I was just at a protest of the Iran War where a passerby accused us, heatedly, of “killing Ukrainians.” Of all the accusations directed my way in years of protests, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an accusation quite that baffling. By not fighting a war in Iran, we are somehow killing Ukrainians. No matter how I try to conceptualize this, I can’t.

There’s a cottage industry in philosophy on “deviant causal chains,” cases where an agent’s intention causes an action, but in an unexpected or “wayward” manner, leading to the intended result without genuine agency or control. Add this one to the list, I guess, but don’t ask me what happens next. Or what happened in the first place.