News with Nuance: Feb. 10, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

I’m writing you today this News with Nuance with a fresh set of ice packs as I recover from a minor surgery. I thought about taking this week off — but there are a few important stories I do want to share here, so I may just keep it brief.

Leading the news, of course, is the terrible tragedy in Turkey and Syria after two large earthquakes brought mass death and devastation. I’ll have more about how political corruption has compounded the destruction below. And there’s more from North Korea on the corruption of absolute power, and then some essential reading and statistics on Christian Nationalism from

Robert P. Jones

, who has taught me so much since I first appeared with him on NPR’s 1A in 2020.

Let’s get to the news - with nuance - and hopefully not too many typos due to my current state of surgery recovery!

The Headline: Death toll passes 9,500 as Turkey and Syria race to find quake survivors

There’s this phenomenon that happens with human capacity for compassion and understanding when it comes to war and natural disaster. As the scale of death and destruction ramps up, it’s like our brains go haywire. Paradoxically, once numbers get into the upper thousands, we start to lose our ability to empathize and understand tragedy on this scale.

I noticed this phenomenon happening for me as I kept reading, day after day, about the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. At first, there were hundreds dead - then 1800 - then several thousand - then 5000 - and as of this writing almost 10,000 people have been counted as dead.

It’s a scale impossible to grasp. So much loss of life. And thousands of miles away, we go on with our days. We do the laundry, put away the dishes, pull on our socks, remind our kids to brush their teeth. Life is monotony and routine until it’s over. And I suppose if we could really grasp tragedy on this scale, we wouldn’t be able to go on with our own lives. We’d be lost in mourning and railing against a seemingly cavalier God. Why, oh God, did you allow this suffering and death? Why, oh God, for a people of northwest Syria who have already lost so much to war and violence? Why, oh God, did this happen in the midst of an unusually cold winter, so that people trapped could not survive in the cold?

God, have mercy.

In these moments I turn anew to the storytellers. We claim our ability to live and respect the beauty of life in the individual stories, crushing as they may be, because it is these stories that remind us of our common humanity. I think of the father who rescued his wife and daughter, then ran back inside only to find his two sons dead. Of the pregnant woman whose baby alone survived. Of family members helpless in the U.S., trying to reach their elderly parents in Turkey. Of doctors and rescuers who worked without proper equipment for 24 hours straight, only to find out that their own families too had died in the quake.

We can only go on if we tell and hear these stories, and pledge to honor every individual human life, recognizing that part of the story in Turkey is the political corruption that gave construction contracts again and again to the same corrupt firms, and failed to ensure these contractors followed the earthquake codes. Greed, as always, is part of the story here - and greed is one of those things that blinds us to the value of every individual life.

Photo by Adem Altan / AFP via Getty Images

The Quote: In Syria, residents found a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told the Associated Press.

Story by Mehmet Guzel, Ghaith Alsayed and Suzan Fraser, Associated Press

The Headline: Is this the face of North Korea’s future leader? Kim Jong Un shows off his daughter

This story horrified me. And not only because, like Kim Jong Un, I too have a 10-year-old child. It horrified me because it reminded me of the famous quote from Lord Acton, that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Life is terrible in North Korea, most poignantly for the majority of the population who is not part of the political elite and does not live in Pyongyang. They’ve endured famines, natural disasters, and forced isolation from the rest of the world due to the cult of the ruling family.

But life in North Korea isn’t even good for the ones at the top of the pyramid, for Kim Jong Un himself and his young daughter.