Dirty old man

Have you ever seen Philip Roth’s play, “Sabbath’s Theater”? Mickey Sabbath, the man who despises decency like a rabid dog, despises a leash. He is not content to merely exist on the fringes of morality; he corrodes it, destroys it, like acid eats through metal. His life is a shattered mirror, reflecting the horror we all try to hide under layers of false virtue. Sabbath is decadence personified, a plunge into the void, where every decision is a conscious choice for self-destruction. He doesn’t just embrace chaos; he woos it, turning it into an insatiable lover.

Mickey Sabbath challenges us to face the truth head-on without the anesthesia of social conventions. He echoes our darkest thoughts, those we hide even from ourselves. His journey shows human nature’s rawest and most disturbing form. He is the man who says “no” to any hope of redemption, who chooses the abyss because, at least, there are no lies.

Netanyahu embodied Mickey Sabbath in the cabinet meeting: “We do not have to be under pressure; it is Hamas who should be under pressure. The hostages are suffering, but they are not dead.” The coldness of this statement is cutting; a dagger plunged into the heart of compassion. It’s as if Sabbath had whispered into the leader’s ear, inspiring a calculated indifference. The reality of the hostages, human beings reduced to pieces in a cruel game, is ignored. Empathy was exiled and replaced by a perverse logic where suffering is measured only in terms of political utility.

The truth? It is a currency, a tool shaped at the whim of power. In Sabbath’s style, Netanyahu distorts reality with an astounding ease, devoid of remorse. The certainty of the hostages’ lives is an enigma, but to him, they are just numbers, variables in a power equation. Empathy? It sent its regards but was buried under the ruthless rhetoric of a politics that has forgotten the human face.

In this macabre theater, truth is molded, compassion is a discarded luxury, and morality is a ridiculous concept. Mickey Sabbath and Netanyahu show us that, in the end, decadence is not just a destiny; it is a choice. And the price of that choice is paid by all of us as we watch, powerless, the dehumanization unfolding before our eyes.