Suffer little children…

You will have noticed a lack of coverage on Slugger of the situation in the Middle East. We struggled to work out how to cover it as every time we discuss the Middle East the comments get incredibly toxic.

After I read a comment on Sunday’s open post about TikTok videos of kidnapped children crying for their parents, I made the decision to go off all news, and I have stuck to it since. I can’t begin to take in the horror of it all.

I have written before about how disturbing I find the news. The past few years seem like one tragedy after another. I find it so overwhelming that I must step away from it all.

You can argue about the ethics of turning a blind eye to such suffering, but I am not sure how me having a breakdown would help the situation.

As a parent and, frankly, as a human, I struggle to comprehend the barbarism of it all. Worse social media and 24/7 news means we can follow every atrocity in real-time – we are not building for this level of constant trauma.

And yes, I know what the people on the ground are going through is utterly obscene and a complete humanitarian disaster.

I struggle to give any commentary or insight on such a horrendous situation, but I know readers are keen to discuss it.

So here it is your opportunity to give your view, but there are a few restrictions:

• Comments will be pre-moderated so they may be slow to appear.
• Please do not try to frame the situation through a NI us/them lens.
• Do not attempt to justify acts of terror on either side.

I do not like pre moding posts but it is the only way to stop the discussion from going off the rails. The open forum this Sunday will have no restrictions as normal.

Brian O'Neill

Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.