Interesting Times
“May you live in interesting times.”
Said to be a curse, this apocryphal saying, attributed to China, is in fact more than likely the product of an Englishman’s imagination. It is, however, accurate nonetheless, especially if one’s understanding of the definition of the word “interesting” takes a more morbid approach toward what is capable today of “arousing curiosity or interest” or “holding or catching the attention.”
By any account, 2024 was an “interesting” year. We began with dual conflicts in progress—the Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, and the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
But there were other conflicts as well, those that operated below the event horizon of most Americans. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, contested results stemming from a flawed election that took place in December 2023 led to a fresh outbreak of fighting in the eastern part of that troubled nation, continuing three decades of warfare that has killed millions and currently is responsible for the displacement of some 7.2 million civilians.
And in Sudan a Civil War raged with all the brutality that can be mustered when conflict becomes based upon ethnicity. With tens of thousands killed and millions more displaced, the conflict in Sudan had all the earmarks of a genocide.
Interesting times, indeed.
But then the Houthis shut down Israeli-affiliated shipping in the Gulf of Aden, and Iran launched not one, but two, missile strikes against Israel, and things became even more interesting.
The US-led “rules-based international order” found itself challenged in unprecedented fashion by a new multi-polar forum, BRICS, which held its annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan, demonstrating once and for all that the western efforts to isolate Russia in the aftermath of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine had failed.
China flexed its muscles in the Pacific, asserting its sovereignty over Taiwan and the disputed islands, many of them man-made (by the Chinese) in the South Pacific, and North Korea continued to expand its nuclear-capable ballistic missile arsenal.
In the United States, politically motivated lawfare sought to disrupt the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump while the Democratic Party carried out a de facto coup, replacing the senile Joe Biden with the incompetent Kamala Harris without any of the normal trappings of democratic due process.
Donald Trump won—convincingly, throwing the entire American establishment into a panic.
And, to top things off, the Biden administration, seeking to cement its policy legacies in a way that Trump would not be able to readily undo them, pushed the United States to the brink of a nuclear war with Russia.
It is with good reason that the newborn 2025 looks back on 2024 with fear and trepidation.
But when he turns his gaze toward the year to come, things become even more “interesting.”
Benjamin Netanyahu continues to rule over an Israeli nation defined by genocide and empowered by an incoming Trump administration that has staffed its senior policy posts with the staunchest of Zionists.
Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn in as President and he has turned the world upside down with threats to use military force to invade, occupy and annex Greenland (a territory of Denmark, ostensibly a NATO ally!) and to seize control of the Panama Canal, the control of which the US transferred to the Panamanian government in 1999.
Trump has pledged to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, but neither Volodymyr Zelensky, the erstwhile President of Ukraine, or Vladimir Putin, the legitimate President of Russia, are on the same page when it comes to a cessation of hostilities, meaning that the war in Ukraine will drag on for months to come.
Trump claims he wants to resume his bromance with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un, but Kim has become cozy with Putin.
And Xi Jinping and his behemoth Chinese economy looms large in the background, identified by Trump as the greatest threat to the United States, and as such his greatest challenge.
The old wars continue to rage, and the potential for new conflicts is an ever-present reality.
It’s no wonder the poor baby 2025 pooped his diapers in fear!
2025 is going to be very interesting indeed.
We live in interesting times.
Thank you for mentioning the atrocities in DRCongo. A colleague of a Congolese friend of mine, a community worker, who was feeding people in refugee camps in Uganda and trying to convince young boys not to become child soldiers, was recently abducted, tortured and murdered in eastern Congo by Rwandan-backed M23 death squads. Left his 4 children orphans after their mother was killed in an M23 ambush 2 years ago. I met them once some time ago, and what kind and beautiful people they were. May their souls rest in peace and may the violence and abuses cease once and for all!
I think that maybe we should wish to live in boring, uninteresting times, for as interesting times go, I'm very much with the baby on this!