On the first anniversary of Egypt’s Revolution that dethroned a thirty-year dictator, activists lament the continuing power of his army, while Americans worry about the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood. Little by little it’s becoming clear that fundamentalism and military control are not limited to Third World countries trying to achieve ‘democracy’.  The most powerful democracy in the world increasingly uses drones to spy on its citizens and assassinate enemies – or unlucky by-standers – around the world.

As usual, I’ve raised two issues here, but they are related: one is the increasing clout of fundamentalists in all religions, the other is rulers’ increasing recourse to military means to control populations.

Fundamentalists are not generally perceived as threats by governments. They tend to approve of the use of force to force conversions, but more ‘fundamentally’ , obedience to any higher power, be it God or a President, implies a willingness to accept that power’s use of force.  As I have written in ‘A Taoist Politics’, both the Judeo-Christian ethic and Islamic morality are based on God’s perceived power over life and death.

Thus it is not surprising that American military bases and academies have increasingly made room for religious services, fostering a simultaneous commitment to God and the use of force.

Nor is it surprising that our twenty-first century enemies go by names such as Al Shabaab (Movement of Striving  Youth) in Somalia, or Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) in Yemen.  Have we not fundamentalist militia groups preparing to take on the American government, which they see as opposed to their moral convictions?

Not to mention well-funded movements of American evangelical Christians who oppose “both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorses”? <en.wikipedia.org/wiki Christian_ fundamentalism# Militancy_ and_ evangelicals>.

The fact that Tea Partiers and associated groups tend to believe in competition rather than cooperation is really a detail compared to the fact that they, like Islamic fundamentalists, believe women should be subservient to men, and that real men carry guns.

Turn on the TV and you’ll hear every manner of learned comments on the day’s dreary news, subtleties beyond measure.  But the bottom line becomes clearer every day: as the world goes to hell in a breadbasket, most of its inhabitants clamoring in vain for power brakes.

The world’s leaders may be competing for power, but knowing they cannot fix the mess they’ve created, all turn to their respective police and military, in an ultimate us against them. Known to some as Armageddon, the what, where, when and how are frivolous details that merely justify the paychecks of talking heads.

Political leaders once competed for land, then they competed over ideology, now any issue will do, and brinkmanship is down to its last chips.

Africa teams with refugees from famine and wars, but the U.N. has to beg permission of governments to open camps, as in the case with Kenya, reported by the BBC yesterday. When the powerful flaunt their gains, the underlings follow suit.  Everyone is in the game, but the ultimate stakes are human survival on a planet that has seen eons of turmoil, and is indifferent to our fate.