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.

Martin LeFevre

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