The notion of having to one day repent for one’s trespasses gives even the godless a fright, we assume. A kicker like “You’ll regret this!” is redoubled by the certitude of a not-yet-felt emotion—how bad one will surely feel when the now becomes the later. No one wants to someday be found the fool. That potential regret resides, affectively if not quite grammatically, in the future-perfect tense, which, per the Oxford English Dictionary, expresses “an event or action viewed as past in relation to a given future time”: What will have come to pass. This is a version of the future not only understood in tandem with the present but also disciplined by it—and a version of the present which is very sure of our capacity to remember, and to feel.
As Israel gluts the present with death and destruction, the future perfect has become a means of stirring timid Americans out of indifference and into something like sympathy for Palestinian lives. As riot police climbed the ladder atop an armored truck—nicknamed “the Bear”—into an occupied hall at Columbia University in late April, in a widely circulated image, the Jacobin podcast host Daniel Denvir remarked, “This image will be in the history books and the people who authorized or cheered it on are going to look like shit.” In one sweet protest photo, an older woman holds high a sign: “YOUR SILENCE WILL BE STUDIED BY YOUR GRANDKIDS.” That premonition in full, as found on other signs, in social-media posts, and on a bumper sticker available for purchase online, includes the following question: “Will you admit you were complicit when they ask how the world let it happen?” Headlines and images have been received as if they are lessons for the future, lamented for how unfortunate this will all look later. A statement from the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, supporting an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” back in October, declared, “This is a moment of truth. History will judge us all.” Eight months on, the same line of rhetoric is repeated with identical urgency. “History will judge what we do right now,” Bernie Sanders wrote in April. (In December, after months of urging from staffers and supporters, Sanders called for a humanitarian ceasefire; he has yet to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.) Those who have yet to do so are implored to join the “the right side of history,” another common refrain. Altogether, the appeals go something like, One day, when this moment is history, this will have been a shame and you will regret your silence. The statements adopt an imperative from the future, which, it’s said, will be the best arbiter.