You just had to be there

I know many subscribe to me for my acerbic celebrity takedowns. So let me start by giving the people what they want.

Laura Loomer is a far-right self-appointed whip cracker on the Left’s pitiful backs. Born and raised in Arizona, Loomer attended the progressive, all-women’s Mount Holyoke College for one semester before leaving due to apparent anti-conservative bias (okay Bari Weiss). She then transferred to Barry University and began a career as a far-right provocateur, engaging in stunts such as donning a burqa and attempting to register to vote as Huma Abedin, attempting to entrap Hillary Clinton campaign workers, convincing “undocumented immigrants” in a Home Depot parking lot to jump Nancy Pelosi’s fence and set up a campsite, jumping California Governor Gavin Newsom’s fence whilst wearing a sombrero, and failing (twice) to win a U.S. House of Representatives seat.

Loomer has also made the mistake of getting cosmetic work done and it not turning out so well. Some might say Loomer needs to worry more about the filler migrating across her face than refugees migrating across the border. I would not say that, but someone else might. What I will say is that if Loomer had gone to Kylie Jenner’s surgeon, she might not attract such public scorn. As I have written before, the public is fickle; it likes heinous behavior more when the perpetrator is not ugly. But anyways, when she’s not calling for immigrants to be eaten by alligators, showing up to her plastic surgeon’s office with a photo of Jigsaw, or sneaking out the side door of the Lincoln bedroom even though Melania never sleeps in there anyways, Loomer is influencing both far-right voters and major players: donors, celebrities, politicians. Loomer may come across a court jester, but she is a court-pointed adviser. And of all people, she has U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s ear.

Into this ear she has (allegedly) whispered many things (such as the Haitian immigrant pet-eating hoax), but Kremlin propaganda is (allegedly) often the star of the show. For, amidst a four-year invasion that has killed at least 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, Loomer has come out hard against Ukraine. Loomer has fixed her mouth and Twitter fingers to say that Ukraine, which apparently started the war, is a “country full of Nazi apologists” led by a “self-hating Nazi Jew.”

Some critics argue that Loomer was heartless in these remarks. But Loomer has never been to Ukraine. So why would she know or care anything about those people?

But then, on July 19th, 2026, she went.

I have begun cognitive behavioral therapy for the PTSD I developed in Palestine. In a recent session, my therapist asked, “Why did you go?”

“Well,” I began, and then I launched into my usual answer: I’d been before, and I spoke Arabic, and my activism had piqued my interest in the issue, and—

“Did you know it would be so bad?”

“No.”

And I didn’t. Unlike war journalists who say they do it for the love of humanitarian issues but actually get their rocks off falling asleep to gunfire, I accepted my post whilst falsely believing that it would not be so bad. It was 2022, and the West Bank had been rebuilding since the Second Intifada; there were the regular military incursions, but my employer assured me that those were isolated to specific areas. It wouldn’t be easy, but it wasn’t Gaza. Little did I know that a week after arriving, the city I lived in would get bombed. And again. And again.

Would I have gone had I known what awaited? I do not know. I was not thrill-seeking. But for as ‘worldly’ as I was prior living in Palestine, I knew that there was still so much I did not understand. I wanted to make connections to people in this place I had heard about for so many years. I wanted to know.

But had I an inkling of how bad things would get, I would have been a bit more psychologically prepared. What I would learn was worse than I could have ever imagined.

I found it difficult to express the severity of the issue to others outside. I had breakdowns on the phone to my parents, who, accustomed to me having breakdowns over much less, talked me into staying because “it could not possibly be that bad.” At the end of their eventual visit, they cried as they left me. They knew now!

But that inability to imagine also led to friendship breakdowns with some of my most intimate companions. Prior to leaving, I was close with several friends who leaned Zionist but told me they wanted me to tell them “the truth.” Yes, folks, I have had Zionist friends. Many, in fact. Despite not agreeing with them, I was friends with them because in life—and particularly if you want to change minds and hearts—you need to spend time around people you do not agree with, which is why I have also been to Israel, including to a kibbutz that was later attacked on October 7th. I planned to continue fostering this attitude whilst in Palestine.

But unfortunately, that was a one-sided commitment. My friends did not actually want to know “the truth,” regardless of how gently I attempted to deliver it, and changed the subject or outright ignored me when I talked about the less savory parts of my life. It was as though I was to pretend I was not currently contracting a waterborne virus from drinking stale roof water because our pipe water was getting diverted to a nearby settlement’s pool. One of the most intriguing things they said was, after a particularly gnarly raid that killed multiple people, “I’m sorry that’s happening while you’re there.” As opposed to what? You know the answer.

As if this was not enough, my friends also enjoyed reposting bizarre anti-Palestine posts from influencers who spoke as though their boots were on the ground and not in California’s San Fernando Valley. Like Loomer and her Ukraine-truther acolytes, my friends had not witnessed the violence they derided as fake, and thus could not imagine it, nor did they want to. Our friendship atrophied. It was hard to keep conversation when I could not speak about almost any facet of my life. They did not want to know. I couldn’t make them.

Who knows what made Loomer want to change her mind. But she did.

Loomer and I may not have much in common, but we know one thing: what it’s like to get bombed. Unlike Loomer, I have never felt a bomb shelter’s sweet protective embrace—Israel has them; Palestine doesn’t—but I know how scary the experience is. Unlike Loomer, I also never went to a bombed out McDonalds, though Lord knows I would have had they franchised in the West Bank. I missed those burgers so much y’all.

I will not replay Loomer’s entire Ukrainian odyssey here. But its most significant moment occurred when Loomer interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Afterwards, Loomer posted that she had been wrong: that Ukranians had been nothing but kind to her; that she had sucked up Russian propaganda the way I once sucked up a SquareBucks frappe just minutes from Jesus’s birthplace (the West Bank didn’t have Starbucks either).

Laura “Proud Islamophobe” Loomer was made fun of, for good reason. Lest we forget, this woman has said “fuck Zelenskyy.” Was Loomer’s mind changed before or after she was forced to enjoy her Big Mac next to a PlayPlace obliterated by Putin’s missiles? Is all that stands between Loomer and empathy a McDonald’s? Can we build one in Gaza? Who’s to say.

Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder: Laura Loomer, why did you need to experience an air raid to believe Ukraine had it rough?

But did I not, in my own way, experience the same? Did my parents not? My old friends? I will not equate myself to Jigsaw. But that question—why must we see to believe—is not isolated to Trump’s Foreign Policy Paramour.

Rather, it is human nature. It extends to all areas of our lives. Even if we are not telling Ukrainians we don’t care about them getting shelled in the middle of the night and starving to death on the frontlines, we have lots of other ways of showing that we do not take the suffering of others seriously. We have to see it to believe it.

But we are allowed to evolve. You may not have Thiel Bucks as the wind beneath your wings, flying you to a demolished Ukrainian McDonald’s. You may not be young and able to drop everything to work in Palestine. You may not know immigrants. You may not know many people at all. But you do not have to know someone or go anywhere to imagine.

And like Laura Loomer, you can always change your mind.