We're seeing the death of shame in real time

All readers will be familiar with the Titanic, that grand vessel of hubris and tragedy. Its wreckage lies in dignified silence, a memorial to human folly and the price of unchecked ambition. How fitting, then, that in the Oval Office last week, we witnessed another titanic collision - between decency and derangement, between the sacred and the profane.

President Donald Trump, that maestro of moral bankruptcy, unveiled his latest transactional dream: to transform Gaza - still warm with the bodies of thousands of women and children - into what he terms the 'Riviera of the Middle East'. One imagines bronzed tourists sipping mojitos where children once played, luxury condos rising from the rubble like gaudy phoenixes from the ashes of devastation.

The sheer vulgarity of it all would be comedic if it weren't so grotesquely tragic. Here sits a former property developer, treating a humanitarian catastrophe like a distressed asset ripe for development. 

"We'll own it," he declared with all the sensitivity of a bull in an antiquities shop, while Netanyahu, that architect of destruction, purred like a cat doused in double cream.

This brashness is perhaps the ultimate expression of Trump's worldview - a perspective where everything, absolutely everything, can be reduced to a real estate transaction. Even war crimes can be repackaged as development opportunities, and genocides rebranded as urban renewal projects. It's capitalism at its most grotesque, where human suffering becomes merely another externality to be factored into the cost-benefit analysis.

The proposal reads like something scribbled on the back of a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin after one too many Diet Cokes. The entire Palestinian population, we're told, would be relocated - as if moving millions of people were no more complicated than reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Their homes, history, and very identity would be erased, replaced by luxury hotels and golf courses because nothing says "peace in the Middle East" quite like a putting green where a playground once stood.

What's particularly chilling is the casual colonialism of it all. Trump speaks of "taking over" Gaza as if he were discussing a hostile corporate takeover rather than the forced displacement of an entire population. There's a breathtaking arrogance in assuming that one can purchase and repurpose a people's homeland like some Mediterranean Mar-a-Lago, that centuries of history and culture can be traded away for the promise of beachfront property.

The international response has been predictably apoplectic. Arab nations, the United Nations, and virtually every country with a functioning moral compass have condemned the plan. But in Trump's gold-plated reality distortion field such universal opprobrium merely confirms his genius. It's the same logic that leads a man to believe he can negotiate with a virus or suggest injecting bleach - a peculiar combination of ignorance and arrogance that would be amusing if it weren't so dangerous.

Netanyahu's enthusiastic endorsement of this scheme adds another layer of moral bankruptcy to the proceedings. Here sits the man primarily responsible for turning Gaza into what Trump describes as a "demolition site", nodding appreciatively at plans to profit from the very destruction he orchestrated. It's rather like an arsonist admiring the development potential of the ashes he created.

But perhaps the most telling aspect of this whole sorry affair is Trump's apparent bewilderment at why anyone would want to return to Gaza. "It's been hell," he declares as if the conditions he's describing existed in some sort of historical vacuum as if they weren't the direct result of policies his purring companion, the Prime Minister of Israel, championed and enabled. The cognitive dissonance is staggering yet somehow entirely on-brand.

This isn't just a policy proposal - it's a moral obscenity dressed up as a business deal. It's the kind of idea that could only emerge from a mind where everything has a price tag, but nothing has value, where human dignity is measured in square footage, and suffering is an inconvenient footnote to calculated opportunism.

The real obscenity isn't just in the proposal itself but in what it reveals about our times when such an idea could be voiced in the Oval Office, not as a dark joke but as serious policy, marking a new nadir in our political discourse. It's as if we're watching the death of shame in real time, broadcast live from the highest office on the planet.

One can't help but wonder what's next in this grotesque parade of moral failures. Perhaps we'll see proposals to convert refugee camps into luxury spas or turn sites of mass graves into themed water parks. After all, once you've normalised the idea of building a 'Riviera' on the ruins of a humanitarian catastrophe, the sky's the limit.

The plan also reveals a profound misunderstanding of the Middle East that would also be comical if it weren't so dangerous. Trump believes that the complex web of historical, religious, and cultural tensions that have defined the region for centuries can be resolved with a few luxury hotels and a casino or two. It's the kind of thinking that reduced Middle Eastern politics to a real estate prospectus.

We shouldn't be surprised. This is, after all, the same man who suggested building a wall across the Mexican border and making Mexico pay for it - the same man who viewed the presidency itself as little more than a branding opportunity. Why should we expect him to view Gaza any differently? In Trump's reductive world, everything is transactional, everything is negotiable, and nothing - not human rights, not international law, not basic human dignity - is sacred.

The most disturbing aspect of all this might be the precedent it sets. By suggesting such a plan, Trump has pushed the boundaries of acceptable discourse even further into the realm of the unconscionable. Ideas that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago are now being debated in the halls of power. The Overton window hasn't just shifted - it's been knocked off its hinges.

In any political analysis, this isn't just about Gaza or even about Trump. It's about us - what we're willing to tolerate, what we're prepared to normalise. When the conversion of mass graves into beach resorts becomes a policy position rather than a war crime, we've crossed a threshold from which there may be no return.

That could be the real estate deal Trump is actually proposing - the selling off of our moral authority, piece by piece, until there's nothing left but the hollow shell of our former principles, decorated with gilt and glitter but empty of anything resembling human dignity.

As I write this, I can't help but think back to the Titanic, resting in its watery grave. Like Gaza, it too is a monument to human tragedy, a reminder of the price of hubris. But unlike Gaza, it has been treated with the respect such a site deserves. That we can extend such dignity to a shipwreck while contemplating the erasure of an entire people's history speaks volumes about our selective morality.

The question now is not whether Trump's proposal will succeed - it won't. The question is what its very existence says about us as a society and what our response to it says about who we wish to be. In the end, that's the only question that matters.