Why History's Actors are History's Prisoners

 

"We're doing this in a very different way than in the past," Tony Blinken, a deputy national security adviser, said on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley.

 

Got it.  Arming and training local opposition forces to take out the Big Bad. 

 

The US has clearly never taken that approach before and regretted it - especially in the Middle East.

 

Those hyper-confident folk who magically land on ideas like this that are too great to fail don't need to reflect on the lessons of history - that's for reality-based pols and the like.  After all - history's actors command and control the world and all its lesser creatures, right?

 

Which reminds me - I have heard rumblings for years that the death of bin Laden had done nothing to quell the tide of terrorism in the Middle East; indeed, like Hydra, the one head has been replaced by two or more.

 

This is just one piece of an increasingly fractious big picture, too - there is a growing amount of civic unrest out there, even in so-called stable countries.  The water hole of our resources continues to shrink, opportunity continues to become the playground of an increasing few and people out there are becoming angry.

 

Those in the bubble don't feel the changes, and therefore don't believe they're happening.  The world, to them, is as it has always been.

 

Ignorance is the most insidious form of enslavement.

 

Confidence is not the same as mindfulness.  Until this lesson is consciously absorbed, we are doomed to do this again, and again, and again.