MM Book Club Discussion: "One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This"(August 2026)
Here's where to discuss this month's selection from the "The World, Explained" shelf
Welcome to the Discussion Page for Common Sense by Thomas Paine, one of our five options to read for August 2026. To learn more about the club, where to get your books and more, go to the official book club launch page. Learn about the rules for commenting, and get the links to the discussion pages for the other titles on this month’s Book Club Hub.
The World, Explained Shelf (Non-Fiction)
”One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad
I was moved by his devastating reckoning with the mass killing and displacement in Gaza and his take on the leaders, politicians, institutions and pundits who continue to enable or excuse it. Don’t let the intensity of the subject intimidate you or keep you away. At around 200 pages, it’s relatively short and written in clear, beautiful prose that will sweep you from one page to the next. You’ll never regret reading Omar’s words, nor will you ever forget them.
My Thoughts and Discussion Kickoff
In late October 2023, El Akkad watched a video taken by a Palestinian walking through a devastated neighborhood in northern Gaza the morning after intense bombing. Just three weeks into the war, El Akkad posted on Twitter/X:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
The sentence came from his recognition of something distressing, yet familiar: historical amnesia. Or, how once scandal, injustice or atrocity is safely in the rearview mirror, people tend to rewrite their own take on it, or even the role they themselves played.
I’m old enough to remember when Richard Nixon won re-election. It was 1972, the year I graduated from high school in Michigan, and the same year I became the youngest elected person in this country. Nixon won in a historic landslide, winning all but one state. But after the fallout from the Watergate scandal led to his disgrace, nobody seemed to remember voting for him or, at least, wanted to admit it publicly.
And while I’m not remotely comparing Nixon to Adolf Hitler, let’s all remember that even though the Nazis never won a majority in a free national election, Hitler once had millions of fans. He was so adored that the name Adolf, which had been falling out of fashion for newborns, enjoyed a sudden revival after he came to power.
As the persecution of Jews escalated, some Germans actively welcomed it. As MAGA shows us today, bigotry loves company. Others tolerated the increasingly public abuses, or stayed quiet out of fear, or simply to avoid disturbing their own comfortable lives. Only after the war, when the full extent of the Nazi regime’s horrific crimes shocked the world, did many formerly fervent supporters become strangely difficult to find, and then, they had explanations.
They had been misled, they’d say. They had known nothing. They had never really supported him, or so they now remembered.
This disturbing, remarkably human ability to edit our own stories to place ourselves onto the right side of history is exactly what Omar El Akkad is writing about.
As a pacifist, I firmly believe that war of any kind is morally wrong. No one should be a casualty of war, and especially not a child.
The Democratic nominee for Senator in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, told CNN, “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It’s not, ‘How evil is this one versus that one?’ Hamas? Evil. Israeli government? Evil. We can say both.” And we should.
With that in mind, here’s the way I hope we can frame the discussion. Let’s begin by exploring the concepts El Akkad is presenting, rather than litigating who is right and who is wrong in this war.
Some questions to get us started
What are our principles worth if they disappear the moment we realize that standing up for them becomes inconvenient or uncomfortable?
Is El Akkad right that, someday, everyone, or almost everyone, will claim to have opposed what happened in Gaza?
Can you be against the atrocities in Gaza and still be pro-Israeli?
How do you think history will describe Israel’s actions? Will they be written off as the usual brutality of war? Collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, genocide or something else?
Here’s perhaps the hardest question: When history looks back on this moment, how will each of us remember where we stood?
MM
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Learn about the rules for commenting, and get the links to the discussion pages for the other titles on this month’s Book Club Hub.
I just bought my third copy of this book because the first copy I gave to a man moving back to Scotland having lived 40 years in Silicon Valley and wanted something worthwhile to read while vacationing in the redwoods before flying to his ancestral home across the pond. I hadn't finished the book yet so a ordered a second one at a local independent bookstore where the woman owner had just written an opinion piece in the local newspaper about the Amazon project being proposed in our county. Before that book arrived, I found another copy at a wonderful used bookstore in Old Town Eureka so I bought it. As I was walking down the street, a young friend with the local chapter of the Democrati Socialists of America drove by and I handed him the book as I walked across in the crosswalk. I finally picked up my third copy and decided to donate to the Cal Poly Humboldt library as the students are returning to campus next week and I am hoping this book and others will be displayed prominently in the library. I guess I need to order another copy to finish reading it but meanwhile I have Pope Leo XIV's papal encyclical to pick up at a third independent bookstore in Eureka and I want to read that as well about AI and human dignity. When I had a copy of "One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This", I carried it as my protest sign at the No Kings rally and shared it at the public podium at Arcata City Council meetings during local efforts for a ceasefire resolution. I will finish it ultimately. I'd rather have the genocide end, though.
I remember when the Beatles were considered vermin by many Americans anyways, their long hair and all, right up there with all the other damn war protesters, and later their music playing in office building elevators, everyone humming along. Though, I am not sure you can get "everyone" to agree on anything. I should read the book.