When More than a Chessboard Is at Stake

Again I say (not to sound oracular or pontifical, much less Dominical) - but again I say, Pray - and fast when you can - for the peace and free passage, the safety and sanity of the Persian Gulf.

And of course there's a specific reason - quite apart from the obvious - why I want to keep urging that message, through quiet times and loud. It is that frankly I don't trust any of our present global so-called leaders to be - well, sufficiently human in matters like these. To be sufficiently mindful of the people on the ground, anywhere. As distinct from people in high-rises the world over. Or in boardrooms, or control installations, or who likely have bunkers in reserve somewhere, whether owned or borrowed. In fact, I'm having trouble recalling any period in, e.g., the past 200 years, when the lives of so many world-scale leaders were more removed from, less directly invested in, or more thoroughly insulated against, say, the rougher parts of the lives of the people they govern, manage or employ. And if that peculiar deficit (but especially in this war-simulation-as-total-entertainment Age?) isn't likely to make otherwise rational yet powerful leaders think "All or nothing" or "Now or never" - at least with other people's lives - I don't know what is.

Because NO world leader should be that secure in his own mind. No one should be so big and rich and powerful and global, so placeless and countryless himself, that he's prepared to risk, much less write off, the peace and stability of what is still - for most of us ordinary peons anyway - a globally critical part of the world. I don't care how smart and indispensable, how accomplished and multi-productive and superior our Superhero is. No one of his stature and influence should be able to look in good conscience at any part of the globe, much less the earth as a whole, as chiefly the backdrop for some glorified, epic-scale, highest-of-stakes videogame. Or even a chessboard (however grand). 

One more thing. It's possible that we already have more leaders like that than we can handle - leaders who think that way, here in the West and Russia and China and India. In that case, I was wondering if anyone might care to explain to me: Just how is that not the most serious and far-reaching judgment on us? And every adult one of us?

(Edited.)