Alternate Realities and the End of the Rules-Based Order
Alternate Realities and the End of the Rules-Based Order
Reading time: 6 minutes
Way back in first year university, I befriended a rather quirky fella whom we nicknamed The Wizard. To say he was off-beat is to vastly understate his uniqueness. With a strong affinity for medieval lore, The Wizard felt that chivalry and honour had become diminished by modern life, to our peril. When he drank at all, his tipple was homemade brandy.
One time, the Wizard explained that reality consisted of parallel time lines and that higher-level beings were responsible for weaving various threads of time together towards a more enlightened and peaceful future. For example, to avoid worst case scenarios like nuclear Armageddon, our individual and collective freewill certainly matters (good to know)—along with these mystical forces.
It turns out The Wizard was actually expounding upon the Multiverse Theory (well, with added embellishments) whereby different versions of events and history can unfold in radically different ways while also co-existing.
It all sounded kind of sci-fi back then—but the theory actually arises from interpretations of quantum mechanics (the many-worlds thesis), cosmology, and string theory, and it raises profound questions about the nature of reality and our place within it.
New Agers have picked up on it and YouTube is chock full of Multiverse adherents and advice on how to jump parallel realities.
I’ve been thinking about The Wizard lately when I think about unfolding events in the Middle East and the so-called “rules-based international order”— now pulverized into nonexistence by Israel’s scorched earth policy.
When I see online comments from people who praise Netanyahu as a great world leader, who label ceasefire advocates as “terrorists” and “anti-Semites” and who then double down on their ahistorical b.s and unhinged racism, even as Israel’s actions grow more extreme, for me it’s like they live in an alternate reality.
Did I quantum jump?
Then again, maybe I’m the one from another timeline because things here seem strangely out of whack.
In this reality, both presidential contenders are beholden to the Israeli lobby and thus both are unabashedly aligned with Israel’s actions. This is nothing new, but there was a time when America would use its leverage over Israel but it seems the Biden/Harris administration has basically dropped the leash, consequences be damned.
This basically means the anti-genocide constituency, and the protests, often led by Jews, have had next to zero influence on the US electoral process. Since teleporting into this reality, I’ve had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around that one.
On The View, Kamala Harris was recently asked if she’d do anything differently than Biden; she replied she couldn’t think of anything. So it's likely she’d continue the endless flow of US arms for Israel’s expanding war. Actually, she’s establishment hawkish and bizarrely so on Iran, which is interesting timing.
In a piece entitled Why I am not voting for Kamala Harris, Al Jazeera journalist Maura Finkelstein writes “If Harris wants the progressive vote, she has to support an arms embargo on Israel… this is a red line for many of us.”
She can’t and she won’t. Yet Kamala Harris can still lose Michigan, and given the large Arab constituency there, that could be a crucial mistake for the Dems. Would she rather lose the election than defy the Israeli lobby? That’s what American-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin asserts in this Instagram post.
On the other side, there’s the unhinged Herr Trump. In the reality I recall inhabiting, this freak would never have once been president, let alone have two additional attempts. Yet here we are, in this insane reality.
Arch-Zionist Miriam Adelson contributed $100 million to Trump’s campaign. She and her late husband Sheldon were key influencers in Trump’s controversial move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017 and his 2019 recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights (seized from Syria in 1967). Trump speaks of Israel ‘finishing the job’ and vows to deport anti-genocide activists. In short, Trump is proudly aligned with Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right and its American Christian Zionist allies, and he says so out loud all the time. He couldn’t care less about Palestinians.
Even if he were to flip flop like he did over North Korea, only those living in an alternate reality can possibly believe he’s up to the task of brokering a just and lasting peace. Nonetheless, I see a lot of deluded comments by those who’ve been duped into thinking Trump is somehow the ‘peace candidate.’ In what time line do these idiots exist?
It would take thousands more words to adequately describe the current holocaust, oops, I mean General’s Plan that Israel has unleashed on northern Gaza, now in its fourth week—to replace Palestinians with Jewish settlers.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Drop Site News documents how eyewitnesses report the IDF is starving residents, targeting hospitals, bombing shelters, and murdering civilians in the streets. That’s on top of all the other accumulated atrocities and war crimes that are not even remotely controversial because they are being documented by Israeli forces.
With that in mind, I recently noticed a Facebook post citing the oft-quoted former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
That’s pretty rich after a year of collective punishment, starvation and mass murder of Palestinians by the “world’s most moral army.”
What baffles Punditman’s brain is, how at this point, any educated, liberal-minded person can post something so anachronistic, so incendiary, and so racist.
It takes courage and an open mind to shift long held views—to take a quantum stride, maybe even a leap. Sometimes it starts with taking a step back.
Far too many people are unwilling or unable to do this regarding Israel’s response to the horrific actions of Hamas on October 7, which has unfolded as a war of vengeance, wanton destruction, indiscriminate attacks and ethnic cleansing.
Normally I’d put this down to ignorance and Western propaganda, but it’s well beyond that now because the truth is leaking through everywhere, and yet there are those who remain in a completely deluded reality.
And that’s way more destabilizing to my sense of reality than anything The Wizard ever said to me; indeed it entertains all sorts of explanations, none particularly comforting.
Actually maybe that Wizard was onto something.
On that note, let’s end with some hippy dippy vibes. Peace.
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I agree. This is mind boggling. How can people support a genocide?!
The fact that AIPAC is not required to register as a foreign lobby group under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) has sparked debate about the implications for U.S. democracy. Organizations that register under FARA are required to disclose detailed information about their funding sources, activities, and any connections to foreign governments but AIPAC doesn't have to. Consequently, many have suggested that the US has "the best government money can buy". Israel becomes the dog wagging the tail of US politics. Trump is now Israel's preferred candidate, for the most part. He may win as a consequence and just as Zionism, which dominates Israeli policy, is fascist, so too the US may be if they elect Trump for a second time. He has even praised Hitler. But, as you note Punditman, Biden and probably Harris, are both Zionists as well. The difference may come regarding the Ukraine war with Trump wanting to cut Ukraine off financially because they are losing and the US has therefore been throwing good money after bad. With Russia in the ascendancy, the decision may rest in Putin's hands, however, as Russia no longer trusts either NATO or Zelensky. In this scenario, neither Harris or Trump will have much say as to when the Ukraine will finally end.