"finest silks and linens’ washed in orphans tears and the blood of martyrs.

No thanks - I know where he’s been.

A world at peace, true peace based on justice and happiness not enforced by oppression and brainwashing, is my hope. It’s what humans need. It’s what I need :-) I would prefer democracy, votes, laws, regulations, social norms all coming together to deliver that. Right now, it is others who are ‘moving fast and breaking stuff’ so my puzzle is how to slow 'em down and mend stuff before it goes too far to save anything good. Can I do that without violence or not? I prefer not but is it my choice? I am not the powerful one here, it’s the guys with guns and nukes who are running this show, and they seem hell-bent on violence. Do I let them roll over me or take a stand, however token? I am old enough to remember Tiananmen Square protests and that guy standing in front of a column of tanks asking the soldiers to go back to barracks and not brutalise peaceful protesters. I witnessed the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. I ask myself have I the guts to do as much? Will I be a coward and let the tanks roll? Just being honest and thinking aloud. And worried, very worried, about where things are headed.

I agree with you but I got side-tracked because of the way my childish mind thinks and started chuckling to myself as I imagined an enormous ‘dictator’s support’. The Trump Truss (patent pending). I am visualising something Steampunk style with polished brass, gears and levers, and puffs of steam - a bit like the walking house in Howl’s Moving Castle but bolted around the Tangerine nethers. Cheered me up!

Beware the Ides of March, huh?

If I recall, Shakespeare’s Caesar says to Antony:

*Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*

Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it’s just a coincidence.

I think we have to explore moral questions. I think it immoral to just refuse to think. It is wrong to simply assert ‘killing people is wrong’ instead of arguing a case. Games, imaginary scenarios, give us laboratories in which to test out our ideas without hurting anyone.

Like you, I am very reluctant to harm any sentient being. But is it always wrong? Example of a thought experiment: you are passenger on an airplane, a terrorist hijacks the plane, says he is going to fly it into a hospital and kill thousands of people. You just came out of the rest room and are behind him, he has not realised you are there, you could jump him but he has a gun, you might have to wrestle for the gun, and he, or you, or a bystander might get killed. What do you do? If you must never kill, then you must not take the risk of killing him, or yourself, or a bystander while you wrestle so you just have to let him fly the plane into the hospital and kill thousands. Or you might argue it is morally better to act, risk killing someone rather than do nothing, and as a result thousands die.

For thousands of years (probably far longer) humans have asked themselves ‘what if…?’ questions. We did this with stories around the camp fire, with theatre, with novels, with radio, movies, t.v., cartoons, comic books. Now we do it with video games. Speculating and questioning and debating is how we develop moral views. This is how humans do human. This is the way we got to having courts of law to argue cases, democratic institutions to argue over what is best government. Asking a question is not immoral. Refusing to ask questions is - those who do not think for themselves, often have their thinking done for them by others, and that is at best infantalising, a refusal to do adult, and at worst a form of willing slavery. That’s my view.

I could see a role for ‘elder statesmen and women’ as a chamber of cousellors i.e. they offer advice when asked but are not ‘hands-on’. Instead, they step down at a retirement age (about 60 years old say) and their juniors step up. That way you get the best from all generations and no generation selfishly dominates decision-making.

Good point!

I know too little about Russia to know who is a contender to replace Putin or if when he goes the system that created him will go too. I am trying to educate myself on that.

As for China, I know a bit more but I am no expert. Given my limited insight, I am surprised that Xi is still in power. I expected the Communist Party to have ‘neutralised’ him, not necessarily bumped him off but to have taken away his power and reduced him to a figurehead, especially after he mishandled the pandemic and has struggled to fix China’s economic woes. He is basically a thug. If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But you cannot beat a pandemic with a hammer nor fix inflation or unemployment or pollution with one. You must have as many tools as possible - Chinese perfected the toolkit of government over thousands of years. Sophisticated people in Chinese government must think Xi is an ignorant lout. I suspect they keep him in place because its better for the people who really run China to have a useful idiot as a puppet than to go through the uncertainties of replacing him - more or less how they handled the Kim regime in North Korea until lately. Putin and Kim collaborating on Ukraine must have really angered China which is probably why Chinese are considering sending ‘peace-keeping’ troops to Ukraine. Xi is a pig in a drawing room and the real government is just working around him.

It is hard to tell how much of the reportage about Xi is ‘smoke and mirrors’. I recently saw a viral report on Reddit and in The Guardian newspaper (probably going around all the news outlets) about Chinese military exercises and some special navy vessels (biggest of their kind! etc) they had which were supposed to provide support for amphibian landings of tanks etc. Every report spins this as ‘China war games is preparation for invading Taiwan - shock!’. I am very sceptical. Xi is apparently the driving force behind sabre-rattling rhetoric against Taiwan and building up PRC military might (his new bigger hammer), but I reckon most of Chinese government are not interested in a war with anyone least of all Taiwan - I think they expect to recover Taiwan eventually, by peaceful means, and are happy if it takes a century cos that long timescale is how Chinese think. So, given this split between Xi and the rest, I have the sense this whole media story is just a performance - whether it is to fool the world about China’s military aggressiveness (advertising Xi’s policy) or is some part of Chinese administration doing this to fool Xi he’s still in charge (covert anti-Xi policy), I cannot tell. I just don’t have enough facts to judge what these military manouvres tell us about Chinese government or, on the bigger scale, what real difference it would make if Xi was not around.

We (in UK) get 24/7 coverage of Trump’s idiocies but not real information on other political leaders. I am European and I could not name five European political leaders, let alone predict the outcome if one were assassinated. As for politics in rest of globe, I am just clueless for the most part but I do try to educate myself. I have to create my own news feeds because the MSM is worthless.

Creating bigger problems. Exactly why I ponder if assassination does any good or just recoils on you. But I think that its usefulness is contingent on who kills whom.

I guess that is why there are so few assassinations of elite figures - it threatens the stability that protects the elite so the elite do not assassinate each other.

However, assassinating non-elite people - terrorists and revolutionaries is routine. The elites (governments of nation states, their sub-contractors) have even mechanised assassination by using remote-controlled drone attacks. This stabalises their control.

So, if elites assassinate those that threaten them, it typically works in their favour. But if non-elites do it to elites, does it empower them or not? If it causes chaos and instability amongst the elite, and the chaos spreads to wider society, and does harm to bystanders or even brings about war, is this a price worth paying, or even a good and necessary outcome?

Honestly, I am still struggling with these questions. Part of me thinks ‘sauce for goose, sauce for gander’ and the tyrants deserve to die by their own methods turned back on them. Another part of me knows war is terrible, especially for ‘ordinary people’ and for the environment, and should be avoided. But there is such a thing as ‘a just war’ and armed struggle can be morally good or even our duty.

So, I go back and forth.

Very clear statement, very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct in your analysis. I know that one reason I play video games is to help myself become aware of my ‘ethics’ (derived originally from my Roman Catholic childhood and still full of that mentality despite decades of ‘personal development’ and consciously trying to break free from false religiosity) and to start questioning them. I am a vegan, literally avoid hurting insects let alone humans. I recoil from violence … and it makes me easy to abuse and exploit. I have been trodden on all my life one way or another because I am too ‘nice’ - I am not a Christian but I still ‘turn the other cheek’.

I play Skyrim and one story arc allows you to be an assassin who eventually assassinates the Emperor which, as a republican who finds monarchy morally offensive, is fine by me! But before you kill him, you have to kill a list of ‘ordinary’ people and it is hard to justify doing so as most of these targets are just eccentric or annoying rather than political threats deserving of execution on behalf of those they oppress. I struggle to do this mindless killing (which the game presents as a cultish sacrifice on behalf of a ‘daedric’ demi-god and/or service performed for pay/capitalist commodity) and as I play the game I am trying to understand my anxieties about ‘killing’ pixels, and trying to achieve a visceral sense of it being okay to use violence in specific situations, to feel good in myself about using my own power/agency, so I am not constantly second-guessing myself and thus conceding the initiative to others who are bad actors. I do not find it easy.

I am currently playing The Outer Worlds which is explicitly about the act of rebellion or revolution against tyranny. One of the characters revels in killing the evil corporation’s mercenaries. I am like a child, looking on and trying to understand the lessons, trying to imagine feeling the same about the work of liberation. It is ironic that capitalist products are helping me become a revolutionary but everything can be a learning experience and whatever the developers think they are creating, the players make their own experiences.

That reminds me of a news story from a few years back: a series of bank robberies in Germany, Holland, Denmark - all the same modus operandi and all done by white-haired robbers. Interpol (international police force) said they thought it was elderly members of 1970s terrorist organisations like Bader-Meinhoff gang stealing money because they had no retirement pensions as they destroyed their state records when young/had no savings accounts/criminal records etc and had to find some way to pay for elder care. It just paints an hilarious picture in my mind: Zimmer-frame Zapatas!

Interesting… Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea … and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).

Drum roll, ting on the cymbal! Lol!

I think it would be easier to just get WW3 over with and see how the dust settles!

I play Skyrim. In that rpg video game you can be an assassin. After you kill Grelod the Kind, a child abuser, one of the children she tortured says:

“Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities.” - Runa Fair-Shield.

When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy? I can see how bumping off many crazy men (and right now I can only name male dictators but I guess women could be just as bad) would make the world safer - well, safer if we assume it would not trigger a backlash and WW3.

Maybe we could assassinate Kim and North Korea would rejoice not set off nukes? Maybe we could assassinate MbS and the Saudis would just shrug and appoint a new Crown Prince with a less murderous tendancy towards journalists and dissidents? But could we assassinate Putin, Trump, Xi, or Modi and not release hell?

If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?

Note: this is a thought experiment - outside Skyrim, I never killed anyone, never worked as an assassin for hire, and have no desire to change that fact. I just want to read your thoughts on this topic - I think we’ve all wondered if there is a shortcut back to normality in face of current events but are we fooling ourselves?

Cheers friend! My hope lies in the decency of most people - yes, we are told that humans will readily do evil e.g. will hurt others if ordered to do so by an authority figure in a white coat (a classic experiment I vaguely recall from somewhere). But what gets missed is that there are always some people who refuse the first time, and if those who get fooled once realise what happened they are harder to fool a second time, which means we humans are fallible but we tend to fail towards becoming older, wiser. In brief, we can learn to do better. That is our strength. That’s how we survive.

You make good points. I sincerely hope you succeed. I admire Sanders and AOC - wish we had similar figures here in UK politics, we had Corbyn but he was destroyed by the rightwing of his party and now we have Starmer who is at best Centre-Right. I think Starmer is clueless and unwittingly preparing the way for a coup in UK like the one in US. We are just a few years behind you unless we find a miracle. I am more pessimistic than you because I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch. I cannot imagine Trump being impeached, tried, deposed in USA’s current situation and I expect it to get much, much worse because Trump is serious about dismantling American democracy and has no respect for human rights and wants to wage imperialist wars and open access to the new economic zone in the ice-free Arctic. Would he even allow another election or accept any result he dislikes? Will Dems not be soon made an illegal group or labelled a terrorist organisation - like the people vandalising Tesla cars? The window of opportunity to stop him is closing very, very fast.

Given that what amounts to fascism or some similar tyranny not yet defined by academia already controls USA, what can ordinary citizens do? I think they have to recognise the old way is gone - no more calling police to report a crime, or expecting rights of employees to be respected, or getting insurance to cover healthcare, or having enforcible consumer rights, no free education, no civic freedoms or human rights, no social security in sickness or old age. Society, for the poor, those unable to emigrate, will be effectively lawless, have no safety nets, few outside resources to rely on, no state provision. Trump is trying to replace dollar with crypto currency. People might not even have access to cash economy but be reduced to barter. When ‘might is right’, the only way to protect your life, your loved ones, your neighbours and community, will be by organising yourself and improvising at the local level (and building ties with other similar organisations). Thus a kind of practical de facto anarchism - not read from a textbook and led by theory but built by trial and error from scratch from the ground up. I feel insane saying this about USA. It sounds more like an HBO or video game scenario! If Trump objects to such communities, they will either be disappeared by police or military or dragged into violent conflict with police or military. Eventually, it scales up and we have civil war or organised armed resistance and/or terrorism against Trump’s regime. Who wins that armed struggle, who else gets involved, will it lead to WW3, is beyond my guess. I cannot imagine what 2050 will be like for anywhere on earth, least of all USA. And by then, I’ll probably be dead of old age and never know.

I base this sketch of post-democracy USA on seeing what happens in improvised communities e.g. refugee camps etc. Yes, UN or MSF or other NGOs and charities do some professional organisation, send in some outside help/rations/transport/water/electricity, but the main work of surviving is on the refugees themselves. They do what they can, improvise schools, childcare, community kitchens, latrines, form orderly queues, ensure fair shares, stop crime, stop black markets, or help one another tolerate what they cannot control. USA has better infrastructure than a city of tents in Sudan or wherever but the principle remains - when a state fails, the people have to build from the ground up. Either that, or some opportunists hijack their fears, hunger, desperation, ambition, and recruit them into some cause not necessarily their own e.g. organised crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism, armed struggle in a civil war or maybe a revolution - give me your son to fight my cause and I’ll give you rice, give me your daughter for my brothel and she’ll send you a cut of the earnings so you can buy medicine, sell me your kidney and I’ll smuggle you to a new country where you’ll be safe. When society falls apart, there is chaos, and then there are new rules. The future is created by those who make those new rules.

I hope it will not come to this ‘worst case’ scenario. I hope there is a way to avoid this. But if it comes to it, I think leadership will emerge in the moment, from the community. It will not helicopter in from Washington or the state capital. The political parties will not organise food or medicine or dig graves. They are not designed to do that. Boy scouts, school football teams, college students, religious congregations, and random community groups would be more organised, integrated into the community, and potentially provide more timely, practical help. I would hope Leftists would be useful too but too many of us just talk, we don’t do the work. There is some hope in that community preparedness - we can be our own leaders, make our own society, fix our problems good enough to get by. Humans have that built in. We have been doing this for millions of years and we all default to human and we can build on that and protect the human against the inhumane. I have to believe that. I have to believe most people are good and do right by one another given a chance. I believe good is better than evil and can win in any struggle, given time, hard work, and some luck. I don’t want to be wrong about that. I think your hope in saving the democratic system by heroic efforts now, and my hope of surviving a failed system through heroic efforts in future, is based on this same belief in human decency and human beings’ sheer determination to survive. We are allies, I think.

I’m old. I write essays. Youngsters write snippets for social media. Apologies for my verbosity!

It gets my vote!

Israel ranked 8th in 2025, if I recall correctly. 8th happiest country on earth, higher than my country (UK) or USA. Mind you, in 2024 they were 5th happiest so its not all sunshine and roses for the IDF. For comparison, I could not find rankings for Palestine or Hamas.

Makes me wonder exactly what they were measuring as ‘happiness’, how they measure it, and who they asked!?! They certainly did not ask Israelis opposed to genocide and doing their best to put Netanyahu in gaol - I have Israeli friends like this and they are off the chart miserable right now.

I guess MAGA cultists of all ages, Nazis, Christo-fascists, first-time Gen Z male voters enthralled by the triumph of the Trump, that Alpha Male so adored by the not gay but straight very straight get that right straight as straight as Vance he’s married and she’s not his beard manly Manosphere influncers like that guy whose name I forgot but was accused of rape in Romania, or the Gen Z Betas 100% in bed with the incels (so to speak), plus Tesla customers, and OpenAI employees, plus anyone who shot his balls off to own the libs, are all enjoying peak happiness right now - actually their Venn diagram is just one big happy circle. So cheer up, USA, its not bleak for everyone! /s.

Seriously, this happiness ranking is clickbait bullshit, don’t let it spoil your day.