It is of small benefit to the West's now ugly future that Trump's overtures towards Russia have, most likely, averted nuclear war. It is of equally small benefit to the West that, perhaps, in time, the hideous truth of the West's rape of Ukraine – that tragic country singled out by geography to be an expendable staging house on the West's greedy rampage to Russia's subsoil riches – will come out for the peoples of the West to learn of the horrors their leaders set in motion. But perhaps the rest of the world will benefit more. Perhaps they deserve it. Perhaps the West deserves its future. In fact I'm sure it does; one thing leads to another. There's nothing 'fairer' than that, even when it hurts, even when it's tragedy, even when you hate it, even when history once again reveals its capricious ruthlessness to perpetrators and victims alike.
The West, just like every other civilisation, cannot escape reality. Hegemony is a prize that hubris tells you is there for the taking, but when you reach out to grasp it, ignore all signs of your impending doom, and keep on doubling down on your gambit blind to those signs, self-destruction will be your reward.
The world is bitterly polarised across multiple axes, secular and religious, 'scientific' and 'faith-based', national and international, state and market, and no doubt many others. I'm not defending or attacking one side or the other in this post, nor do I elsewhere at this site. It's just that the uglinesses must be exposed, faced and processed, and to my eyes they are primarily reaped from the West's bitter harvest. These uglinesses are legion, and very human; the energies that drive them live in us all, though I strongly believe they are perversely 'wanted', or amplified and nurtured, by structural factors of power as power gets bogged down in its own entangling context, forced to believe its own hype by uncontrollable circumstances, such that doubling down is the only option it can see. It is because the West has the most power that it is condemned to do the most evil this time around. But this is a human process, not a Judaic one, nor a Christian one, nor an atheist or Islamic or Chinese one. It's human first and foremost, and it happens over and over again.
The West is tearing itself and great chunks of the world apart in its rapidly metastasising madness. I dearly hope I am wrong, but it is hard to see any other way through but down. I believe Trump had a chance. But the worst in him has burst forth in the last few weeks and it looks like he will hang himself, and millions of others, in its noose.
