Trump’s killing of an Iranian general reminded me, with great foreboding, of the assassination of the Archduke that started WWI.

When two powers are locked in a contest to be Number One in a region, like two tomcats in the back yard, the yowling will escalate until the twitch of a whisker will launch the fury until one is dead if one doesn’t limp off.

When neither side, America or Iran can deescalate the build-up of fury, a saturation point is met where you just need on tap to release the pent-up energy, which then has no checks.

We see this building tension of frustrated forces in America as well. The quest to be Number One, to restore unity, law, and order has invested in violence instead of creativity.

In America, the election of a new president is a creative act. But on the world stage, only when great world leaders rise in a confrontation is a creative resolution possible. Where is Mandela, or Gandhi in the Middle East?

Is the fire destroying Australia a portent of the fire in the Middle East that just needs a single match to start?

All wars are religious. I read that somewhere. Haven’t you heard that? The purpose of religion is to restore unity, to restore the One. It’s right there in the Hebrew Bible. Yahweh says let there be no other god before me. “I am the One.” 

When a people, a nation, a society, or any One is divided into a polarity, and each pole must restore the One by eliminating the challenger, you have a civil or religious war. Either they come to a creative solution or they will if equally matched, destroy each other, mutual suicide. 

But when one side wins, and the other half of the One, or society, must submit to its “evil twin” the religious war continues fermenting underground until it erupts another day, perhaps in a new costume. We can witness this in America today, as the civil or religious was that consumed us is still being fought in proxy wars. We have yet to discover that single Idea of a new America that transcends yet contains the values of the polar twins. 

The Middle East is a battlefield of ancient wars. America seems to be the stick that enjoys stirring the sand into all-encompassing sand storms. When one cycle of violence dies down, we stir the sand to provoke a new storm. At some point, the fury cannot be contained.