Tag: current events

The key to understanding the Middle East (and possibly the world)

I just finished Douglass Murray’s latest book, On Democracies and Death Cults, and wow, is it an incredible book. Difficult to read, simply because of the grim nature of the subject, but a very powerful and very timely book.

My own thinking on Israel and the Middle East has changed a lot since the October 7th attacks. For the record, I studied Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic in college in the 00s, traveled throughout Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine / Judea & Samaria while I was pursuing my degree. I’ve kept up with geopolitical developments over the years, including during the Arab spring, and have helped some of my Arab friends navigate those developments.

The apocryphal Churchill quote that “if you’re not a liberal by your 20s, you have no heart, but if you’re not a conservative by your 50s, you have no brain” very much describes my own experience. I used to be very sympathetic toward the Palestinians, but after the October 7th attacks, my position has shifted almost 180 degrees.

The thing about the Middle East is that even though it’s complex, it’s not really that complicated. Within the Middle East, there are basically three kinds of people:

  • the Jews,
  • the people who want to kill the Jews, and
  • the people who really don’t care.

This dynamic has defined the politics of the region since at least the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 600 BC, and possibly quite longer. Possibly, in fact, since the very first Hebrews migrated to the region during the Bronze Age Collapse.

(As a side note, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Levant since our first historical records of the Jews. In other words, this is the one place in the world where the Jews are indigenous. Therefore, anyone who argues that the Jewish State of Israel is a “colonist” state is, in effect, arguing for the extermination of the Jews, because there is no other place in the world where the Jews can live and not be considered colonists. At the very least, they are laying the foundation for the ideological position that the Jews should always and everywhere be treated as subhuman.)

With the above dymanic in mind, there are only two configurations that possess any sort of inherent stability. The first is that the Jews are the people in charge of the region AND constitute the majority of the population. That way, even if all of the non-Jews fall into the kill-the-Jews camp, they are still not powerful enough to carry out their plans.

This was the state of affairs from the days of Ezra and Nehemiah basically to the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Following the Babylonian exile, the Jews returned to their homeland under the (mostly) benevolent rule of King Darius of Persia, who allowed them to rebuild the temple, which the Babylonians had destroyed. When Alexander took over the region and the Greeks began to Hellenize it, the Maccabees and other Jewish rulers still managed to hold their own.

But all of that changed when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. They put down the Jewish revolt with utter ruthlessness, making a desert and calling it peace. They drove the main body of the Jews out of their ancestral homeland, making sure it would never be such a hotbed of rebellion again. They also renamed the region “Palestine,” after the ancestral enemies of the Jews, the Phillistines. The name “Palestine” was originally an insult to the conquered Jewish people, just like the name “Britain” (ie “land of the painted people”) was originally an insult to the conquered Celts. And just like the British came to own the term, the Jews also came to own the term “Palestine” until it was appropriated from them by the Levantine Arabs who wanted to kill all the Jews.

From 70 A.D. until the early 20th century, the Jews were a minority in their own homeland. And so long as their numbers didn’t get too large, things were relatively stable. Sure, there were plenty of people who still wanted to kill them all, but so long as the Jews mostly stayed out of sight, most of the non-Jews frankly didn’t care. It was only when their numbers began to grow that the I-don’t-care faction bled into the kill-them-all faction, leading to pogroms and mass rapes and all sorts of insane atrocities.

But then, in the 19th century, the Jews began to migrate back to the region in large numbers. This led to an inherently unstable configuration which persists to this day, where the Jews and non-Jews are roughly equal in number. The Jews formed the State of Israel with help from their Western patrons, who provided a degree of metastability. But the situation is not long-term stable, and hasn’t been for the last 150 years.

The Americans tried to solve this problem by bringing together the Jews and the people who want to kill the Jews—as if they could ever make peace. This was incredibly naive. So long as there are Jews, there will be people who want to kill them. Individuals may be persuaded to change their positions, but the ideologies of antisemitism are as persistent as the Jewish people themselves. The death cult will never be satisfied until all of the Jews are dead.

What October 7th showed us is that the three-way dynamic of the region is still very much in play, and that the kill-the-Jews faction is still far too strong. And given the way things are changing here in the United States, I suspect that the Jews have, at best, another generation before their Western patrons become unreliable, and the metastable nature of the current configuration begins to deteriorate.

The Abraham Accords are changing things in a very positive way. For once, instead of trying to get the Jews to make a deal with the people who want to kill them, we are moving away from that silly nonsense and cutting those people out of the equation by making a deal with everyone else (like we should have done in the beginning). And with the way that Iran was utterly defeated in the latest war, it looks like that might actually work. But even then I don’t think the situation is going to be long-term stable unless it ultimately leads to a mass resettlement of the Palestinians, because that’s the only thing (aside from the senseless massacre of millions of Israeli Jews) that puts us into a stable configuration.

I think the Israelis know this. And I think that Israel is going to get a lot more aggressive in the coming years, much to the consternation and perplexity of their friends here in the West who do not understand this three-way dynamic (or who think that the key to peace is for the Jews to play nice and not fight back, so that most of the non-Jews fall into the I-don’t-care camp).

Because here’s the thing that almost no one is talking about: the impetus for the October 7th massacre was the transportation of several red heifers to Israel from a ranch in Texas. In order to build the third Jewish temple, the land of the Temple Mount (where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stand) needs to be ritually cleansed by the ashes of a pure red heifer. The reason Hamas called their operation the “Al-Aqsa Flood” was to appeal to their Muslim brothers to defend the temple mount.

From what I understand, most Jews do not currently want to rebuild the temple, and the State of Israel itself has taken strong measures to suppress those who do. But every time the Jews have had a commanding presence in their own ancestral homeland, they have built or maintained a temple on the Temple Mount. So once they feel they’re strong enough, they will probably do it again. And when that happens (or as it is beginning to happen, perhaps even now), I think that this three-way dynamic will become much more of a global phenomenon.

The best take on the Epstein files that I’ve heard

Worth listening through to the end. I think Malcolm misses some of the deeper nuances of Epstein’s (alleged) operation, but there are plenty of people schooling him on it in the comments to this video.

Epstein did not kill himself… and if it ever became public who did, it would probably start WWIII (or massively escalate it, if indeed it has already started). We certainly live in interesting times.

Did I predict it?

On July 24th, 2024, eleven days after the (first) Trump assassination attempt, I posted the following prediction:

8. There will be a major shakedown of the administrative state in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

It hasn’t been 100 days yet, but enough has transpired that this prediction has certainly come true. Which brings my current prediction score to five out of eight. Not bad.

Five things I did at work last week

So apparently DOGE’s “what are five things you did at work last week” is now an ongoing weekly task, which I am heartily in favor of, at least until the Trump Administration’s reforms to the executive branch are complete. The best counter-argument for this policy that I’ve heard so far comes from Cal Newport, who points out that this sort of request is typical of an insecure and overbearing manager, but I don’t find that argument very convincing. Given the sheer amount of corruption and outright fraud that Elon Musk’s DOGE has already uncovered, I think there are very good reasons for the Trump Administration to be overbearing. Besides, it really shouldn’t be that hard to come up with five bullet points, as I will demonstrate now.

Last week, I:

  • finished releasing all of my books in audio on Audible, using KDP’s AI narration tools,
  • made a rough outline for a seven book series, of which my current WIP (The Soulbond and the Sling) will be the first,
  • re-released “Lord of the Slaves” as a free short story,
  • wrote up character sheets for all of the viewpoint characters in The Soulbond and the Sling, and
  • outlined twelve separate throughlines in the story bible for The Soulbond and the Sling.

Oh, the trauma. How can I possibly be expected to do this every week? And people say that writing isn’t a “real” job… in any case, I plan to make this a regular thing for as long as DOGE and Elon Musk continue to keep it going. Feel free to add your own five bullets in the comments!

Re: DOGE: Five things I accomplished at work last week

  1. I started and finished the rough AI draft of The Unknown Sea, at 54,330 words (cover reveal forthcoming).
  2. I published 14 titles from my backlist on Audible using Amazon’s AI narration system.
  3. I compiled ten years of author’s notes for an upcoming book release.
  4. I developed a magic system for a new fantasy series, where magical powers can only be unlocked through marriage between a man and a women who both have latent abilities.
  5. I workshopped the first three chapters of an unpublished WIP through my writing group, and used their feedback to start outlining my next WIP, a fantasy adaptation of David and Goliath (but with 100% more jackalopes).

Generational Turnings and the Great American Revival

One of the shows that I listen to fairly regularly is Steve Deace, and a couple of days ago he had an interesting discussion about The Fourth Turning and Strauss & Howe’s generational theory. It’s worth giving a listen, if you’re interested in that kind of stuff.

What really interested me, though, is how the theory may (or may not) predict the period of religious revival that we currently appear to be entering. So after listening to the show, I shot Steve an email with my thoughts on the subject. Since this email more or less brings together my recent thoughts on the subject, I thought it was worth sharing on this blog.

Hi Steve. I enjoyed your show today, where you discussed Strauss & Howe’s theory of generational turnings. I’ve been fascinated by this subject for several years now, and have studied The Fourth Turning is Here (published just recently) and Generations (published in the 80s), in addition to The Fourth Turning. Here are some pertinent details that you missed, but may find interesting:

First, of all of Strauss & Howe’s predictions, the optimistic ones always seem laughably wrong in hindsight, whereas the pessimistic predictions are the ones that seem prophetic. I could share examples, but you’re a busy man and I want to keep this email relatively short. Todd will probably back me up on this.

Second, the spiritual foundation of the new societal order which emerges in the first turning is always set by the awakening in the previous second turning. So, for example, the spiritual foundations of the post-Revolutionary War period that gave us the Constitution were set by the First Great Awakening in the first half of the 1700s.

If we follow this pattern to its logical conclusion, then the spiritual foundations of the coming period of national unity in the 2030s and 2040s were set by the counterculture revolution of the 1960s… which is just another way of saying that the woke leftists win and establish their DEI utopia. That is what the “hero” generation of the Millennials will give us, if we follow the pattern.

Third, Howe’s most pessimistic prediction in The Fourth Turning is Here is that our current crisis era spirals so completely out of control that the United States disintegrates into separate waring countries. In other words, we never get a first turning period of national unity because the whole thing breaks apart, and the current “hero” generation never rises to the occasion.

But there is a third option, which Strauss & Howe actually predicted in one of their first books, Generations. This third option is the most pessimistic prediction from that book, but it lines up pretty well with what has actually occured. It is that we skip the first turning altogether and go immediately from a crisis era to an awakening era.

There is a precedent for this. According to the theory, we should have gotten a period of national unity immediately after the Civil War… but of course, we didn’t. Reconstruction was a mess that we muddled through for several decades, giving way to the labor riots, the rise of anarchism, the decadent excesses of the Gilded Age, etc. But we also got things like prohibition, Zionism, premillennial dispensationalism, and movements like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Salvation Army.

Point is, it was a period of spiritual awakening that happened immediately after a major crisis. We never got the peace, unity, or prosperity of a first turning period, but jumped immediately from the Civil War to the next Awakening. And it appears that we are following a very similar path right now.

Put another way, our three possible scenarios are:

1) The left wins, and everyone who listens to your show gets shipped off to the rainbow gulag in order to establish their progressive utopia (Strauss & Howe’s optimistic scenario),

2) The cycle breaks, and the United States disintegrates into separate countries, probably with an accompanying civil and/or global war (Howe’s pessimistic scenario), or

3) We skip straight from the current crisis period to a period of spiritual revival, which ultimately saves the country, but never gives us a period of peace, prosperity, or unity–at least not until the next generational cycle.

If the assassin’s bullet had blown Trump’s head off in Butler Pennsylvania, I think we would already be well on our way to either scenario 1 or scenario 2. I think the reason God saved Trump’s life on that day was to move us into scenario 3, and to give us the sort of spiritual revival that will purge our culture of all (or at least most) of the pernicious evils that took root during the counterculture revolution of the 60s, which in many ways was actually an anti-revival. Fifty years from now, I think the world that the Boomers gave us will seem as foreign and strange to our grandchildren as Medieval Christendom seems to us now.

Anyhow, those are some points that I thought you’d find pertinent. It was an interesting discussion on your show.

Did I predict it?

On July 24th, 2024, eleven days after the (first) Trump assassination attempt, I posted the following predictions:

3. Biden will be removed from office via the 25th amendment, and Harris will become the 47th President.

On this one, I was clearly wrong. I thought that the Democrats would do the right thing and remove an obviously senile disaster of a president from power, even if for the wrong reasons (such as Kamala’s lust for power). Clearly, I underestimated the political strength of the unelected cabal behind Biden’s handlers, as well as the craven disregard of the Democrats for their own country. The greatest political scandal of my lifetime is that Biden was not removed from office when it became obvious that he lacked the mental competence to fulfill his presidential duties—and I lived through the Clinton years.

6. Before Trump becomes president, NATO will become entangled in a direct war with Russia.

On this one, I was also wrong. About a month ago, it seemed that we were heading toward this outcome, but then Russia debuted the oreshnik hypersonic missile, and the neocons backed down. Turns out that when your opponent can strike any capital in Europe within minutes with a missile that cannot be shot down, that changes the calculus of war. There has probably also been some backroom dealing with the incoming Trump administration that we won’t hear about until long after the Russo-Ukraine war has been resolved. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Trump is using the Greenland issue to get leverage over Putin and satisfy the NATO hawks.

7. The war with Russia will not go nuclear, if only because Russia no longer has a functioning nuclear arsenal.

I was right about the war not going nuclear, though of course we have no way of knowing whether Russia’s nuclear arsenal is or is not functional—at least, no way of knowing short of fighting a nuclear war. So I’m going to give myself a point on this one, since despite the fact that the world has never been closer to nuclear armageddon, the US nuclear football has now passed hands to a man who isn’t utterly senile and suffering from late stage dimentia. I never thought I would say this, but I feel much safer knowing that Trump has the nuclear codes.

And that brings my score in the prediction game to four out of seven. Not the best, but still greater than 50%.

The Great American Revival is beginning

Saw this in a news article, thought it was worth posting, especially as it has more than 10k likes only 24 hours after it was posted. I will share more signs of the brewing revival as I encounter them.

For more of my thoughts, check out this post here.

A fascinating take on cultural trends from a fashion CEO

I was not expecting to get as much out of this podcast as I did. Triggernometry is a fantastic long-form podcast, and the guest for this one is the guy who made the suits for Jordan Peterson, among other people. He has some fascinating insights into our current culture and where, from his view, it appears to be heading.