No, you really don’t “have to” take sides in the war (if that’s what it ends up being) between India and Pakistan. I’m an ethnic Kashmiri, and have no shortage of things to say about recent events, but ultimately, I think this kid Kaif not only gets things right, but deserves a Moral Equanimity award for what he says here.

It’s an interesting question what the reporter deserves. Aristotle describes shame as a minimal expression of decency in someone who’s done something disgraceful. We lose our sense of shame, on his view, only when we lose our sense of decency altogether. Unfortunately, we now seem to be governed, the world over, by people who fit the latter description: shameless, without decency, and addicted to apocalyptic visions of violence. Somehow, the kids seem more tethered to moral reality in this respect than their elders. Is that despite TikTok, or because of it?

It’s a sad verdict to have to pass on my generational peers, but I look at some of them and think: I hope they die before I get old. So many people leap to mind, but at a minimum that hope includes this reporter, his target audience, their equivalents in Pakistan, and their equivalents everywhere else on the planet. It’s a mean thing to say, I guess, but there’s got to be a limit to the appetite for destruction. The world isn’t big enough for the people who want to live in it, and the ones who to destroy it. One party may need to be asked to leave. And it’s obvious which one.