I stink at this whole ‘clickbait’ thing. All the YouTube gurus say you need an attention grabbing titles and to build suspense. Me? I lead with the conclusion. Oh well, guess ‘YouTube sensation‘ like Lawrence Brown isn’t in my future.
I’ll live.
I’m a cranky old lady and proud of it. What annoys the heck out of me are headlines that scream about impending doom. First off, scaring the socks off of people is just morally wrong. Second, it’s not true. Third, it gets people’s attention off the real world and the problems we can and need to address and has them looking for zombies under the window instead.
There isn’t going to be a zombie apocalypse. Scripture would probably have mentioned it in all that eschatology stuff if there were – look up eschatology those of you who can’t click the link in the blog – and since it didn’t I think we’re safe in assuming no zombie apocalypse.
But, but, World War Three! Gaza! Ukraine! China! Russia! All the stuff you normally talk about!
Calm down. First, we’re not going to have a nuclear Armageddon anytime soon. We might manage a technical world war but only because China is so danged far away from all the fun stuff. Frankly, I’m extremely dubious of even that. What we’re definitely not going to do is World War Two level conflict.
Why? The US is the only kid that could show up to the fight. Russia and China are quickly going broke. Iran hasn’t the moxie to back up Hamas. Ukraine is intent on itself and won’t be out to expand the war any further than absolutely necessary. NATO EU isn’t interested in mass warfare and will barely be able to handle its end of the NATO bargain if it did. The Middle East is ‘rediscovering’ itself before it becomes more of a basket case.
There’s no one else to play with.
Sure, I’m over simplifying to a degree – it’s a blog, not a dissertation. Y’all ain’t paying for that much work! But in reality, the simple answer is usually top card in the ‘why we’re doing this’ deck. The US is quite capable of fighting a two front war. We won’t like it; the Pentagon will gripe; the media will naysay; all the other countries will get all upset and whatever idiot actually went to war with us will cry – a lot. But we can do it.
No other entity can. NATO without the US can’t. No other security alliance can handle one front, let alone two. Russia can’t. China can’t. The entire Middle East can’t. Africa can’t even unify let alone fight together. South and Central America have less chance of unification let alone cooperating in a war.
Unless the penguins in Antarctica are a lot more militant than I think they are, we’re out of possible playmates. Wars are like marriage – it takes two. The US would have to have a civil war – a real one – to even pretend to have World War Three. Sorry, but no WWIII for you.
Will there be wars? Yeppers, those are ongoing. There are a LOT of them. The media just doesn’t pay attention to those that won’t get masses of people riled up in America. Those wars are important but they aren’t going to set off WWIII. People are suffering and people are dying – THAT MATTERS. But it doesn’t get nation states to lob nukes.
There’s a lot going on – welcome to a normal political world – and some of it is really impactful. None of it is nuke tossing level and none is likely to be as things stand today, October 23, 2023. Tomorrow? Can’t promise but so far, we haven’t managed to destroy the planet overnight so I’m pretty confident tomorrow will be just fine.
Busy, messy and probably a bit scary, but fine. Politics among nations are not placid or boring. Way too interesting if you ask most folks.
How do I know? If you are looking for 100% certainty, I’m only 100% certain about the existence of God. Beyond that, I deal with levels of uncertainly like everyone else. That said, the probabilities against World War Three are extremely high.
But, but, WAR! Instability in the Middle East! Russian aggression…
Chill, okay? The world was never as stable as you thought. It’s okay – it walks like a drunk on a ship in a storm but it always gets where it’s going. Humans only come in size imperfect and that makes the world way more interesting than we may like but it also makes our systems fairly robust. Humans are nothing if not survivors. Resilience is bred into us and it is built into our political lives.
Despite what the screeching media would have you believe, we are not a species out to destroy ourselves and our world. The Crazies are not the majority. Loud and annoying, yes; majority, no.
Come on, Lady! You’re not taking this seriously!
Oh, I am taking it seriously. There’s a lot going on and a lot of it can and will impact the US. What I’m not doing is what you’ve been taught to do your whole lives – I’m not treating every event or problem as a crisis that spells impeding doom. The world has been amazingly peaceful over the last seventy plus years and beyond amazing the last thirty.
No, that doesn’t mean there were no wars – there were way too many – but compared to centuries past or to the first half of the Twentieth Century it’s been downright calm. Both in the overall number of wars and the number of casualties, modern wars after World War II have been a fraction of their former selves. I’m all for keeping it that way.
The last thirty years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, have been the most peaceful in recorded human history. That isn’t some sideways justification for wars that shouldn’t have happened at all or for not finding better solutions to political problems but it does put the current political climate into better perspective. We’re not used to handling the prickly problems of conflicting worldviews between powerful players or the changing political landscape. It’s been possible to just ignore most of the rest of the world for three decades.
Hope you enjoyed it because that ride is over.
But, but Afghanistan and Iraq!
Any war is tragic. Don’t pretend otherwise. But if you look at the blood and treasure expended, those are just blips on the blotter. Relatively few people died or were wounded – which is no comfort at all to those who were killed or maimed – and the numbers are miniscule up against World War II or even Viet Nam. Same thing for the trillions we spent. It wasn’t much compared to our defense budget over the same period and less if you compare it to World War II, adjusted for inflation.
Even if you believe we shouldn’t have been in either war they don’t hold a candle to Viet Nam in terms of American lives lost. Not justified isn’t the same thing as major war. Neither were major measured by the real thing. Hence they don’t disprove the premise that the last thirty years have been the most peaceful in recorded human history.
Welcome to the real world! Sorry it came back so late!
For those of us who grew up in the Cold War, the last few years look somewhat familiar – and not in a good way. That’s annoying and even mildly scary for us. But for those who were born in the 1990’s? This isn’t even the same planet to them. It’s not surprising at all that they find the Ukraine War and the massacre of Israelis terrifying. This isn’t the relatively calm world they grew up in. Worse, they had some vague notion that once the COVID panicdemic was over, everything would go back to the world that they knew as normal.
Talk about a nasty surprise. Instead of Zoomer normal, they get Boomer normal.
Try not to snicker at them – at least not too much. We’ve seen this picture before and while we may not know how it turns out, we have a pretty good idea of the plot. We see dramatic comedy. They see world annihilation.
Okay, it is funny when they think World War III is starting every other day and a civil war on the days in between.
So, how do I know the world isn’t ending? Simple, none of the actors capable of starting World War III are even remotely acting like they want that outcome. It’s like a game of chicken being played over a safety pillow pit. The players look all mean and tough but if you look down, they have plenty of padding to fall back on.
Russia can declare victory and go home whenever they get the clue. No need to destroy the world – there will be another day to fight. This is why Putin couches his threats and pulls his punches with the West. He wants to win and will push as hard as he safely can, but he plans on landing softly.
I know – it sounds ominous and dangerous. But Russia has done more damage to itself than to us – yes, really. Putin has come as close as he dares to falling out of the safety zone. The noise will remain scary but the actions will stay in the safety zone because Putin doesn’t want to destroy the world – imagine how bad that looks in Russian history books!
You can relax about Putin or Xi being bonkers. Total nutcases are easy to take out – usually by their own guards. If the guy with the gun that keeps you safe decides that you are a threat to him and his family, things get ugly fast. Convincing a whole passel thieves to carry out your orders to launch against the US when they know full well that spells death for everything they care about is a very, very tall order for a sane man – forget it if they think you’re out of your mind.
So no, no crazies get to start a nuclear war. I swear, it’s like they don’t teach y’all anything in school. Oh yeah, they didn’t teach us much, either.
I get it – there is a LOT of political noise and it’s being filtered by a media that feeds on controversy and crisis. It’s hard even for those of us who know better not to get upset and scared. But ninety percent of what you hear on the news is just that – noise. Consider the source – media’s bread and butter is keeping you glued to their channel. Maybe don’t trust everything you hear from the talking head crowd, especially when they use the word ‘crisis’.
There is no 100% certitude. Anyone can be wrong. But fortunately, probability doesn’t hang around with outliers any more than it has to and the extremely unlikely stuff rarely actually happens.
Which is why grown ups deal with the likely, not the remote possibility. Most of the stuff in life falls in the likely category so worrying about the unlikely maybes is just an exercise in futility. You can waste your time with ‘but scary thing!’ if you want but I’m telling you, you are hurting yourself doing it.
So now do the math yourself. How likely is it that any of the nation states you are concerned about are suicidal? Extremely unlikely. So why are you worrying about World War III?
There’s plenty of real trouble in this old world without borrowing imaginary crises. There’s more than enough that needs doing to make this old world a better place for your grandkids – our great grands. There’s a ton of stuff that needs doing yesterday to make sure the world you leave to your kids is no worse than the one we left you.
Wanna make a big difference? Start with the small stuff. Make the world a bit better just holding the door for some poor guy with his hands full. You don’t know, he might be president someday. Angels unawares, doncha know? But more than that, if you can’t even handle the little stuff, how are you going to handle the big stuff?
Seems I’ve heard that somewhere before.
The world is not ending. You can take your head out of the sand now. A meaningful life is not a fearful life. There’s plenty of things, big and small, for you to do to make this place better and in so doing give your own life that much more meaning.
No time like the present to get started.
