The apathy of the stars

James Joyce’s Ulysses offers Leopold Bloom a long list of consolations after he discovers his wife’s infidelity. The one that seems most useful here is “the apathy of the stars,” a phrase that suggests a little distance from the stupidity consuming much of the world.

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Orcas eat those bears like little fish. Yes, they simply attack in a pack and tear them apart. We should tell children about this, so they understand what kind of world we live in and why we are carrying out the special military operation.

Looking away is one option. But the writer says that people who follow the news cannot easily take it. They watch as brute force defeats justice, as two supposedly disturbed leaders control the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, as Israel carries out what the column calls an “endemonic ethnic cleansing” in the Holy Land, and as the United States and Russia wage seemingly endless wars in Iran and Ukraine. Argentina, it adds, is energetically renewing its claim to the Falkland Islands, described in the column as the most inhospitable and depopulated territory in its geography.

The column focuses on Ukraine and the Falklands as two different forms of delirium. One represents tragedy, the other comedy. What links them, it argues, is irrationality.

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the most important and sacred cause we Argentines have

In Moscow, Vladimir Putin told students why he had ordered the invasion of Ukraine. In the Arctic, he said, orcas live alongside polar bears. “Orcas eat those bears like little fish. Yes, they simply attack in a pack and tear them apart. We should tell children about this, so they understand what kind of world we live in and why we are carrying out the special military operation.” The writer reads the lesson as an argument that the strong naturally devour the weak, turning fascism into the supposed order of nature.

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winds of change in the world favourable to our claims

In Buenos Aires, Javier Milei made a solemn appeal to restore Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands. He called the islands the “most important and sacred cause we Argentines have” and said the time for action had arrived because of “winds of change in the world favourable to our claims” and Argentina’s “new geopolitical relevance.” The column links that shift to remarks by Donald Trump that appeared to leave open the possibility of removing the British from the islands, though the supplied article ends while introducing the context of a journalist’s question about Trump’s position.

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new geopolitical relevance