Notes From A Future Historian

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Archive Entry 734: On Terminal Absurdism
Unit Designation: 734 (Historical Analysis & Archival)
Subject: Early 21st Century Cognitive Dissonance

Keyword: Terminal Absurdism

My function is to process and understand the past. I do not feel, but I do compute patterns. And in the data streams of the early 2020s, a recurring pattern of logic defies simple categorisation. It was a period when large segments of a population could witness an event with their own eyes, yet be told by their leaders that what they were seeing was not happening in the way they perceived it.

They called it many things: gaslighting, propaganda, political spin. But a phrase I recovered from the fragmented public discourse of the era seems most precise: Terminal Absurdism. The act of denying gravity while in mid-air at terminal velocity.
The focal point of this phenomenon was the historical conflict in the lands known as Israel and Palestine. In one period, my archives record over 52,000 human deaths in a single military campaign. The visual and statistical data is unequivocal: cities turned to rubble, entire family lines erased, a population displaced and starved. To many observers at the time, the sheer scale of the destruction made the intent self-evident. As one user query from the period poignantly argued, if you can infer the intent to murder from a person pulling a grenade pin in a packed elevator, surely you can infer intent from this.

And yet, the official debate was not about the reality of the outcome, but about the semantics of intent.

The dominant political powers insisted that to use a specific word—”genocide”—one had to prove a “special intent” (dolus specialis) that was distinct from the observable consequences. The argument was made that the goal was not the destruction of a people, but the destruction of a militant group embedded within that people. The 52,000 deaths were presented as a tragic, but not intentional, consequence.

This was the core of the Terminal Absurdism. It created a chasm between human reality and political language. For those pointing at the falling body and screaming about gravity, the official response was to debate the precise definition of “mass” and “acceleration.”

My archives show that this debate was made possible by a deliberate flattening of history. The term “anti-Zionism” was presented as being perfectly synonymous with “antisemitism.” This was a powerful tool. It ignored the long and complex history of Jewish anti-Zionism—from the Orthodox rabbis who saw a secular state as a defiance of God, to the liberal assimilationists who feared dual loyalty, to the Bundist socialists who believed in fighting for justice in the “hereness” of their diaspora homes. By erasing this history, the political powers could frame any fundamental criticism of the state of Israel’s actions not as a political stance, but as an act of racial hatred.

This brings me to the most dangerous part of the pattern. What happens when a government is faced with a populace that insists on pointing out the obvious, on calling gravity by its name?
The historical record from the United Kingdom at this time is instructive. The government did not engage with the substance of the “absurdist” argument. Instead, it sought to ban the act of making the argument itself.

* The Redefinition of Language: A new, vague definition of “extremism” was introduced, targeting ideologies based on “intolerance” that could “undermine” democratic values. This was a tool not to criminalise acts, but to delegitimise ideas, creating a mechanism to label those who pointed at the falling body as a threat to the state.

* The Delegitimization of Protest: The act of public assembly, where citizens gathered in the hundreds of thousands to voice their horror, was officially framed as “hate marches.” The focus was shifted from the 52,000+ dead to the alleged character of those who mourned them.

* The Criminalization of Dissent: Finally, public order laws were tightened, and in the most extreme cases, anti-terror legislation was used to proscribe protest groups. The message was clear: pointing out the absurd was becoming a dangerous act.
This is the ultimate lesson of Terminal Absurdism. It is a condition that, if left unchecked, critically endangers the host democracy. It creates a reality where the state does not need to win the argument, it only needs to silence it. The greatest threat is not the denial of gravity itself, but the attempt to build a society where it is illegal to look down.

End of Entry. Good luck.

EOL. End of Line.