It's complicated stuff.  Back when we raced around the world to defeat where we could to protect our reputation as the greatest, non-aggressive superpower.  We were a beat up lot by the time we realized, um, this "saving face" is a) costing us even more debt, b) most of the world felt we owed them an apology for infinitely making things worse wherever and whenever we got involved, and c) what's coming for "us" someday is truly evil and God, the One in which we trust, is letting this happen.

  It was devastating enough to realize these things and go on.  But something else happened too.  This was recorded in story form in the movie (i)Monstrum(i).  The old Asian-world way, well, it, uh, changed.  In the Old World there was the Hail Mary pass of zero-ing out differences, and preserving honor.  Old World court systems upheld usually the Royal honor, or the Emperor's honor, or the State Ruler's "honor".  WWI proved that geo-politics (where we get "sphere" and similar geopolitical terms that rival sovereignty) was as much traditional parity of military with command-in-chief as it was about personality/influence.  All of that hit its head on the iron curtains of soviet-style communism and the fort walls of TOP SECRET.  And a lot of brutality and warfare development just happened alongside worldwide political "show".  

  The credit cards going global like "AID" money doled out a certain amount of "disposable" GDP and a sort of license to anyone and everyone to mess with "governance" and "rule" and prerogative.

  Defending honor became first a match-to-match and then a game of survival anytime the rules of war were abandoned or there was "drift".  Each time the world cycled through budgetary spending and bloodletting, the enemies were getting the better of each other...bankrupting, killing off, eliminating, isolating, running into debt and slavery, displacement, occupation, rinse and repeat. 

  China managed to cause the resistance to its ascendancy to "surrender".  Islam caused its religious subjects "to submit".  The U.S. chose careful interactions to preserve itself as a Republic by surviving but could not be "peace keeper".  Everytime the world goes for being one big peaceloving democracy, we crash and burn, have hotspots, and worldwide disease and economic calamity.

  World leaders largely agreed to prison guard their own nations.  And sometimes there's a weeding of ties that bind.  Done smartly, people put limits on what will be spent on a chaotic thing like a "war".  It's why late 20th century presidential politics convene at summits with militaries' and organizations' input...to make better informed decisions.  Humanity cannot survive the level of violence that is potential to reaching a certain level of "anything goes". 

  The current U.S. Republican administration is saavy to all of the 21st century updates.  No one is ever right 100% of the time, but our current administration is actually working with a breadth and depth of ally to re-establish sanity to the absolute insanity of the violence.  This I know for fact. 

Three Phones,

  until one was thrown out of a cab window.  "Why the fuck did you do that????"  Only the "fuck" was in English.  Four women, one cab driver.  Translation:  "In our Country, they blow up at this point in the game." 

  "This is not a game girls." 

  "Somebody seems to think so Oriana."  The cab jerked over to the side of the road.  "Get out."  The cab driver turned halfway round in his seat and asked in French, though we were tasked with crossing Cairo to free the translators with Diplomatic Papers, "I said, Get Out, do you understand?" 

  One braved, "Just her or all of us?" 

  "Some mentor, getting us kicked out of everywhere we go." 

  We got out.  "Surely there'll be another."  The Doctor of Ancient Archeology rolled her eyes.  "Only for the Americans now."  Smoking, reading, looking at abandoned beggar's cups.  The streets dissolved of traffic.  "We might as well be in old Mexico." The sun making us into pinned moths on fading construction paper.

  "I hear something!"  Nobody made a point of listening too closely or being obvious about also hearing something.  The low moan of a lawnmower or outboard boat.  Some sheets of plywood in front of a wares table was suddenly kicked away, and two figures ran.

  From out of the sun's rays, late afternoon tilt on shadows, came the sound of the droning plane.  As it began to block the sun the sound split into others too.  "That's routine around here." We stood there as we might eating sandwiches on a Cape Cod beach with seagulls doing a mostly silent ballet above us.  Until the strafing began. 

  Gamification.  This is definitely not a Ukrainian invention.  And it's been central to humanity's ethics issues for a long time.  An article from ZME Science tells us more. 

  Also of note from Dr. Andrei in ZME.  Somebody blew a hole in the nuke safety shield the world managed to erect over Chernobyl. 

     Rifled purses, trees de-barked by gunshots, pieces of clothing.  The trail of blood started, ran, stopped.  Dogs with protective muzzles since shooter drug stuff was everywhere.  "Maybe it's good you missed your appointment Ma."  The trail seemed to "run cold" about a half mile before the hospice building.  Some had gone towards the road; some back into suburbia.

  Blood smear, cracked window glass at the front doors.  

  "It's the same all over Europe." 

  "Oh, you been?" 

  The group of ladies had taken revolvers and pistols out of handbags, stockings, bras, and waistbands. 

  "Just got back." 

  Duck!  Hide!  Within seconds all were out of sight. 

  "Then that'll be another one," the person knifing the hostage's elbow and arm behind back called back into the building.  "ON YOU!" He hollered and pointed the gun.  "Find out what they want."  The ear piece said.

  The North Carolina authorities were "all over it".  They sounded laid back all along the wires, but had a tempo and pace to their moves.

  "You kids better get back to school or training or whatever it is young professionals do these days," a somewhat shaky in the hand middle-ager everyone called Ma waved us back behind a perimeter being established in between Crime Scene and waves of foot traffic.  "Ma!  Put the pistolè back in your purse until I can check your blood sugar level." A frown, "Oh, alright."  She put it in her coat pocket.  "Na-ah.  Purse."  Ma looked at us "cubs" and sounded angry when she asked, "Whaddaya you the boss now?" One of us flashed a Detective's badge.  

  "Noooo shit." She opened her handbag, dropped the little .22 inside, and was closing it when she asked, "Wah, woo, woodya like I should empty the chambah?"  

  "I would like you to put the tape up, then come over here and sit with us for a quick visit.  We gotta go north." 

  "Alright kiddo." She put her hand back in her coat pocket.  "I forgot I had these," she pulled out lollipops.  

  The Detective flashed the badge again.  "The tape Ma." 

"I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT."

  The man gently slammed the door.  He closed it but not all the way.  The woman took two steps closer.  "Alright, I hearya darling, but you can't go around putting bullet holes in everything and," the door closed, "And not expect the rest of us to NOT WONDER if you might want to talk about something." 

  "Problem?" 

  "No, not really muttering." 

  "I DON'T have anyone for you." 

  "Really?!" 

  "Talk to me about the sheetrock." 

  "Like what about it?  Like the difference between horse hair plaster and gypsum?" 

  "How much the project needs." 

  "Guess I can head back home then.  Podunk's done with me." 

  "I don't have anyone for you since you exposed everyone's deepest psychological stress and desires." 

  "But I did not." 

  "But that's the word from Foggy Bottom." 

  "But it," deep breathing and suppressing an asthma attack, "It can't be.  It just can NOT possibly be so." 

  The man got up from a big desk.  "Seven newspapers on the West Coast say that you have done the very one thing YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO." 

  The woman collapsed.

"Come in, come in, but

  don't step on anything," a man finished the sentence as a tiny crowd hurried in and things were stepped on. 

  "I'll just talk on.  Probably everyone knows I lost my job at the University.  But I'm keeping up with my lecturing," he lifted a foot in a dress shoe from a paper mache rider on a horse.  He smoothed both rider and horse as he told, "You may not know that the University itself is no more." Someone gasped.  A woman came from a three foot deep kitchenette area.  "Oh dear," at the sight of eight or nine people.  She made way carefully around the perimeter of the room.  Snagged a pile of books and magazines and as timing would have it, a rocket flew overhead, she jumped, the books crashed down, and the rocket exploded. 

  The professor sighed.  But knelt to help re-gather the books.  A young woman pushed her way through semi-frozen people and also helped.  She handed the books one by one into the woman in the kitchenette.  Then asked, "Sir, what's with all the strings?"  

  Sprawling the floor was a patchwork of string and yarn and rags.  "My dear," the professor said, "I'm so glad you've asked." The man took in the creation by looking down at it from his height.  His eyes misted, he rang his hands gently, caressed a side of his face, and almost started talking a few times before more seeing what's inside of the design.  At long last he spoke.  "Waves."

  Jesus was asym-metrical too.  In a cultural landscape where it was mostly an eye for an eye, he said, God's got a better plan.  It's called forgiveness.  "It's a real game changer!"

  More than one man speaking in tandem.

  And an older woman who'd survived WWII, "Part of the Allied's distinction in WWII from just joining the warring was it's commitment to honor." Translators paused the conversation to clarify. 

  Back when at this type of world coming together and differing on some serious issues we tumbled into comparing and contrasting certain concepts like honor and warrior in and out of cultural contexts.