Myeti Allah, an umbrella organization for Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria, Fulani from the foreign nations of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, etc., with the intention of deploying them to make the nation ungovernable should Goodluck Jonathan refuse to leave. That was the reason for the popular statement of Buhari that blood will flow. The current president, Bola Tinubu, was also in the know of that plan. Apart from that plan, they also visited America, where they sought help to remove the government of Goodluck Jonathan, who they accused of being inefficient and clueless.
It was alleged that they had recruited and fully armed thousands of these foreign Fulani in the north. But surprisingly, Goodluck Jonathan placed a call to Buhari when it became obvious to him that he didn’t win the election, even when INEC had not officially released the result. The foreign Fulani were no longer needed, but where do they go? Those who brought them had no plan to return them. These Fulani had seen the wealth of Nigeria compared to their impoverished countries. Left in the bush, the foreign Fulani devised the plan of kidnapping Nigerians and running to the bush, from where they demanded huge ransom. They became very rich in a very little time. And they won’t go back to their nation again. They have tasted the good of Nigeria.
If President Bola Tinubu knew of the existence of this kidnapping gang in the bush, why was Tinubu short of plans to evacuate them? Why did he promise to recruit half a million soldiers to the Army to combat the terrorists and the insurgents? The more you look, the less you see: the deliberate attempt of leaders to hoodwink Nigerians. Create problems and tell lies about the solution to it. Nobody except Bugaje told anything about it to Nigerians. But it is difficult that big men like Buhari and Tinubu and Nasir El Rufai, a man that must be acknowledged as one of the most deceptive Nigerians alive, will hatch such an evil plan against their fatherland. The more you look, the less you see. The one who proposes to solve your problem is really the source of that problem, and he makes his living out of the problems he created in the first instance. Nasir El-Rufai is nowhere to be found as the threat of Trump invasion looms over the nation. Nothing has been heard from him. Tinubu is feigning being overwhelmed, but he knows the origin of the problem. Buhari, on whose behalf the foreign Fulani were brought, was given a hero’s burial even when these people knew he was either by acts of ommission or commission partly responsible for the terrorism ravaging Nigerians and killing thousands. They kept mute and are telling lies. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria!
The domestic Fulani who has criminal tendencies also joined the now lucrative business of kidnapping for ransom. A Fulani bandit from Zamfara was seen on a WhatsApp video with his AK-47 hung on his shoulder entering a mall to buy a phone. Many people swam around him to take photographs with him. He was their enemy; he was the one who kidnapped them and made life difficult for them and their families, but they cherish a photo op with him. Nobody reported him, and nobody arrested him. He has become a celebrity. How do you explain that? The man every soldier in Nigeria is looking for appeared in a mall and became a celebrity. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria. Maybe those of us in the south of Nigeria don’t know what our brothers and sisters up north know. In the southwest we are complaining and asking Tinubu and the state governors to go for the jugular of these bandits. But in the north they are celebrated. I asked the daughter of my friend, who dared all dangers to take up a teaching job at a university in Katsina, to tell me whether all those things we read on the net about bandits walking freely and who the government negotiate with are true or just the usual social media noise. She said they are true, that the bandits freely enter the markets to collect money from the traders. And in the days they want to kidnap, she told me, they come in large numbers on their bikes. How does she keep herself? “I don’t stay in the market for too long. I transact my business and leave.” The more you look, the less you see of the confusion that is Nigeria. Maybe for the north banditry has been accepted as a permanent feature of life. Or maybe banditry is part of the plan to Islamize Nigeria. The more you look, the less you see.
My politician friend warned me not to take the president for a joke. “He is more vicious than Buhari.” He said Vice President Shettima’s vice presidency is a reward to him for the roles he played during the Goodluck Jonathan era. Well, the more you look, the less you see. Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket does not make sense, but it is a planned work. Kabiru Sokoto, the young man who bombed Nyanya in Abuja, was allegedly found in the Abuja house of Shettima. And up till now nothing has happened to Shettima. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria. “Don’t be surprised,” my politician friend told me, “if you see Nigeria become a one-party state before 2027.” And don’t be surprised if you see President Bola Tinubu going for a third term after winning the 2027 election. “But do you think there will be 2027 in the first instance?” I asked him. The more you look, the less you see of the confusion that is Nigeria. “Everything is scripted; everything is written. Just don’t look too much, but watch,” my politician friend told me.
President Bola Tinubu moved swiftly to subdue the attempted coup in the Republic of Benin. Many Nigerians are praising him, but they did not see the hand of Esau in the move; they only heard the voice of Isaac. Nigerians looked more but saw less. This is what Nigerians didn’t see. President Emmanuel Macron in faraway France gave the assignment to Tinubu, who was close enough to Benin to be able to do the job. France must not lose another of its cash cows in West Africa. She has lost some, and losing one again will have a telling effect on France. But Tinubu’s intervention may turn Nigeria into another Ukraine. When Volodymyr Zelensky, the ruler of Ukraine, decided to jump into the Russian-American tango, he did not think deep enough, just like our president didn’t think deep enough before he dived into the Republic of Benin attempted coup issue. Now Ukraine is totally ruined, and America, which had promised postwar repair in Ukraine, has reneged, courtesy of loquacious Trump. In West Africa, Burkina Faso is angry with Nigeria. It is detaining a Nigerian military jet that it accused of landing in its territory without permission. Who will believe Tinubu that the jet, a military one for that matter, had a problem and had to land in Burkina Faso of all places? A war is looming, and Russia may camp behind Burkina Faso. Nigeria and confusion. Will Tinubu be able to cope with all these wars? I don’t think so.
Nigeria has signed a memorandum of understanding with France on our new tax law. France will manage for us what our experts can manage well. Bosun Tijani is doing excellently at the digital economy ministry. He knows his onions, but Tinubu can’t trust him enough to allow him to arrange a Nigerian deal to manage the tax data. How will he do that? If he did, where will money come from? France and not Tijani is a good deal for the president. France is far away, where the loot will be safe, but Tijani is in Nigeria, where things can get out of hand and where Sahara Reporters can sniff and report to Nigerians. “Confusion break bone,” courtesy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nigeria’s late music icon who sang “ITT (International Thief Thief).” Late MKO Abiola, the president of ITT for Africa and the Middle East, is dead now, but “international thief thief” is still going on. Ask Hightech Construction Nigeria Limited, which is constructing the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, and ask Macron of France.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
The Israeli war on Gaza and other parts of Palestine portray a trajectory of deceit and defeat for the Arab-Muslim leadership. History offers lessons to change and reconstruct thinking and strategic priorities for sustainable future-making. The Arab-Muslim leadership failed to adapt new thinking and reasoned priorities to protect the public interests and defend the masses. The 21st century Western leaders exploit oil exporting Arab leaders for money laundering and weapon sales. Arab-Muslim leaders detached from reality and divided for individual survival appear delusional and defeated.
People once colonized, remain colonized. To buy wisdom with money is a delusional scenario. None of the Arab-Muslim leaders seek expert advice from people of knowledge and integrity. They live in darkness of Western illusions of dubious friendship. In crisis, intelligent leaders opt for facts of life and when facts warrant a change, responsible leaders pursue a navigational change. Public advisory is rare and non-existence across the Arab-Muslim governance. The overwhelming reality of war in Palestine reflects a cataclysm that afflicted the entire Arab-Muslim world. When hope is replaced by tyranny and terror, people lose sense of rational thinking and direction. The US-Israel war has broader strategic objectives to conquer the Arab world and make Israel a mini superpower of the Middle East. Despite the crimes against humanity and genocide by few Israeli leaders, most West European nations and some of the Arab States continued friendly relations with Israel. How Israeli leaders capitalized massive weapons sales after destroying Gaza and killings of innocent 70K people? Media reports indicate some 15B worth of increased Israeli weapon sales by making Gaza as a lab experiment. The oil exporting Arab leaders and people live in a fantasy of their own imagination – a fallacy of truth telling. Spectators and onlookers they watched the planned massacres, bombing of places of worship, hospitals, planned starvation of the civilians in Gaza, yet continued their relationships with Israel as a new normal against the interest of their masses. All monsters of history claimed good intentions and righteous ambitions but inflicted horrors, deaths and destruction on fellow human beings to achieve individualistic ambitions of power and glory. If you don’t believe in the encompassing truth, just view the real “genocide pictures” presented by Editor Antonio Rosa (Transcend Media: 11/10/25), exposes the reality of the on-going genocide in Gaza and other parts of Palestine: “Genocide in Pictures: Worth a Trillion Words.” https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/11/genocide-in-pictures-worth-a-trillion-words-74/
The American-Israeli collaborative war on Gaza and its immediate consequences made the Western world and all of its institutions shamefully redundant and void in the 21stcentury global norms of civility, human rights, freedom, justice and safety of civilians- whereas crimes against humanity are captured in obscure impulses and indecision and deliberate inaction by the UN Security Council.
Insane Leaders Bomb the Living Earth and Humanity Demands Accountability
The Earth provides you - the human being from birth to sustenance of life, yet the ignorant and unjust monsters bomb the mother earth. It extends all of your needs for progress and prosperity. Israel so far has dropped more than 90,000 tons of bombs on Gaza - three times more insane than what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Perhaps, the Israeli and American leaders do not believe in life and death and accountability to God for all of their actions. The Torah and Bible fully reflect on this core human responsibility and punishment to those who violate the Divine Covenants. The Earth is not a property of the US or Israel but a Divine hub of human Life, Survival and a Trust, those bombing and destroying it are mentally sick and defy the Divine Truth. It looks as if the US and Israeli leaders do not believe in life and death and accountability. The earth is a living entity and spins at 1670 km per hour and orbits the Sun at 107,000 km per hour. Imagine, if this spinning fails, what consequences could occur to the living beings on Earth. Think again, about the average distance of earth from Sun is 93 million miles -the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 km equivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units. Earth is a “trust” to mankind for its existence, sustenance of life, survival, progress and future-making. The Earth exists and floats without any pillars in a capsule by the Will of God, so, ”Fear God Who created life and death.” Is human intelligence still intact to understand this reality? Wherever there is a trust, there is an accountability. (The Quran: 22: 66):
It is God Who gave you life Will cause you to die And will again give you Life; Truly man (human being) is a most ungrateful creature! And killing of innocent people is prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Torah):
'Thou shalt not kill' (Exod. 20:13; also Deut. 5:17). Jewish law views the shedding of innocent blood very seriously, and lists murder as one of three sins (along with idolatry and sexual immorality), that fall under the category of yehareg ve'al ya'avor - meaning "One should let himself be killed rather than violate it.
The Trump Peace Plan has paused the war but bombing, displacement and killing of Palestinian continues unabated. What a shame, what a disgrace to the Arab-Muslim countries and so-called leaders having armies, resources and opportunities to defend Palestine, besieged masses of Gaza and their rights, dignity, and sustainable future. Yet they all turned out to be inept puppets of the US and Israel. Do the Arab-Muslim leaders have a future with honor and accountability? Please see: https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/the-fallacy-of-gaza-peace-plan-and-failure-of-arab-muslim-leadership-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/global-humanity-and-remaking-of-peace-security-and-conflict-resolution-for-the-21st-century-and-beyond-mahboob-a-khawaja/1147150197 and We, The People in Search of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Kindle Direct Publishing-Amazon, USA: 2025 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V6CH5W
Check Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. NEW eBOOK, Wars on Humanity: Ukraine, Palestine and the role of Global Leaders HERE!
The quiet act of workers adding Donald Trump’s name to the façade of the Kennedy Center without meaningful institutional approval was not merely an administrative irregularity. It was a small but telling rehearsal for a political culture that treats public institutions as personal billboards and democratic process as an inconvenience. That moment, subtle as it may seem, carries the unmistakable odor of authoritarian habit: act first, legitimize later, and silence dissent in between.
Public buildings are not neutral stone and glass. They are shared symbols, collective property, and living archives of national values. The Kennedy Center in particular stands as a monument to artistic freedom, cultural dialogue, and the uneasy but essential relationship between power and creativity. To stamp a politician’s name onto such a space without transparent consent is to misunderstand, or deliberately ignore, what the building represents. It turns a civic landmark into a campaign prop, and culture into collateral damage.
What makes the episode especially disturbing is not just the name itself, but the method. Opposition voices were shut out, bypassed, or dismissed, while a small circle of loyalists pushed the change through. This is governance by shortcut, a tactic that thrives on fatigue and confusion. When people are excluded from decisions about shared spaces, it sends a clear message participation is optional, obedience is not.
This behavior fits neatly into a broader pattern. Throughout Trump’s political life, institutions have been treated less as guardians of continuity and more as obstacles to personal will. Norms are tested not to improve them, but to see how easily they bend. Rules are not broken loudly at first; they are nudged, quietly, until resistance feels futile. A name on a wall may seem trivial but symbolism is never trivial to those who understand power.
Yet there is another layer to this story, one that looks beyond the present and into the long shadow of aftermath. History is rarely kind to leaders who confuse dominance with legacy. When the scaffolding of power is removed, what remains is memory, and memory is ruthless. Names that are forced into public view rarely stay there with honor. They are scraped off, defaced, mocked, or left behind as warnings rather than tributes.
Trump’s defenders may believe that visibility equals permanence, that repetition carves admiration into stone. The opposite is often true. The more aggressively a name is imposed, the more eagerly it is erased once the imposing force is gone. After his term fades into the archive of past presidencies, his name is unlikely to linger as a mark of respect. It will either vanish quietly from walls and plaques, or survive only as something people point to with embarrassment, disbelief, or outright disgust.
Cultural memory has its own immune system. It eventually rejects what feels false, coerced, or corrosive. Art institutions, universities, libraries, and public spaces are especially sensitive to this process. They outlast administrations precisely because they are meant to reflect something larger than any one leader. When they are temporarily hijacked, they tend to snap back with force once pressure eases.
There is also a deeper irony at play. John F. Kennedy whose name the Center bears, symbolized an aspirational vision of public service, flawed yet forward-looking, rooted in the idea that culture elevates democracy. To append Trump’s name to that legacy without consent is not an honor; it is a provocation. It highlights the gulf between public-minded leadership and self-centered rule.
In the end, this episode may be remembered less for the act itself and more for what it revealed. It exposed how fragile institutional norms can be when confronted by entitlement and loyalist machinery. It also hinted at the future reckoning to come. Power can command walls, workers, and silence for a time. It cannot command history’s verdict.
When Trump’s era is studied years from now, these small transgressions will matter. They will form a pattern, a texture, a sense of how democracy was strained not only by grand crises, but by petty assertions of ownership over what was never his to claim. And when his name is removed, as names like his so often are, it will not be an act of erasure. It will be an act of cleaning.
That quiet removal, whether literal or symbolic, will say more than any plaque ever could. It will confirm that institutions endure, egos fade, and that the public ultimately reclaims what was briefly misused, restoring meaning where spectacle once stood alone.
The Trump administration’s long-awaited release of the Epstein files arrived with the fanfare of supposed transparency and the hollow echo of a locked door. Survivors hoped for clarity, accountability, and a public reckoning that might finally name names and expose the machinery that protected a serial abuser for decades. What they received instead was a carefully trimmed dossier that felt less like disclosure and more like damage control. The omissions were not subtle. They were glaring, strategic, and revealing in their absence.
This was never just about paperwork. It was about power. Epstein did not operate in a vacuum; he thrived in rooms full of it. The promise of the files was that the public would finally see how influence insulated him and how proximity to the powerful translated into impunity. When those connections are selectively obscured, the message is unmistakable, the system still knows how to protect itself. Survivors are asked, once again, to accept partial truth as justice.
What makes the release especially cynical is the pretense that it settles anything. The idea that the Epstein stigma will simply dissipate with a curated dump of documents misunderstands how truth works. Stigma fades only when accountability replaces denial. When names are redacted, timelines softened, and photographs conspicuously absent, suspicion hardens rather than dissolves. Silence is not neutral; it is an argument in favor of concealment.
The political calculation is transparent. Epstein’s social orbit overlapped with wealth, celebrity, and office, including figures who later insisted they barely knew him. Yet images, flight logs, and testimonies have long suggested otherwise. To pretend that the remaining sealed material does not disproportionately implicate powerful men, some of them still active in public life, is to insult the intelligence of anyone paying attention. The refusal to fully open the record does not protect reputations; it corrodes them.
For survivors, the harm is doubled. First came the abuse, facilitated by indifference and intimidation. Then came years of legal maneuvering that treated their lives as collateral damage. Now comes the spectacle of disclosure without disclosure, a reminder that even in moments marketed as progress, their needs rank below the comfort of elites. Transparency that stops short of discomfort is not transparency at all.
The defenders of the release argue that law, privacy, and due process require restraint. Those principles matter. But they ring hollow when invoked selectively and late. Due process did not seem to weigh heavily when Epstein received a sweetheart deal that shielded co-conspirators and muzzled victims. Privacy did not trouble institutions that enabled him while smearing accusers. To deploy these values now, only when exposure threatens the powerful, is not principled restraint; it is opportunism.
There is also a deeper cultural failure at work. America loves the theater of revelation more than the labor of accountability. We cheer the opening of files as if the act itself were justice, as if sunlight alone could substitute for consequences. But sunlight filtered through a political lens becomes stage lighting, illuminating what is safe while leaving the rest in shadow. The result is cynicism dressed up as closure.
If the aim was to close the chapter, the release has done the opposite. It has widened the gap between official narratives and lived reality. Every withheld page invites speculation. Every missing image raises questions about who benefits from the silence. And every insistence that this is all there is only confirms that it is not.
The Epstein scandal will not be laundered away by time or paperwork. It lingers because it speaks to a durable truth: abuse is enabled by networks, not monsters alone. Until those networks are named and confronted, the stain remains. The administration may hope that partial disclosure dulls public outrage. Instead, it sharpens it, reminding us that power still expects exemption.
Survivors were not asking for spectacle. They were asking for honesty. They were asking for a reckoning that treats their testimony as more than an inconvenience. Anything less is an illusion of justice and illusions have a way of collapsing under their own weight.
What endures, then, is a choice. Leaders can continue to ration truth, hoping fatigue will replace anger, or they can accept that credibility is rebuilt only by risking embarrassment and consequence. The public, too, must decide whether it will settle for managed transparency or demand the unvarnished record. History suggests that secrets age poorly. When they surface, they indict not only the guilty, but everyone who helped keep them buried. Silence eventually condemns the silent as well.
The artillery thunder rolling across the Thai–Cambodian border feels less like a military strategy and more like the sound of two governments shouting past reason. Along an 800-kilometre line drawn decades ago by colonial maps and political convenience, shells now land where farmers once walked, and forested hilltops have become symbols of pride worth dying for. What is unfolding is not a war of necessity but a war of stubbornness, fuelled by history, nationalism, and a dangerous lack of imagination.
On paper, the balance is clear. Thailand commands the skies, flying unchallenged over Cambodian territory, striking at targets that cannot strike back. Cambodia, lacking meaningful air defences or a credible air force, responds with what it has, BM21 rocket systems that are terrifying more for their randomness than their precision. These rockets do not choose soldiers over civilians. They fall where gravity and chance decide, killing a civilian here, wounding families there, turning evacuation plans into grim confirmations that the worst was always expected.
This is where the moral argument collapses entirely. When inherently inaccurate weapons are used near civilian areas, and when air superiority is exercised without restraint, the conflict stops being about security and starts being about indifference. Each side claims defence, yet each action deepens the wound it claims to be stitching shut. The forested hilltops now soaked in blood offer no strategic value proportional to the lives being spent to control them. They are trophies of ego, not assets of survival.
The tragedy is amplified by how predictable this escalation was. Border tensions between Thailand and Cambodia are not new; they are ritualistic. They flare, cool, and flare again, usually wrapped in the language of sovereignty and honour. But honour has become a hollow word when it is invoked to justify artillery exchanges across villages and bombing runs against a neighbour with no capacity to respond in kind. Strength, in this context, is not measured by how hard one can hit, but by how wisely one chooses not to.
What makes this confrontation particularly grim is its asymmetry. Thailand’s freedom to operate in the air is not a sign of tactical brilliance; it is simply a reflection of imbalance. Cambodia’s reliance on crude rocket fire is not courage; it is desperation. When one side dominates and the other flails, the outcome is not victory but prolonged suffering. The death toll climbs, the wounded overflow medical facilities, and the language of “no obvious end” becomes an accepted background hum, as if endless violence were a natural state.
Nationalism, of course, is doing what it always does in times like these. Flags are waved, histories selectively remembered, and any call for restraint branded as weakness. Leaders speak of resolve while families bury their dead. The border becomes a stage where politicians perform toughness for domestic audiences, gambling with lives they will never personally risk. In such moments, escalation is easier than compromise, because compromise requires admitting that pride is a poor substitute for policy.
The international silence surrounding this conflict is equally damning. Because it does not neatly fit into the narratives of great power rivalry, it is treated as a regional scuffle, a regrettable but manageable affair. Yet for those living near the border, this is not a footnote. It is the sound of rockets at night, the fear of aircraft overhead, and the slow realisation that their safety is negotiable.
Wars rarely end because one side finally proves it is tougher. They end when exhaustion sets in or when leaders choose reason over rage. Right now, neither condition appears imminent. The shells keep falling, the bombing continues, and each new casualty hardens attitudes further. Without a conscious decision to step back, to accept mediation, or at the very least to prioritise civilian lives over symbolic terrain, this conflict will grind on until its original causes are buried beneath its consequences.
The border will still be there when the guns fall silent. The question is how many lives will be lost before someone remembers that lines on a map are not worth more than the people who live beside them.
History will judge this moment harshly, not for the ferocity of the fighting, but for the emptiness of its purpose. When the smoke clears, neither side will be able to claim moral high ground, only graves and grievances. Peace will come eventually, as it always does but it will arrive late, expensive and stained with avoidable regret remembered long after excuses and speeches fade.
