The least human thing you can do

Luke O'Neil

28 Feb 2026 • 9 min read

I read a story just now about a man in Chicago who saved a baby after its carriage had been blown into the harbor by heavy gusts of wind. Lio Cundiff – who is a trans man not that it should matter here but it does – leapt into the freezing cold water and grabbed the baby and held it aloft for a few minutes until others nearby could pull them both to safety.

“I’m so happy that this baby has a chance for a future and a life,” Lio's mother Karen Cundiff said. “I’m so glad both (he) and the baby are OK because both of them could have died.”

Cundiff – who is not much of a swimmer – said after that fact "All I did was a human act. I’m just a human who did the most human thing you could do – which is save someone who can’t save themselves.”

Yes that is exactly right. The most human thing you can do is save someone who can't save themselves. One of the bravest things you can do as well.

Then there is the opposite of that. The antithesis of bravery. I watched what that looks like this morning as well as the United States and Israel began bombarding Iran. For the sake of their own freedom naturally. Because Iran is "the world's number one state sponsor of terror," as Trump said today.

One of our strikes hit an elementary school in the city of Minab killing over 80 people. Many of them little girls. You can watch a video of the aftermath if you are up for it. I don't think I will soon be able to get the sound of the anguished screams out of my head.

In Trump's speech he asked God to bless "the brave men and women of America's armed forces" who massacred these children. Democrats have come out with statements condemning the attacks – but mostly because they want the proper procedures to be followed. Their chief complaint is that the killing innocent people paperwork wasn't filed correctly and that they weren't consulted. In a series of posts Congressman Greg Landsman thanked the "brave service members who are leading this effort," while Chuck Schumer said his prayers are with those same brave service members. Senator Jack Reed saluted their bravery and prayed for their safety as well. This is to name just a few.

Jumping into the water to save someone is brave. So too running into a burning home. We all know this. Pushing back against the takeover of your city by federal kidnappers armed with little more than whistles and solidarity is likewise brave. Existing as trans or another kind of marginalized person in this country when the entire force of the state is being used to erase your rights is brave. Continuing to wake up every day in a place ravaged by these same missiles of ours such as in Gaza and elsewhere is brave. Refusing to die when so much money and weaponry and political will is laser focused on ensuring that your life is worthless is brave.

I cannot think of anything less like bravery than operating an attack drone from the safety of some fucking aircraft carrier or office in D.C. – or Palm Beach, Florida as the case is today – or Tel Aviv. Pressing a button on a missile that will land hundreds or thousands of miles away. The little bottle of water next to your desk. Maybe a picture of your family taped up there. Marching around saying "Yes sir" and all that shit. Saluting each other.

Fucking losers. Fucking murderers. Fucking cowards.

And expecting us – with good reason based on history of course – to all thank them for their service. Fuck your service and fuck you.

Saving a life is brave. Being instructed to kill – for nothing but the greed and bloodlust of politicians – and saying no I will not do that is brave. But killing like this? It is the least human thing you can do.

Related reading:

Like many of you I've been trying to calibrate my moral compass as it pertains to war and violence this past week and as best I can tell from what I've been reading and hearing is that the formula by which we determine whether or not a killing is either justifiable or "terrorism" is the physical distance between the aggressor and the victim. Up close is barbaric but launched from far away is reasonable.

The civilian deaths in the latter scenario accidental or a regrettable but necessary condition of "self defense."

Maybe it's because we think it would be so much harder to kill someone while looking them in the eye?

Is that why the powerful countries are so prolific at it then? We don't even make our combatants do that anymore.

From We Had It Coming:

Violence comes in many forms and can be either slow and grinding or sudden and percussive. What a victory of messaging it is then to be able to define what violence is and what violence is not and expect for good reason that much of the western world will adopt your terms. Leaving your enemy having to fight back against a force that isn't even hitting them.

I think it should go without saying that I abhor war crimes against civilians even in what I consider to be a just cause of liberation. And Palestinians yearning for escape from decades of oppression and confinement and apartheid is indeed a just cause.

I also think that it is very convenient that the dominant power in any given conflict almost always gets to commit their own war crimes from a remove via blockade and sanction or missile and bomb. Each resulting individual civilian death observed from an abstract sanitized distance in the form of a building collapsing. Being made to collapse.

A lot of people are wedded to this idea that it’s somehow so much worse to be brutalized or killed by a man standing there in front of you than by a pressed button or pulled lever. Or to be systematically killed by laws and policies of indifference or outright malevolence.

Is shooting a man in the head more or less just than locking him in your basement without food or water? Surely he'll live somewhat longer in the latter scenario but he will nonetheless surely die. Having been killed.

So yes of course I abhor violence. I simply wonder why we are being press-ganged into a moral jury for one kind of violence and not the countless other examples of the more invisible kind. Invisible to those of us observing from afar that is. The killings that aren't even really happening if you squint just so.

What would she say to them if they were to tell her they were sorry?

“I will never forgive them. I will just leave it to God. God will punish them,” she said, her voice rising in anger.

“If they were in front of me, I would want to drink their blood,” she said.

“Even then I wouldn’t be satisfied.”

I know it should not at this point but it nonetheless still surprises me how the United States insists upon maintaining the collective delusion of our of unassailable national virtue all the while continuing to be the most prolific exporter of violence around the globe. Any attempt to tell the truth about this very simple fact — that we and our apprentices in Israel are the authors of some of the most despicable war crimes in recent history — is cause for an apoplectic political meltdown. Especially when it comes from someone like Ilhan Omar (if you know what I mean.) And not just from the Republicans from whom you might expect this type of disingenuous bullshit but also from the Democrats from whom you also might expect this type of disingenuous bullshit. Cowards all.

As I’ve written in here before our military exploits are essentially the large scale version of how the police operate within America which makes sense because America itself is the self-styled cop of the world: incapable of addressing any situation without bungling in guns blazing sowing endless pointless destruction in our wake. One boot on an innocent’s face the other boot stomping firmly on our own dick.

While it’s bad enough that we cause so much suffering what’s worse is that then on top of that and also like cops we need to be big fucking pissing babies about it whenever anyone tries to call us out on our bullshit. Barbarians and martyrs at once. There’s no difference between what’s coming out of the Democratic leadership right now than what you typically hear from any police union when someone has the temerity to suggest that they might perhaps acknowledge they’ve got something of a temper problem. Catch Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the leadership in the role of fucking Pat Lynch of the New York Police Benevolent Association. Crying and hitting you and crying and hitting you and crying and hitting you.

The hollowness and malleability of the term means that it can be applied to groups regardless of their actual conduct and regardless of their actual ideology. It admits only a circular definition (not too dissimilar from the definition advanced by the Israeli Counter Terrorism Law) that a terrorist is someone who carries out terrorist acts, and a terrorist act is violence carried out by a terrorist. Conversely, if someone is killed, it is because they are a terrorist, because to be a terrorist means to be killable.

This circularity of the definition allows the designation to justify violence against entire populations both ex-ante and ex-post. Hamas and all of its supporters and members—military and government—have been deemed to be terrorists, and these “terrorists” control Gaza. Thus the bombing of the Gaza Strip can be, at any time, permitted. (Indeed Israel engaged in seven major military operations in Gaza since Hamas’s election in 2006.) Gaza, however, is populated primarily by ordinary civilians as well. But the circularity of “terrorist” occludes this fact: once there exists a category of persons upon whom one can inflict violence by virtue of their status rather than their actions, violence becomes constitutive of the status itself.

Some other reading this morning.