After being prodded by Netanyahu into what he thought was another short if more intensive bombing campaign of Iran, President Trump has been cornered in the Straits of Hormuz. So where is this war headed?
Trump can do one of two things — end “Epic Fury” and declare victory in the war he and Netanyahu started, or escalate.
Most analysts, goading the TACO president, and citing the thing Americans care about the most (the price of gas), think he’s close to declaring victory.
But as former allies refuse to buckle to Trump’s bullying and send warships to help open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is facing the growing prospect of accountability and responsibility for the war. And since he has never taken responsibility or been held accountable for anything in his life, he’ll probably escalate.
Trump is so deluded that he believes that he is not only the most important person in the world because he commands the world’s most powerful military, but that he actually rules the world.
Let’s hope I’m wrong and Trump relents. However since this is a worst-case scenario president, it would be foolhardy not to consider the worst-case scenario for this war.
Today Trump chastised former allies for not joining his war, and delayed his trip to Beijing because Xi isn’t sending warships to help provide safe passage for tankers through Hormuz, many of which supply China with oil.
Whether he consciously intends to or not, is Trump trying to start a world war? The answer is clearly yes, since he’s even attempting to drag even China into the war.
Even so, why are journalists so focused on Trump? That just reinforces his narcissism. Why don’t they see that the power concentrated into one unbalanced, amoral man, with the world’s most advanced military following his illegal orders, is a far larger problem than one unbalanced, amoral man?
This war is much more dangerous than most experts seem to realize. There are times when the momentum of history is like a runaway train, and a crash is inevitable before it occurs. This may be one of them.
So far the Gulf States have shown remarkable restraint. But Iran’s leadership is in an existential fight, so they are driven, like Trump (for life-or-death rather than egoistic reasons) to widen the war as much as possible. Cornered, both sides are hell-bent on escalating into a world war.
I’m not an apocalypticist. Though the world is clearly ruled by dark forces in human consciousness, and humankind is heading toward ecological and political catastrophe, there is no divine intention and intervention that will establish a new, righteous kingdom. Cosmic intelligence exists, but it can only operate through human beings.
Is this an ultimate confrontation between good and evil in human consciousness? Perhaps, though no one can know if it’s humankind’s last chance to change course until after the matter is resolved one way or another.
Can human beings rise to the immense challenge of our times and begin to build a global civilization, or will Homo sap continue to fail and perish?
Finally, does resistance still have a place? Resisting oppression or invasion has been a strong theme of human history, but the human condition is very different now.
In ancient times, vanquishment through war and absorption into an empire was a strong pattern, and resistance was often seen as futile. During the Greek and Roman periods for example, cities and peoples were given a choice: become vassals of the conquering empire, or be slaughtered. People still celebrate “Alexander the Great” because he employed this method from Greece through Persia all the way to India, where he was finally done in by poison or debauchery.
The point is that the modern narrative of “resistance to colonialism that moves from one generation to the next, from one historical moment in the context of a world where the colonizers are primarily of European descent” no longer applies. Whether history “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” remains to be seen. But people of conscience need new narratives.
Certainly Palestinians deserve their own homeland, as do Ukrainians, Kurds and Tibetans. But a homeland does not equate to a sovereign state, except in the context of the defunct nation-state system. And to continue to think in nationalistic terms plays into the hands of oppressors everywhere.
Hope is not a strategy, and a strategy is not a vision for the aftermath of war. If this conflict doesn’t expand into a world war, we will have dodged a nuke. Nevertheless, the runaway train toward more war and nuclear proliferation will not have been slowed, but speeded up.
Technological and economic forces far stronger and deeper than conventional western colonialism are in play in the leveling of Gaza, Tehran and Beirut. AI chose thousands of human and physical targets in both places so quickly that humans could only rubber-stamp them. That resulted in tens of thousands of civilians murdered in Gaza, and 165 elementary school girls crushed in the first minutes of the bombing of Tehran.
What comprises the increasing mass of history’s momentum? I maintain that it’s the cumulative weight of the unaddressed darkness within human consciousness, which isn’t just the result of colonialism or rapacious capitalism.
Resistance is endemic to history, but it certainly isn’t life. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are children of diasporas of human violence and oppression. Identifying with one of them from our comfortable and relatively secure nations is no sign of our humanity and human solidarity.
Invaded peoples have often had no choice but to fight. That appears to be true of Ukrainians today. But to valorize resistance, and call it life, is deeply mistaken.
That isn’t a philosophical abstraction. I’ve been confronted with life-threatening violence inside and outside America. I didn’t submit, but if I had resisted I would have been destroyed.
To end the cycle of human violence one must end resistance within oneself, and remain with what is. That allows the space and energy for insight, understanding and compassion to grow. Inner work is first, and short of enlightenment, it’s never done.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
Well, now that I know these MLeF piece aren’t a series on how to meditate, but a political series, I might occasionally read and comment. Yet ironically the piece ends about how fixing the inner self through meditation is the road to world peace.
MLeF’s opening premise that collapses under its own weight: a global war engineered by one man being “prodded” by another. That framing is narrative convenience. It strips agency from every other actor in the system, especially Iran, whose behavior in the Strait of Hormuz, proxy conflicts, and regional escalation has been the central destabilizing force for years. MLeF erases that and declares the situation the product of Netanyahu whispering in Trump’s ear. That is ideological storytelling dressed up as geopolitics.
MLeF leans heavily on the idea that Trump’s ego is the primary driver of events, as if international conflict is a personality disorder rather than a collision of state interests, deterrence failures, and strategic miscalculation. That move lets MLeF (and much of the media) avoid engaging with actual incentives: oil chokepoints, freedom of navigation, nuclear proliferation concerns, and Iran’s own strategic doctrine. Reducing all of that to “narcissism” simplifies a complex system so it fits a pre-decided moral frame . . . and all those with TDS thump along with it.
MLeF’s treatment of allies refusing to join in is similarly distorted. Coalition behavior is a calculation of risk, domestic politics, and regional priorities. Countries hesitate to enter conflicts for reasons grounded in their own interests. By interpreting every hesitation as moral resistance to Trump, MLeF centers DT as the axis of the world while claiming to oppose that framing.
Then there is the conspicuous minimization of Iran. MLeF describes its leadership as acting from “life-or-death rather than egoistic reasons,” granting a kind of moral seriousness absent on the other side. This is a regime that openly funds proxy militias, suppresses internal dissent, and has repeatedly threatened regional annihilation. If that’s not ego, what is? Treating its escalation as existential necessity while casting U.S. or Israeli actions as ego-driven creates asymmetry disguised as nuance. MLeF assigns dignity to one actor’s aggression while pathologizing the other’s. Why??? I know you don’t like DT, but seriously . . . not even a tip of the hat to Ayatollian evil?
MLeF’s swipe at “journalists focusing on Trump” contradicts the essay itself, which is almost entirely about Trump. MLeF critiques over-personalization while indulging in it. A focus on concentrated power would expand to institutions, military doctrine, intelligence failures, and international law. Instead, MLeF returns to the same psychological caricature which leans into a fixation disguised as journalism.
The colonialism section is where MLeF’s argument loses coherence entirely. MLeF gestures at dismantling the “European colonial narrative,” then replaces it with a vague flattening of all historical conflict into a single, interchangeable story of domination. Seriously, only European “whities” conquered vast tracts of the world and it’s peoples? Palestinians, Ukrainians, Kurds, and Tibetans are mentioned — totally unique situations to their regions and politics — then the concept of sovereignty that underpins their ‘claims’ is immediately undermined. A homeland that is not a state functions as a slogan. MLeF dissolves concrete political problems into abstract philosophy so contradictions never have to be resolved.
The closing turn to inner transformation detaches from reality. Ending global violence by “ending resistance within oneself” functions as a retreat from the problem. Individuals can cultivate restraint, perspective, and compassion in their own minds. None of that stops a missile, reopens a shipping lane, or deters a state actor pursuing strategic advantage. MLeF takes a concept that may have value at the level of personal conduct and inflates it into a solution for geopolitical conflict. Error, Error, Error.
Finally, there is an undercurrent running through the piece that hints at familiar tropes without stating them outright: disproportionate influence, manipulation, hidden drivers. MLeF avoids explicitly claiming that Israel “controls” U.S. policy, but the structure of the argument leans in that direction by framing U.S. action as derivative rather than autonomous. That insinuation carries weight and requires evidence or removal. As written, it functions as suggestion rather than argument. Ask an Israeli how they view this weird yet pervasive idea that Netanyahu controls Trump. And how, exactly, does a country of 10 million control a country of 330 million? Magic Jew mind control?
The essay wants to be sweeping and philosophical, but is just TDS on steroids.
A total misreading of the piece, and more importantly, a nauseating apologia for the Iranian war. Focusing entirely on a defense of our narcissistic and demented president, while accusing the writer of doing so is a typical trick of Trumpers, who are incapable of seeing the man and his administration for what they are.
Having revealed himself in his last posts as an exceedingly unintelligent man, the diatribe is filled with what reads like AI lifted text. What is the intent of the human? It appears to be a long winded way of avoiding confronting the stupidity and bottomless darkness of Trump, his administration, and his cultish followers.
The irony is that this essay length reaction sets up strawman for some of the very political points made in the piece. That attests that the deeper insights of this column really struck a nerve.
Stop finding political fault with things we might agree on with a decent reading, and start asking questions.
I am not a Trumper and I have a high IQ
And sometimes I stick my finger in my ear and shout: “here pggy poigy puggy”
You contend nothing I said, just say stuff about me.
Frail fail.
“After being prodded by Netanyahu into what he thought was another short if more intensive bombing campaign of Iran, President Trump has been cornered in the Straits of Hormuz.”
What did Trump get in trouble for having in his bathroom at Mar A Lago? The war plans for Iran.
I offered ‘Meditations’ to the Vanguard with the intent to spark inquiry at all levels, but what I see on the site is a lot of trolling — the antithesis of honest inquiry.
As far as the charge that to write about politics and war is unsuited for a column called ‘Meditations,’ besides the editor’s studied response a few days ago, my response is that to ignore the evil of this unprovoked war, and confine things to personal, inward reflections, would be irresponsible. Although, living in a cultural and online climate such as this, I’m not sure putting any proposed insights out there makes a difference.
Given the much greater escalation of the war this morning, the question that entitled my last column still stands: Has human history come to a head? That question obviously involves the political level. It is wholly unaddressed so far on this site.
“but what I see on the site is a lot of trolling”
What I see is your inability to accept that others disagree with you, so you insult them with “Troll”, “Trumper”, etc.
I think the author let’s Trump off too easy by suggesting that he got played by Netanyahu. Donald Trump isn’t known for doing things he doesn’t want to do. Trump wanted to do this all along. He ended the Obama deal with Iran in his first term and had Mark Milly, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, draw up war plans against Iran that he kept after leaving the Whitehouse. My guess is he didn’t want to do this until after the 2020 election. When asked about Netanyahu’s influence Trump took full responsibility for the decision to bomb Iran. Trump is the 79 year old leader of the USA he is where the buck stops.