Are you tired of geopolitics? I know I am! More and more, it seems like a ploy for keeping pundits and analysts and internet talking heads talking and to keep you looking at online advertising. And so, for a change, I’d like to write about something else. But first, let me briefly describe the geopolitical landscape I wish to leave behind.

First, we have the United States. It is figureheaded by a man who is dawdling toward senescence but still manages to draw a lot of attention to himself. He keeps everyone in thrall by saying one thing in the morning and another in the evening. There is no rational explanation for his behavior except that it is driven by a desire to further enrich himself and his family through insider trading, as follows, explained in the simplest terms possible, using a bit of pseudocode.

Step 1. Trump clan sells stocks, buys oil futures. Trump announces: “I will destroy Iran!” Stocks tank, oil rallies.

Step 2. Trump clan buys stocks, sells oil futures. Trump announces: “I make deal with Iran!” Stocks rally, oil tanks.

Step 3. Go to step 1.

It is something that’s known as an “infinite loop” but in real life nothing lasts forever and at some point the oil futures and equities traders start discounting his pronouncements. The more intelligent ones probably already have but the robots which do most of the trading these days still haven’t and they are yet to be reprogrammed to ignore Trump. Once they are, Trump’s scheme will stop working. It remains to be seen whether or not he is capable of noticing such a fact. But it is notable that everyone else seems to be ignoring Trump’s geopolitically themed insider trading. The reason for this is that money is more important than self-preservation.

Ignoring its self-serving figurehead, we are waiting for the United States to make a very important financial decision: will it choose endless horror (runaway debt, hyperinflation, social explosion and political collapse) or a horrible end (national default and bankruptcy, economic shutdown, social explosion and political collapse). A little of both is also not out of the question. The new Federal Reserve chairman is quite forthright about the choices: they are all bad.

Moving on to Europe, there is nobody in charge in Europe who is even remotely capable of speaking intelligently on the topic of geopolitics. The main political tactic for the last decade or so has been to mask economic and social decline using Russophobia: Russia bad; hence all the problems. But they seem to have gotten carried away with threatening Russia to a point where Russia is not even threatening them but grinding a very big axe with which to chop them into tiny, insignificant bits. Some of the Europeans have noticed and are trying to pick someone who is capable of walking in and speaking to the Russians. It can’t be someone whom the Europeans regard as pro-Russian and it can’t be a Russophobe with whom the Russians will refuse to talk. These two sets appear to be to be disjoint (A∩B=∅).

Hence, Europe is at an impasse diplomatically. Meanwhile, the Europeans can’t stop themselves from giving drones and rockets to the Ukrainian. This further irritates Russia and causes it to accelerate the axe-sharpening. That is because there is money in drones and rockets and money is more important than self-preservation.

This is something of a refrain. Such behavior is certainly foolish, and this bring to mind an old saying: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

Outside of the United States and Europe lies a geopolitical terra incognita — the vast domain of other civilizations (Persian, Chinese, Russian, Indian, etc.). They are older than the West and different from it and therefore far too complex for a short online article or an hour-long online interview, remaining inscrutable. Any attempt to comprehend these other civilizations from the Western point of view turns, at best, into a futile quest to weigh objects using a ruler or to bail water with a sieve or, at worst, into an exercise of projecting the shadow (“…a Jungian psychological defense mechanism where an individual unconsciously attributes his own disowned thoughts, impulses, or unacceptable character traits to someone else.”) Someone should write a succession of weighty tomes on this subject. But then, would anyone bother to read them when everybody is too busy watching online videos?