Is this world of ours really happening ?  Have things ever been this bad before ?  Well, yes, as a matter of fact, things are not really so unusual at all.  It is easy to believe that the world is imploding at an exponential rate like never before, but a sober look at history (if you can actually stomach much history while sober) indicates that the world has been embroiled in wars since the beginning of recorded history.  I remember when I was in Afghanistan in 1970, during the long hiatus between wars, before the Soviet invasion in 1978 and the decades of war that followed.  I had a great time in those good old days.  Afghanistan was flooded with barefoot hippies from all over the world (like June Bugs in Kansas), looking for their incomparable hashish (the world’s finest, at anywhere from $10 ~ $15 a kilo).  

     Our hotel in Kandahar was pretty cheap.  The first room they showed us was 11 cents per night for the two of us, but it was small and dreary, so my companion wrinkled his pretty little nose and asked if they had anything better.  They brought us to a deluxe and spacious corner room in the original part of the hotel, with carpets on the floor, art on the walls, tables and chairs, and curtained windows opening onto views of the town on one side and the mountains on the other.  That room set us back about 16 cents per night, but we were obviously great and wealthy lords who could casually plunk down sixteen cents for a night’s lodging without giving it a second thought.  

     Later on I picked up a volume of the history of Afghanistan, and it turns out that we had lucked into a very rare window of peace in between interminable wars.  In fact, for the previous 2000 years and more, Afghanistan has been wracked with almost incessant war between rival factions and warlords.  But Afghanistan is not an outlier ~ an investigation into world history indicates that just about every region of the earth has been constantly involved in warfare, raping, and pillaging throughout the entirety of the time human beings have been fouling this planet with their baneful presence.  

     Plenty of things seem to be getting better, particularly medical knowledge and care, and recent technological advances have provided us with amazing toys.  Computers and the internet have opened up vistas unimagined by our predecessors, with AI promising to bring even more incredible innovations.  However, these silver linings definitely have some serious clouds behind them.  In the case of AI, it turns out that Ministers of War are peeing in their pants with gleeful anticipation of the great wealth of military applications, giving us yet greater opportunities of destroying our planet faster than ever before.

     So, where am I going with this ?  Are we living in the End Times, with Armageddon just around the corner, or is this just Business as Usual ?  Well, in some ways things really are worse than ever before.  When wars were fought with sticks and stones, and later on with swords and spears, the levels of lethality were significantly less than they have been ever since.  When I was reading Homer’s Iliad it was almost charming that, whenever a particularly famous warrior were killed, all fighting would stop for a few days, while both sides would come together in a truce to celebrate the fallen hero with games of skill, in which both sides would participate.  After these niceties had been observed, including due reverence to the gods, the warriors would resume their positions on opposite sides and continue fighting.  

     Now, I hardly need to compare the devastating consequences of modern warfare, without even considering the potential of nuclear conflict.  But there is yet another ominous black cloud hanging over the interminable battlefield of our planet ~ the biological collapse of our planet due to the incredibly blind and stupid destruction of the Trees, which have been the foundation of the life force on this planet from the beginning.  This wanton destruction of the primeval forest has left the planet denuded of any natural protection.  With the Trees gone, the climate, which had developed into a stable progression of expanding fertility and life, began to go downhill, with floods during the rainy season followed by drought during the dry seasons.  The organic, living topsoil washed away, without which today’s farmers seem to believe they can manage just fine, by the simple expedient of substituting chemical fertilizers and pesticides for the long-gone organic soil.  

     But, not content with cutting down the existing forest (so they can graze cattle on the bits of organic life that remains), the human race has spent the last 150 years plundering the last 250 million years or so of the Trees’ residue in the form of the oil which has formed from the slow process of decaying organic matter.  

     So now here we are, living in increasingly precarious times.  It may be that constant warfare is just what the human race does, but with today’s weapons (still without even considering nuclear weapons ~ once we go there, it’s all over) the scale of destruction dwarfs anything ever seen before, and the whole mess is compounded by the specter of the biological collapse of our planet hanging over our heads, while the earth burns and the ice melts (and Donnie fiddles, lost in a power fantasy of Rome and Nero, with Himself at the center).  

     So this brings us to the present day, in which the three most egregious villains are Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Donald Trump in the United States.  Trump, of course, is just a silly clown, a mindless puppet of both Putin and Netanyahu.  However, Trump is a pretty big loose canon careening around on a pretty big deck, so his antics and whims can have devastating consequences.  The real villainy in the United States, however, is all of those (either vacuous and mindless, or greedy and evil) persons and institutions who still support that blithering idiot in the White House.  

     How is it possible for the State of Israel to continue with their nakedly avowed and publicly celebrated campaign of genocide, annihilation, and extermination of the Palestinian people, ever since 1948 ?  Now they talk about Greater Israel “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” and, after pulverizing Gaza and the West Bank, now they are working their way through Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran, for which they have duped the clueless Donald into doing the heavy dropping for them.  Finally, and ever so slowly, most of the world is coming around to rethinking their automatic support of Israel, but as long as they have the Donald as their Number One Puppet in their pocket, they feel invincible.  They have taken their gloves off long ago, while their insidious AIPAC continues to grease the wheels with money which the United States stupidly gives to Israel for free.  

     So far, this is all Preface.  Now we come to the consideration of Iran’s closing of the strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas flows.  On the face of it, this should be good news.  [Here’s that Silver Lining.]  If the burning up of millions of barrels of oil every day is the principal cause of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is rapidly destroying our planet, shouldn’t we all rejoice that at least some of that folly is being abated with the closure of the strait of Hormuz ?  Every year people piously congregate and promise to be good ~ reducing their carbon footprint ~ but then, after having sung in the choir, they go back to lying, cheating, stealing, and killing, just like they did before going to Church.  Oh, no !  It is all right to promise to change our evil ways, but don’t expect us to actually do anything about it, please !  So now everyone is up in arms over this slight blip in the ongoing daily conflagration of oil.  The sky is falling in !  The economy of the world is tanking beyond repair !

     I seem to be taking both sides at once.  On the one hand, I fervently hope that the imminent destruction of life as we know it will cause heads wiser than the Donald’s (a low bar) to prevail to the point of stopping that insane war against Iran, which country has not engaged in unprovoked hostility or aggression since 1730, when Persia under Nader Shah conducted expansionist campaigns into the Caucasus, India, and Central Asia.  For the last 300 years, it has only fought back in response to external attack.  

     Look at what happened to Libya and Iraq (but, pointedly, did not happen to North Korea !).  Cave in to the demands of the Western bullies, and what does it get you ?  Iran agreed to a nuclear deal, and kept their side of the bargain, but Trump nixed the whole thing and resumed sanctions and hostility against Iran, and, under the instigation of Israel, kept up a nagging antagonism, bombing Iran every few years.  

     The U.S. killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.  Iran was outraged, but politely lobbed a single attack against some US military installation, carefully informing the US of their launch in order to forestall any chance of casualties, damage, or consequence.  Then, a few years later, again under the urging of Israel, the United States and Israel launched another bombing attack ~ “the 12 day war.”  Once again, Iran muted their response to avoid escalating into any further troubles.  But, finally, when Israel duped Trump into shouldering another bombing campaign against long suffering Iran, the Iranians had had enough.  Pull the tail of the Lion of Iran once too often, and they will eventually run out of patience.  Br’er Donald has run smack into the Iranian Tar Baby.

     Not only was this war against Iran totally unjustified and illegal, but it was gobsmackingly stupid.  Now there is idiot Trump, foolishly begging the Iranians to discuss their capitulation, while the Iranians don’t even bother to return his calls (or the calls of his minions).  So, if all of this fallout persuades Trump to get off his hobby horse and walk away from the piles of shit he has been dropping in Iran, that’s wonderful news, but I also think that it is about time this world figures out how to get along without all of that oil.  We should leave it all in the ground, not just 20% of it.  

     Here is how to do it ~ first of all, transportation of all kinds will have to be greatly curtailed.  Air traffic, spinning around the globe for fun, will have to be drastically reduced.  Gas powered automobiles will have to be traded in for bicycles, or, if a bicycle just won’t meet the need, then at least go with an electric vehicle.  Perhaps the horse drawn carriage will make a come-back.  Trump has to give up his collusion with all the evil fossil fuel purveyors (drug dealers) and get on the greener alternative band wagon, taxing fossil fuels into oblivion while introducing financial incentives for rolling out more and more wind and solar power.  The US has already lost the initiative to China over electric vehicles and solar panels, but, with a serious public backing of the greener alternatives, there may yet be some role for the Americans to play.  Perhaps they can develop the luxury end of the EV market, featuring solid gold door handles, and tinted glass windows . . .

     Perhaps we will see the return of the family farm, since it will no longer be financially feasible to eat Maine lobster in Los Angeles ~ in fact, all transported food items will be very expensive, suitable only for those rich enough to flaunt their conspicuous consumption.  The rest of us will ride our bicycles to the local farmers’ markets and fill our backpacks with local produce.  

Sunday in New England, Albert Fitch Bellows

Curriculum Vitae ~ links about the Author and his work.