IN A 2025 general audience, Pope Leo XIV drew listeners’ attention to the “cry of pain rising from places devastated by war, especially Ukraine, Iran, Israel and Gaza.” He warned that “we must never get used to war.”
He was identifying a condition already visible on social media, where footage of Russian drones bombing Ukraine and ICE agents raiding neighborhoods in Chicago and Minneapolis is nestled neatly between cat videos and cooking clips as just another type of consumable digital content. These incidents of violence once represented distinct breaks with the ordinary—moments when civic trust collapsed into the mire of conflict. Now, they are part of the endless stream of videos sifted, reacted to, reframed, and absorbed by a political and media apparatus primed for soliciting dramatic responses.
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