> "It is hard to imagine a time in recent history where political leaders openly support a culture of violence without compunction or any trace of self-consciousness, public discourse routinely carpet-bombs fine distinctions with a view to making any nuanced moral responses impossible, and sympathy is routinely so partitioned along partisan lines that the possibility of any human response to tragedy and atrocity seems like a distant gleam."

Not sure about "hard to imagine a time in recent history"; "carpet-bomb" is after all a phrase from the Vietnam War. Or the 80s when nuclear MAD was such an omnipresent threat that it was all over pop culture.

To me it all seems tied to colonialism, which despite what everyone thinks is definitely not dead. Colonialism always comes with justifications for violence against the colonized.

Edit: ah, this article is about India, but I think the cultural drivers are the same - exclusionary nationalism by a group, in this case Hindus, opposed to the idea that minorities deserve rights as individuals.