Ahab is still alive. The great novel “Moby Dick” tells us what goes wrong with history. Ahab is on a mad pursuit to kill a white (representing innocence) whale. His First Mate Starbuck questions the sanity and morality of hunting a “dumb brute out of revenge.” He calls it “blasphemy.” Ahab responds with “Talk to me not of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” So we have a character playing god.
We keep getting these characters, one after the other, over and over again throughout history. Our most recent Ahab is Putin. We thought we were done with the likes of Hitler and Stalin, etc, but they keep popping up like the Hydra of Greek mythology: you cut off one head and two more take its place. How many Ahabs do we have in the Middle East?
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