THE RETURN OF POST-MODERNISM

If truth is beauty, does truth lie in the eyes of the beholder?

Around 30 years ago, post-modernism was the darling of the intellectual set. I tried to read the main authors — Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas — but found them impossibly pompous and dense. The best I could make out was that their message was roughly, “There are no grand narratives”, or more over-simplified, “There is no truth.” Arguments over post-modernism usually ended with something like, “If the statement ‘There is no truth’ is itself not true, then the post-modern argument contradicts itself. It seemed that the whole movement had died a natural death.

Or so it seemed. Surprisingly, in the past week, I have heard three new references to Post-modernism. Is this school of philosophy making a comeback?

Along came Donald Trump, with his acolyte Kellyanne Conway introducing the notion of ‘alternative facts.’ The whole idea of truth is once again under attack. In the past month, VP candidate JP Vance put the whole issue in a nutshell when he declared that he didn’t care whether the story of Haitians eating pets were true or not; what mattered was the impression it made on voters. Its ‘truth’ was its ability to make a point.

Let’s go back a couple of thousand years to Aristotle’s 0-1 concept of the truth value of a statement — the ‘law of the excluded middle’ . A proposition is either true (=1) or false (=0); there is no middle ground. Then, only a century ago, ‘fuzzy logic’ came along, claiming that a statement could have a truth value between 0 and 1, that is, it could be partly true and partly false. That more or less set the stage for post-modernism.

Now J.D, Vance’s new concept of truth value is that the truth value of a statement is a measure of the effect it produces, of the message it sends. The Haitians-eating-pets had a huge effect and sent the message: “We hate black immigrants.” To many white supremacists, this statement had a truth value of 1.
 

The problem with this approach to truth is that different groups will assign radically different truth values to the same statement. In this case, there can be no rational argument, since both groups will claim ‘truth’.

In addition, we now have the ‘Gish gallop’, defined by Wikipedia as

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper’s arguments at the expense of their quality.

When Trump spouts a new falsehood every sentence, it becomes impossible to fact-check it all immediately, and so he gets away with some amazing lies without ever being called out. He repeats the lie so often that it becomes ‘truth’ in the minds of most listeners.
 

An article by Mehdi Hasan (February, 2023) in The Atlantic discussed the phenomenon, and noted what he calls


 “Brandolini’s law”:  “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” The Gish Galloper’s entire strategy rests on exploiting this advantage. 

I’m reminded of Keat’s Grecian Urn poem, it which he offers the memorable line, “Truth is beauty; beauty truth.” If we couple this line with the commonly accepted truism going  back to Plato: “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” it becomes “Truth lies in the eyes of the beholder.” So Keats was a post-modernist.

I fear that the rise of AI will make such post-modern ‘truth’ ubiquitous. We can no longer trust the ‘truth’ of any statement, video, recording, etc. And on the flip side, any real statement can be claimed to be an AI fake, just as the North Carolinian Mark Robinson claims that dozens of his recorded statements and emails are all AI fakes.

Recently, an AI-generated photo of a small girl and her puppy purported to show how Biden had neglected the survivors of hurricane Helene.

Even after people knew that it was an AI fake, many left it on their websites, with explanations such as, “I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter…  I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.” More in keeping with the theme of my blog, was this: “Even though that image was AI, it spoke a truth about the disregard Harris and Biden have for ordinary Americans, as evidenced by their criminal non-response to Helene.”

“It spoke a truth.” It was totally fake but its ‘truth’ remained. Let that sink in.

The day may not be far off before we will be Gish-galloped with millions of fake AI images and recordings, so that no one will know what is true or false. We will hear Trump saying he hates Haitians on one channel, and an almost identical clip on another channel saying he loves Haitians. And everyone will believe whichever clip they prefer.

All this notwithstanding, scholar Hans Bertens offers the following:

If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthestic [sic], epistemological, moral, or political in nature, the representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted.
 

The famous historian Hannah Arendt (most famous quote: “The Banality of Evil”) painted the following frightening picture:

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

TRUMP TARIFFS AND THE SMOOT-HAWLEY TARIFF OF 1930

Trump speaks as though does he not understand tariffs. He claims that putting a tariff on Chinese goods means that the Chinese will pay the US billions of dollars in tariffs. That’s not how tariffs work:

  1. An import tariff means that the American importer pays the tariff, not the Chinese producer.

    2. If the importer pays the tariff, he will immediately pass the increase on to the consumer. That is INFLATION! Trump is proposing huge inflation.

    3. Or maybe the importer decides not to pay the high tariff and not to import the product at all. That way, the American consumer must shop around for some other similar product, almost certainly at a higher price. Again, INFLATION!

    4. Consumers will buy more American-made products, but at higher prices than they had previously been paying for the imported goods.

    5. Other countries, especially China, will surely reciprocate with their own tariffs on American goods.  That will result in fewer American exports and therefore fewer American jobs. Is that good for the American economy?

    Trump’s previous tariffs had precisely the above effects. Of course, he blames his inflation on Biden, since it was only during the Biden administration that the inflation kicked in.

    The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930

    One of the most famous American tariffs was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. It was similar to Trump’s proposed tariffs, although with at least one important difference. It is useful to compare the two.

    1. In the 1930s, other countries quickly retaliated with their own tariffs on American products. That had the effect of lowering American exports in a time of economic depression.
    2. However, one aspect of the Depression was the lowering of prices, that is, DEflation. The tariffs may have even helped to keep prices up. Thus, inflation was not the issue.
    3. When I was in school, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was thought to have caused or at least deepened the Great Depression, but today, most economists agree that its effect was only minimal.

    All in all, I think we can say with some certainty that the proposed Trump tariffs will cause inflation. Trump’s talk of controlling inflation is idle talk; he is proposing a lot more inflation. His tariffs will reduce American exports as well as imports. It will, however, force America to become more self-sufficient, albeit with higher costs and prices.

    The top exports of the United States are:

    • Refined Petroleum
    • Crude Petroleum
    • Cars
    • Integrated Circuits
    • Vehicle Parts
    • Mineral fuels including oil
    • Machinery including computers
    • Electrical machinery, equipment

    The United States exports mostly to Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and Germany.  If those countries retaliate with tariffs on the above products, the above-listed areas of the American economy will be the hardest hit. Thousands, maybe millions, of jobs will be lost.

    Another difference between 2024 and 1930, which Trump apparently doesn’t understand, is the complexity of global supply chains. He wants voters to think that John Deere tractors are made entirely in the USA, when in fact, the company imports a lot of parts, and also exports its products around the globe. A trade war (“Easy to win” — Trump) would shut down the supply chain and perhaps force John Deere into bankruptcy, with the loss of many jobs. In general, economists agree that a trade war would cause a huge recession.

    Therefore, Trump’s tariffs would cause both inflation and a recession. Economies usually experience one but not the other, but our ‘stable genius’ would somehow manage to kill the American economy in both ways.
     

    WE SHOULD MOCK TRUMP’S LIES

    I posted a joking spoof of Trump’s outrageous lie that illegal Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were eating (White) people’s pets. I was called out on this over Facebook, on grounds that I was escalating Trump’s lies into the public domain, that responding to lies only ‘perpetuates the myth’.  After all, this plays right into J.D.Vance’s admitted strategy that it’s OK for Trump to invent any falsehood, as long as it emphasizes his point. By mocking those lies, you focus attention on the point about illegal, horrible, black Haitians invading America.

    So what’s the alternative? The most obvious reply is no reply: ignore it and hope it goes away. I would argue that this tactic doesn’t work with Trump’s lies. He will continue to hammer them home on the assumption that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth. If the media ignore those everyday repetitions, it becomes an accepted truth that Haitians are eating pets. Trump made the statement to millions of viewers on the televised debate, and Vance has spread it virally to the Trump online echo-chamber. At some point someone is going to have to stand up and say “That’s a lie.”

    So the second option is the fact-checking and logical rebuttal. Over the past 8 years, this has not worked with Trump’s 30,000 lies, or whatever the going number is. A logical discussion falls on deaf ears, and even gives the Trumpies the opportunity to raise counter-arguments — usually more and bigger lies. Think of his Covid lies, his anti-vaccine lies, his climate-change hoax lies, etc., going right back to his Obama ‘birther’ lies. You can’t just refute these with the facts.

    No, the only way to shut him up or shut him down is to mock him. After a couple of weeks of Haitian cat jokes, you don’t hear him pushing that issue any more. The thing Trump hates most is to be laughed at. The Haitian cat joke takes the issue beyond the realm of rational argument or fact-checking. Rather, cat-eating becomes so ridiculously false that only the craziest Trump radicals can give it any credence.

    Suppose that tomorrow, Trump claims to millions of Americans that Harris has hired green Martians to land on Earth to take away all guns. If you try to ignore this, he will keep repeating and amplifying it until people start to fear the green Martians. If you push back that he has no evidence, he will manufacture new evidence, such as saying that their spaceships have been sighted. The issue enters into the public debate as something that could conceivably be true. But if the public laughs at such a ridiculous and impossible lie with a host of internet jokes, Trump would shut up on the issue, as his ego would be under attack.

    Trump has said that he will visit Springfield, Ohio, in the next couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see whether he sees this through, or whether he quietly lets the matter drop. I’m guessing the latter, since a visit to Springfield would only raise more derision and humiliation. But with Trump, you never know just how far he will push an obvious lie.

    After more than eight years of Trump’s many lies, it appears that mocking him is the only way to shut him up.

    USE (OR NOT) OF ENGLISH IN FOR-PROFIT UNIVERSITIES

    I have already written about some of the evils of for-profit universities in Cambodia and elsewhere. Today I want to focus on the use (or lack thereof) of English in those universities.

    First, a little background on Cambodia, and many similar countries. The only requirement for university admission is a pass on the public grade-12 examination. There is no English language requirement. Since money is the only criterion for admission, I wager that no high school graduate has ever been rejected by any Cambodian university.

    What’s more, no student ever flunks out of a private Cambodian university, because that would represent a loss of tuition revenue. Therefore, students can get zero in all their courses, or not even attend class, and still be passed along, as long as they pay their tuition.

    Now since there is no English language requirement, students are admitted with little or no knowledge of English. This  has several consequences:

    1. All instruction must be given in the local language, Khmer. Even English literature majors or TEFL majors are taught in Khmer, so that, with no accountability, students may graduate as ‘qualified’ English teachers with little or no knowledge of English.

    2. There can be no international student exchanges, foreign students, or foreign teachers, because classes are held in Khmer.

    3. When I was in university in America, most courses required the writing of a term paper, which entailed library research, footnotes, references, etc. Nowadays, most international universities subscribe to online libraries like JSTOR, with millions of online papers and articles.

    A) The writing of term research papers is not an option for students who do not read English. They cannot do an internet search in English, so any library — online or not — is not an option in Cambodian universities, except just for show.

    B) Many Cambodian universities have token libraries or subscribe to online libraries to promote their image, but in practice, libraries are not used.

    4. Participation in international conferences or forums is not possible.

    Speaking of image-building, I put some of the above ideas to the CEO of a Cambodian university. (Note: the fact that the head is called the CEO illustrates how universities are considered as for-profit companies, not educational institutions.) His disingenuous dodge was, “But we have an English placement exam.”  Such a phony exam is just for show, since no one ever fails the exam, and students are admitted into even English courses even if they score 0%.

    Another disingenuous dodge is the requirement for students to buy photocopies of 800-page university textbooks in English, even if they cannot read a word of them. In one instance that I have witnessed, the 800-page textbook required for an Art History course was not even about Art History!
     

    All these problems will continue as long as for-profit universities admit and pass along any student willing to pay the tuition.

          AN ‘US-VERSUS-THEM’ GENE?

          In a previous post, I looked at my very young sons and saw no signs of racial or class hatred, and I jumped to the Rousseau-ian conclusion that such behavior must be inculcated by society.

          Not so fast! It is at least conceivable that we are pre-programmed with an ‘us-versus-them’ gene (call it ‘UvT’) that kicks in later in life, just as some sexual behavior kicks in at puberty. After all, some social behavior in animal species appears to be inherited. Lions and wolves live in groups, while tigers and coyotes live more solitary lives. Certain species of red ants are programmed to attack and enslave black ants.

          It makes evolutionary sense that an individual gene may enhance its survival chances by enhancing the survival chances of the group or clan. This is the argument in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. Imagine a clan of blue-eyed people. They may have evolved to the extent that one of its blue-eyed members might be genetically programmed to lay down his life for his clan, so that the blue-eyed gene survives.

          In this same way, we may be programmed with a UvT gene or combination of genes that makes us fight for our own clan in order to preserve our own genetic structures.

          I’m reminded of Golding’s Lord of the Flies, in which a group of young boys are abandoned on an island and naturally break apart into warring factions.

          Suppose that we all have UvT genes in our modern society. It is not clear who our ‘clan’ is. In general, it’s anyone who is just like us. Other races, religions, and physical types are identified as outside the ‘clan’, so that the UvT kicks in.

          Society, and notably parents, play their role in identifying those outside our ‘clan’. They may tell us that certain races are bad, and then our inherent UvT easily convinces us to attack or discriminate against them.

          I’m not arguing that the UvT genetic theory is necessarily true, but it’s at least plausible and has a certain amount of internal consistency, especially when we consider social behaviors of animals that are apparently controlled by the genes.

          “A-bombs Don’t Kill People……”

          Hiroshima: Second Amendment Right?

          I’m watching CNN’s discussion of guns after the latest school shooting du jour. Yawn! Same old boring arguments, thoughts and prayers, second amendment, etc. But there’s one argument I’m not hearing: whether I have the right to bear nuclear arms. The same argument that people use to justify AR-15s should apply to atomic bombs.

          So if I have the right to open-carry an AR-15 into a schoolroom, according to the second amendment’s “right to bear arms”, don’t I equally have the right to bring nuclear arms like an A-bomb into a schoolroom? After all “A-bombs don’t kill people, people kill people.” I could blow up an entire city with a million people with an A-bomb, and the gun-rights advocates would just chalk that up to collateral damage, as the right to carry nuclear ‘arms’ must remain sacrosanct. We might even hear clichés like, “We need more good guys with A-bombs.”

          No, really, I think that the A-bomb example shows that the second amendment doesn’t actually authorize ALL arms. But then, where do you draw the line? At least one can claim that AR-15s are not automatically covered by the second amendment. The second amendment is just a red herring, designed to distract from whatever the real argument is about.

          Don’t forget that assault rifles were once banned (and, btw, deaths went down), and the courts didn’t try to step in with the second amendment. So now, if you want to keep AR-15s legal, you can’t fall back on the second amendment. You must now argue that open carry of AR-15s is a somehow a good thing.

          Also, don’t forget that Congress banned lawn darts — LAWN DARTS! — as too dangerous and not protected by the second amendment. Thus, Congress could ban AR-15s as too dangerous, but apparently danger is not the issue for AR-15s. So maybe A-bombs should be permitted as well, no matter how dangerous they are.
           

          So if the second amendment is a red herring, and if the danger element is not an issue, just what IS the issue?

          ISRAEL SHOULD TAKE HOSTAGES

          What would I do if my son were kidnapped, and the kidnapper demanded a million dollars or I would never see my son again? I would probably beg, borrow, or steal the money to get my son back, without any logical reasoning such as:

          1. The kidnapper could just kidnap my son again and demand another million.
          2. The kidnapper, aware that kidnapping is profitable, could kidnap other kids.
          3. Villains around the world would learn that kidnapping is profitable.

          However, any such logical reasoning goes out the window when it’s my own son. Furthermore, if I didn’t pay, people would ostracize me for being so callous that I would allow my son to die.

          Similarly, the Hamas hostage-taking leads to Israelis and people around the world saying, “Free the hostages. Give in to Hamas’s demands:”

          1. Withdraw all troops from Gaza. Let Hamas rebuild their tunnels, re-arm, and prepare to invade Israel again, to take more hostages.
          2. Hamas, learning that hostage-taking is profitable, would be emboldened to take as many more hostages as possible.
          3. Regimes around the world would see how profitable it is to take hostages.

          Indeed, Putin has already learned this, as he ‘arrests’ Americans and uses them as bargaining chips. America’s response is always the same: at first, strict posturing that “We don’t give in to kidnappers.” Then later, behind the scenes, quietly pay the ransom, but claim that nothing was paid. Russia’s ‘arrest’ of Brittney Griner, the basketball player, is a good example; no one questions the price that America had to pay to get her back. Biden can claim a great victory at arranging her release, whatever the cost.

          Also, indeed, Hamas has already gotten a lot of mileage out of kidnapping the Israelis —  a lot more mileage than if they had simply killed them to begin with. I’m actually surprised that there isn’t a lot more hostage-taking in conflicts around the world: Ukraine, Venezuela, etc. Hostage-taking is really useful, whether monetarily or as a bargaining chip.

          Which leads to my question: why doesn’t Israel start kidnapping Gazans or other Palestinians? They could even match the age, sex, etc. with hostages currently held by Hamas. What’s more, they could say that if Hamas harmed any Israeli hostages, Israel would harm the Gazan hostages in a similar manner. After all, as we have learned, a live hostage is far more valuable than a dead one. Why am I not hearing anyone advocate this procedure?

          I think that the answer is that, using its usual double standards, the world would vilify Israel. “How barbaric! How dare they? Taking hostages is against international law!” This outrage would play into Hamas’s primary strategy of provoking enough outrage that Iran and its allies would attack Israel and provoke an all-out regional or global war.

          The recent murder of six hostages by Hamas reveals the world’s thinking. The protesters in Israel are not directing blame or outrage directed at Hamas for their cold-blooded murder. Rather, half a million Israelis are demonstrating against Netanyahu and even Biden for allowing this to happen. The protesters are chanting to make a deal with Hamas to release the remaining hostages. ANY deal. Here is a facebook quote from someone named Lapid: “They were alive but [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his Cabinet of death decided not to save them,” Lapid wrote on his Facebook page.  Huh? Wait a minute! They were alive, but Netanyahu decided to try to save them, so Hamas murdered them. Otherwise, they would be alive today.

          Hostage-taking always leads to emotional, irrational thinking. It could hardly be otherwise. But one thing is clear: it is immensely profitable. It works!

          THOUGHTS OF A NEW FATHER

          A lot of my readers are fathers and will have experienced similar thoughts to mine: the miracle of life, the wonder of witnessing a new human being, etc. So what I’m expressing is probably nothing new, but I feel like expressing it anyway.
           

          One of my first thoughts at seeing my newborn son was that one year ago, this amazing creature didn’t exist at all. Even the sperm and egg didn’t exist a year ago — they were just a bunch of carbon and hydrogen atoms. For these disparate chemicals to come together and form this incredibly complex creature is truly a miracle.

          The father of a newborn baby cannot avoid thoughts of Creationism. Surely there must be a guiding hand behind this creation of life. The old saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes,” should apply to new fathers as well.

          Not only is this new life wonderful in itself, it is pre-programmed to develop. The DNA code dictates that certain changes will take place, at puberty, for example. In that little helpless baby are the seeds for creative or mathematical abilities, for how tall they will be in 30 years’ time, for personality types.

          When I look at my baby, and when I look at my other son (now 3 years old), one thing that I do not see is evil. Young children do not hate. Does our DNA program us to hate, later in life, people who are not identical to us — blacks, Muslims, LGBTQs? If my baby is created by God, does God want him to grow up with the notion that he should kill gays and other minorities? I think not.

          When I look at the hatred expressed by Christian Evangelicals towards minorities, I think I could make a pretty good case that Satan is at work. While I do not see Satan in my baby, I certain see him in many so-called Christians.

          How can this happen? There may be many causes, but I feel that one culprit is the illogical leap from Creationism to morality. “God created me, therefore I must act in a certain way.” There is no logical connection here. My baby is not going to get his moral compass from God, who created him. Remember “Kill a commie for Christ”? Does my baby’s DNA program him to want to kill communists? It is society (of which I am admittedly a member) which will instill moral values in my baby. (There is, however, some research challenging this.)

          I am getting close to those old French philosophers, here. Rousseau: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”, or Voltaire’s ‘tabula rasa.’ To me, it seems that modern genetics shows that a baby is not completely a tabula rasa, but maybe only a moral tabula rasa. That is, a baby may be programmed to develop in a lot of ways, but I don’t see any moral programming. I see my baby as born without hatred or evil, but I have to wonder whether I will be the one responsible for instilling in him that hatred for ‘the other’. Or is there some kind of ‘hate-the-other’ combination of genes.  I am at least grateful that my kids are bi-racial, so that at least they will not grow up to feel that they are the master race or master religion.

          THE CHINESE/ CAMBODIAN CANAL IS A BIG DEAL

          The canal will pass through Cambodia and will bypass Vietnam

          Cambodia declared a national holiday for the start of the new canal, with parades, fireworks, the whole shebang. This canal will allow Cambodian river traffic to avoid passing through the Mekong delta in Vietnam. Phnom Penh will become a major river port, or perhaps some new city will spring up, such as Neak Leung, where Highway 1 crosses the Mekong.

          Of course, this event probably didn’t register a blip on the world media screens. After all, by way of perspective, Cambodia’s population is 1/70th that of China, and there are individual cities in China that have more people than all of Cambodia. But this should be important. The canal will not only be a big deal for Cambodia, but will also have wide geopolitical repercussions.

          Cambodia will be able to export rice to China along this canal, as well as import more Chinese products into Phnom Penh. Cambodia will become even more of a Chinese colony than it is already. The sinification of Phnom Penh will accelerate.

          There will also be military advantages for China, as the Chinese navy will essentially control Cambodia, and can sail its fleet up into the Laos-Thailand area. Don’t forget, that the Mekong has its source in China. China has reportedly established a naval base at Ream, near Sihanoukville. But even without a naval presence, China will control the flow of water all the way from China through Cambodia.

          [As an aside, recall that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were more of a Chinese project than a lot of people realize. Does anyone ever ask the question, “If the Khmer Rouge sent millions of people into the countryside to produce bumper crops of rice, why were the people starving?” One-word answer: China.]

          The effect of the canal will be to divert large amounts water from one of the world’s major rivers away from Vietnam. The Mekong is the life-blood of that whole delta region. I’m not hearing anyone worrying that it will cost Vietnam agriculture billions of dollars. Vietnam is not going to be happy about this. Not to mention environmental concerns for the entire region.  The construction of the canal represents, in many ways, a declaration of economic war against Vietnam.  Vietnam is already trying to shake off a lot of Chinese economic influence, and the canal may push Vietnam further into the arms of America and the West.

          Finally, one must ask whether this huge loan ($1.7 billion), of Chinese money to Cambodia, is another one of those Chinese projects that eventually bankrupt the borrower so that China can take over the entire ownership of the project.

          A HAMAS CONSPIRACY THEORY

          I have written, in earlier blogs, about Hamas’ goal and strategy: the destruction of the State of Israel though global outrage against Israel . To reiterate a bit:

          First, the October 7 incursion into Israel was not designed to topple Israel in one fell swoop. Rather, it was to provoke Israel into a blind rage of destruction that would create a global outrage and a desire from neighboring countries to attack Israel. They knew very well that the United Nations would ring with cries of ‘disproportionate response’ after Israel laid waste large areas of Gaza.

          (I’m old enough that Gaza’s daily TV announcement of the number of Gazans killed reminds me of the US ‘body count’ back in the days of the Vietnam War. For Hamas, the death toll, almost certainly grossly inflated, keeps reminding the world every day of how horrible Israel is.)

          Secondly, Hamas used hospitals and schools for their military operations. They dared Israel to attack those hospitals, and Israel obliged. Now, the UN rang with cries of ‘targeting civilians’ and ‘genocide’. Hamas’ goal was to provoke such outrage that Iran, Lebanon, and the West Bank would be drawn into an all-out assault on Israel.

          It wasn’t working, although there were signs that it might work when Iran sent hundreds of missiles towards Israel, but it stopped there. Gaza body counts and horror stories have become a boring, repetitive story that doesn’t make the front pages anymore. Time for a new outrage.

          So Hamas’ next step was to publicly and conspicuously station its leaders in Iran and Lebanon, just daring Netanyahu to go after them. Again, he obliged by assassinating the leaders on foreign soil. Once again, Hamas is hoping that this outrage will provoke Iran and Hezbollah to launch an all-out war. It might just work this time.

          “Hang on!”, I hear you cry. “First you claim that Hamas leaders were sacrificing thousands of innocent civilians just to create outrage, and now you claim that the Hamas leaders were sacrificing themselves? Ridiculous!” UNLESS….

          What if political enemies within Hamas sent those leaders to places where they could be targeted by Israel? How about Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October incursion, who has now been elevated to be the head of Hamas?  Or to go even further down the rabbit hole, suppose those enemies secretly informed Israel just where and when those leaders would be easy targets. A power-hungry Sinwar, or whoever it was, killed two birds with one stone — not just eliminating the two leaders, but also perpetuating the strategy of outrage, to provoke Lebanon and Iran into total war against Israel.

          We’ll see how this all plays out in the next few days, as Iran and Hezbollah plot their likely attacks on Israel.