Axis of Chaos

Putin. Trump. Netanyahu. The Axis of Chaos. Absent chaos none of these men would be terrorizing their countries, their citizens, and the world. They’ve more than proven that the best way to stay in power is to sow chaos. They may one day reap the whirlwind, but currently they survive by tossing the world into a toilet bowel of turbulence.

They each need each other to continue churning the chaos mill so that they can continue creating and profiting from their own, simultaneously mocking any attempts at accountability.

Both Putin and Netanyahu despise Trump as much as they need him to keep the United States, and thus the rest of the world spinning off kilter. The Russians call tools of Trump’s ilk “useful idiots” and if you ask me he’s exhausted the cliché. That famous photo of Trump in the Oval Office laughing as if he’s in on the joke is one of the funniest and most iconic displays of his ignorance of his own impotence.

Putin doesn’t need Trump because he’s a clever ally with mutually aligned goals, beyond their desires for self-enrichment. He needs Trump because he’s a bumbling behemoth of bombast he can reliably count on to stir things up and keep all eyes unable to focus. It’s the old magician’s distraction trick. The same with Netanyahu. Both he and Putin recognize that they have an easy mark, easy to pay, easy to play.

Trump thinks he needs each of them for the same reasons. But being the awareness-deficient clod that he is, he doesn’t realize he’s being played for a fool. It’s easy for him to think he’s in the gang given the seemingly endless supply of his own useful and idiotic lickspittles leeching off him. None of them, regardless of whom they serve, seem to notice when others get tossed aside or unceremoniously fall out of windows.

That’s what chaos agents and charlatans have always thrived on: wanna-be hangers-on thinking they also have a chance at grabbing the brass ring.

If the three disappeared in a poof of dust overnight, the world would still turn on its somewhat more predictable axis. Certainly part of it would turn in on itself trying to sort out a way forward, perhaps creating a wobble or two. But it would still turn. Spinning in such circles has become so disgustingly normal that it has numbed most of us into inaction as we try to find an always illusive balance.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.