“I was born into a time of war, and out of a time of war I will leave.” The haunting resonance of such a phrase, whether a forgotten quote or a visceral summation of our contemporary reality, compels a stark re-evaluation of our aspirations for peace. As a nation, we once nurtured the universalist thought that global tranquility was an achievable condition. Yet, surveying the relentless maelstrom of events, the intricate machinations of power, and the profound shifts in our collective moral landscape, a chilling truth emerges: the engines of war, both literal and metaphorical, have been meticulously tuned up and are running at full throttle. The question for us now is not how to secure an elusive global peace, but how we, as individuals and as a society, plan on responding to this pervasive state of conflict, how we define and defend our own peace within its reality. This is a warning shot across the bow, demanding profound introspection and a radical shift in our understanding of the world.
The Instrumentalization of Conflict: Power Forged in Perpetual War
In a chilling case study that lays bare the mechanics of modern power, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prolonged conduct of the war in Gaza serves as a stark illustration of how conflict can be instrumentalized for political survival. Against the backdrop of a long-running corruption trial and a fragile coalition dependent on far-right extremists, Netanyahu has, according to an extensive investigation, deliberately extended the fighting. In April 2024, poised to agree to a six-week cease-fire that could have led to a permanent truce and a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu was confronted by an ultimatum from his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich: Accept the truce, and you no longer have a government.” Netanyahu abandoned the peace plan and whispered, “Don’t present the plan.”
This pattern, the evidence suggests, became a defining characteristic of the conflict. Netanyahu reportedly ignored multiple “strategic alerts for war” from his own intelligence chiefs in the months preceding the devastating October 7 attacks, instead focusing on a divisive domestic judicial overhaul. After October 7, he fought relentlessly to deflect blame onto the security establishment, even attempting to alter official phone records to shape historical narratives. He actively resisted planning for postwar Gaza governance, knowing that any discussion of Palestinian alternatives would destabilize his coalition. Against military advice, he introduced maximalist demands, like the capture of Rafah, to prolong fighting. He even broke a January 2025 cease-fire in March to bring back a far-right minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and pass his budget, explicitly linking his coalition’s survival to the war’s continuation.
The cost has been immense: over 55,000 Palestinian deaths, two million displaced, and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself, profoundly sullying Israel’s international image. Yet, for Netanyahu, the war also yielded unexpected political redemption, culminating in a “moment of glory” after a “12-day war” with Iran. The defeats of Hezbollah and the Syrian government, and the “wounding” of Iran, are presented as “unintended victories” that benefited Netanyahu’s political fortunes, even if not his initial intentions. This narrative reveals a leader who has, with ruthless efficiency, instrumentalized conflict to consolidate power and ensure personal survival, demonstrating that the engines of war, once started, can serve purposes far beyond their initial declared objectives.
The Corrosion Within: When Corruption Becomes Statecraft
The external conflicts of geopolitics find their troubling echo in the internal corrosion of democratic governance. In the United States, the Felonious Punk administration has, by critical accounts, orchestrated a level of corruption that “defies historical comparison,” making even past presidential scandals seem “quaint.” This is not merely a series of ethical lapses; it is, in the words of one observer, the “high-water mark of American kleptocracy,” a brazen and pervasive strategy of extracting personal profit from the levers of state power.
The pattern is stark: the Felonious Punk family directly profits from the presidency through burgeoning real-estate ventures with autocratic regimes—Trump towers in Saudi Arabia, hotels in Oman, golf clubs in Vietnam. Gifts, such as a $400 million jet from Qatar, blur the line between diplomacy and direct payment. Domestically, media organizations are subjected to “shakedowns,” paying millions in settlements for “dubious lawsuits” to secure favorable business outcomes. The presidency’s prestige is shamelessly leveraged to peddle Trump-branded consumer goods and even “pay-to-play crypto dinners,” culminating in the remarkable instance of a paused prosecution for a crypto kingpin who invested in Trump-backed tokens.
This unprecedented grifting is compounded by the systematic dismantling of anti-corruption safeguards. Agencies and task forces dedicated to investigating kleptocracy, public corruption, and transnational money laundering have been gutted or effectively terminated. The bedrock Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been “frozen.” These actions, coupled with a Supreme Court ruling granting Felonious Punk presumptive immunity for “official acts,” create a terrifying vacuum where accountability for illicit enrichment is profoundly diminished. Foreign powers are watching, learning that “succoring Trump and his family has already proved one of the fastest ways to guarantee favorable policy,” creating a global competition to out-bribe one another for U.S. favor. This internal rot—a systematic corruption of norms and institutions—is a form of civil war, ensuring that the engines of conflict are well-oiled within our own borders.
The Moral Fragmentation: Why the Engines Keep Running
The ability of such overt corruption and the instrumentalization of war to persist, even thrive, lies in a deeper societal malaise: a profound “moral numbness” that has, for decades, been eroding the very foundations of shared ethical understanding. Drawing on the insights of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, a troubling diagnosis emerges: Western culture has progressively lost its capacity for coherent moral judgment.
In ancient societies, purpose and morality were inherited, woven into a “dense network of family, tribe, city, and nation.” Life was defined by duties, responsibilities, and roles, each with “standards of excellence” that compelled individuals to contribute to a common good. But the Enlightenment, while freeing the “autonomous individual” and producing democratic systems, inadvertently created a “moral vacuum.” Reason and science, while powerful tools for “how to do things,” proved incapable of answering the fundamental “why”—the ultimate purpose of life, what is truly right or wrong.
This vacuum has since been filled by a dangerous cocktail of “narcissism, fanaticism, and authoritarianism.” We live in a world where “many, or even most, people no longer have a sense that there is a permanent moral order to the universe.” Instead, morality has devolved into “emotivism”—where all judgments are “nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.” This preference-driven morality thrives in capitalist societies, yet leaves us without objective standards to settle arguments. The inevitable outcome? Without moral persuasion, differences are settled through coercion or manipulation.
Felonious Punk is presented not as an aberration, but as an “exaggerated version of the kind of person modern society was designed to create.” He “doesn’t even try to speak the language of morality,” preferring the transactional idiom of “I want” and “I have the leverage.” He treats the presidency itself as personal property, using institutions as a “stage to perform on.” This lack of a shared moral vocabulary, where political identities become “holy war” and compromise is “betrayal,” means that the engines of conflict—whether geopolitical, domestic, or even interpersonal—are perpetually fueled by an inability to find common ground or purpose beyond individual will. MacIntyre’s chilling warning resonates: “The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.”
A Call to Action: Defining Our Own Peace
The picture that emerges from this synthesis is stark: a world where conflict is instrumentalized for power, where corruption erodes the very foundations of governance, and where a fragmented moral landscape leaves society vulnerable to internal strife. The ideal of universal peace, once a guiding star, appears to recede into the realm of distant memory. The engines of war—the geopolitical ambition, the internal corrosion of ethics, the societal fracturing fueled by moral relativism—are indeed running.
The question for us, then, becomes profoundly personal and immediate: How do we respond? If global peace remains elusive, how do we define and defend peace within our own lives, our communities, and our nation? The answer may lie not in a return to an idealized past, but in a radical pluralism—one that, as some suggest, can hold the tension of incommensurate values, celebrating the freedoms of the Enlightenment while restoring a vigorous respect for permanent truths and eternal values. It demands a recalibration of our culture, an education in virtues like honesty, fidelity, compassion, and a renewed commitment to the “common good”—a profound shift away from the seductions of atomized self-interest.
This is a warning shot across the bow. There is no peace coming, not in the way we once imagined. The reality is one of ongoing conflict. Our purpose, then, must be to determine how we respond, how we protect the fragile sparks of justice and common purpose, and how we define our own peace in a world seemingly designed for perpetual war.
Discover more from Clight Morning Analysis
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
