I’ve been away from the news, so I didn’t catch what was happening in Belgium until a couple of hours ago.
My hopes and best wishes go out to Belgium and the entire EU right now. Serious political upheavals are testing that already uneasy alliance.
The ‘Islamic State’ is having a temper tantrum again, and trying to scare us with bombs. People have died. Politicians are flailing around. Political enemies are making deals behind the scenes, to use this tragedy to their gain.
This is the danger of tribalism, and always has been: faced with a cosmopolitan world filled with people who do not think, act, or believe as they do, the tribalists lash out. They claim to be victims and martyrs. They poison their minds until suicide bombers and gun battles seem the only way forward, against a world that does not condone or believe in their stupid backwater little cults.
ISIS is a bloody, cynical, incompetent doomsday club bent on ruining the planet for the rest of us. It and its kind of organization (regardless of their actual religion) are on the way out…if humanity can solve the other problems of energy, food, and water supplies before climate change alters the planet too much.
If we can’t solve those problems, if we backslide another century or two, then ISIS and its ilk will be the dominant form of government. Don’t look to ISIS or the Tea Party for fusion generators, starships, and terraforming other planets – these folks can’t even manage to save a major dam or promote science education in their classrooms. Not beyond the minimum needed for bombs and guns.
Which world do we want? Which world could possibly save humanity, the next time a couple of really large asteroids wander by on the wrong trajectory? When the seas rise and take out major ports and arable land, squeezing the billions even closer together?
I damn sure don’t want theocrats with guns in charge.