Hamas and Israel.

Terrorists backed by Russia and Iran, and Israel, allied with the USA.

I’m up at 3:38am as a tidal wave of information crashes in from the ethers about this conflict. I’m tumbled in its churn, the flotsam and jetsam of mass death, fear, and uncertainty.

From the froth, I’m straining out clear pieces of information. Like the fact that this horror was far beyond a terrorist organization like Hamas’ reach. With multi-flanked assaults from the air, the sea, on land, and in the cyber world, this coordinated attack rings more true to a full-scale Russian ransack.

Of course, there’s no evidence of Russian involvement in this attack. There rarely is, globally (outside of Ukraine.) There’s just the matching carnage.

Yet I’m struck, looking into the ethers tonight, by the fact that if this conflict persists, and if the USA steps in to assist Israel, then Russia benefits, as no doubt some of the military aid we’re lending to Ukraine will be diverted elsewhere.

I have said for years and years that Putin is a long-gamer, a chess-player, a Moriarty who can’t seem to find his Sherlock, turning over country after country in his sociopathic boredom.

I’ve felt for a very long time that Putin is deathly ill (if he’s not dead already, and that’s being covered up by the Kremlin). His mind, his choices, aren’t what they used to be.

I watch his war with Ukraine bankrupt his beloved mother Russia. I watch the Russian people suffer beneath his Moriarty complex. I watch Ukraine torn to bits, just so he can leave an anti-west legacy behind in his failing years; an old lion pinned beneath an avalanche caused by an evolving planet, whose teeth are now broken from a battle with the never-ending mountain.

Putin.

Hamas is responsible for initiating this carnage. Yet the complex execution of the modality has Russia sprinkled all over it.

Putin has been furious with the USA’s back-door approach to assisting Ukraine. The passive-aggressive post-cold-war dance between Russia and the USA, where both they and we act like we’re not taking the actions we’re taking, lends itself to an awkward boiling point.

Russia is losing the war they started with Ukraine. They have been for a long time. Russia hired a private army, which turned on Putin, and whose leader miraculously ended up dead by a classic Kremlin “random banana-peel-slipping” incident. Whether it’s a plane crash, falling out a window, or “accidental” poisoning—Putin removed those who fall short of his expectations.

I’m 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton scared the dickens out of Putin by running for POTUS. She had 30 years of dirt on him and planned on slamming his junk in the door of sanctions once she was elected. Putin knew this, and Russia made sure to jump in and mess with not only our first official wave of fake news, yet multiple documented cyber voting machine issues as well. In fact, in 2014, Obama’s administration warned of potential election interference by Russia in the next election.

Miraculously, as if the finger of god moved all obstacles (in the shape of Putin), the long-shot candidate Donald J. Trump won several key electoral college states by exactly 2% over the exit polls, in those very same states claiming voting machine issues, and though Hillary won the popular vote—she lost the electoral college, and America swore-in Trump.

Who, of course, went on to sing his greatest hits that included the ironic pop ballad “Election Interference”, the rocker “Drain the Swamp”, and his only punk song, “Lock Her Up”, a tune that ended up being self-predictive.

Trump, a former Democrat of 30-years turned Republican for the 2017 race, was a big former Bill Clinton campaign contributor. And, a very close friend and business associate of Vladimir Putin. Putin knew Trump’s ins and outs. He wasn’t scary, like Hillary, who even scared Democratic voters. Trump was a predictable, therefore controllable, ally.

In Putin’s mind, Trump was supposed to destabilize America more than he did. If you can believe that. The purpose of a destabilized America that turns a blind eye to Putin’s Moriarty complex is that Putin could then annex Ukraine like a subdivision—and own the wheat fields that feed them all, including Europe.

Yet the USA has a pesky way of being it’s Ted Lasso self in the world, and in spite of mind-numbing inner conflict and flirting with our own civil war, has belly-flopped out of utter destabilization and into a reality-show holding pattern starring Marjorie Taylor Greene, AOC, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Pelosi, entitled “As the Crap Show Churns”.

This didn’t serve the purpose Putin had hoped for. He wanted American Armageddon. He got the re-boot of “Dynasty”.

In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukraine soldiers and citizens have died. Russia has committed heinous war crimes in Ukraine, and goes unpunished, as the result would be a war that divided the planet. Putin’s Mother Russia has been financially starved by the world after sanctions, and has lived off its crypto, and sales of its low-grade tar sand oil to China.

As the USA pumps trillions of our military dollars into Ukraine, broke Russia is out of moves on the chess board. And the pride that has fallen in the Kremlin is a sharp reminder of how the Reagan administration bankrupted Russia in the 80’s, in the Cold War arms race. Russia kept up with the USA on manufacturing nuclear warheads. It just went bankrupt in the process. Which was the point of Reagan’s arms race.

So here I sit, at 4:43am, feeling into a dying (or already deceased? Maybe that’s theoretical…) Putin, who is staring into financial ruin for his country, out of moves on the board. Now what to do? Light a fire in the corner of the pub where the losing chess game is occurring. Break the focus.

Hamas. Attacking Israel. An ages-old war, strained by a heating global climate, blown into horrific and staggering proportions.

All eyes on the Middle East.

The world’s heart breaks once again.

People here in the USA may or may not understand that Putin has been trying to pull the USA into the boxing ring for years. Our government and intelligence agencies know this. Thus, we stay out of the ring. At least, officially. Not because we’re afraid. But because it’s a treacherous thing to get into a knife fight with someone else who is already wounded, and has nothing left to lose. It’s especially ridiculous to fight when you’re on top, and don’t need to.

Yet to look at the layers, in the ethers tonight (or this morning), it’s a devastating and nearly incomprehensible loss of human life, in its senselessness. All in the cause of religion, pride, and borders.

All in the grab for power, on a planet whose resources are dwindling, whose socioeconomic structure is collapsing, whose two biggest superpowers have been passive-aggressively swatting at each other since the 80’s because that’s easier to do than to acknowledge a planet that’s trying to boil us off the surface; we’re the virus, being burned out of the flesh of a fevered and worn-down earth.

Throw in two wars, and it’s a soul-wrenching and exhausting endurance. And real people, with real families and real lives, are dying. First, Ukrainians, then Russians. Then Israelis, then Palestinians.

Humans. Dads, moms, sons and daughters, families, pets, histories, architecture—all leveled.

All for ideologies. All for pride. All for religion and boundaries. For resources and principle.

We survived Covid—for this? The end does not justify the means.

Hamas and Israel. What an analogy for the spiritual, sociological and emotional lessons we’re witnessing: two ancient cultures, entwined in history and ancient family lineage, never able to resolve their wounds with one another.

This is the price of no closure—the forced eruption of timelines and lives, of cities and towns.

We who are only witness to these atrocities from afar, can pray for our world. We can send peaceful and loving energy through God/Universe, whose “heart” I can feel break over the in-fighting of It’s own creation.

There is such opportunity for so many miracles, here on earth. And what an equal opportunity for shocking horrors.

Vlad the Impaler. Adolf Hitler. Vlad Putin—all the same soul. Someone who specializes in crushing others, to exert their will.

What a soul path, to continually play the villain.

We all play a role in this world balance. Tonight, mine was to assemble a puzzle dumped upon my table by a jumbled world, a puzzle when assembled which may only calm my own mind, in the rising and falling tide of world events.

Yet my heart. Your heart. Our collective hearts—

they mourn.