Some very big and important things are happening in the world, and it seems that we’re not paying attention at all. We are becoming so fixated on the simple, the sensational, that we’re not noticing the storm clouds.
Now, to be clear, the ballistic winging of a high-level American politician is most deserving of our attention, particularly when the circumstances and outcome are frankly not just nearly apocalyptic but bizarre. The circumstances are so strange and run counter to our expectations that have been baked in from viewing a thousand shows of that very theme (Half the audience watched the shooter wandering around, ratting him out to the cops, who did nothing? Secret Service left the roof unguarded because its nearly flat structure was too dangerous for SWAT teams? Huh? And on and on.).
We are no longer in the age of the Zapruder Film, where a singular grainy video captured all we know about the Kennedy assassination. Trump’s shooting was so well documented from every angle that we have acoustic engineers taking to social media with impressively detailed analyses of where shots came from, and equally impressive counter arguments based on some other esoteric analysis of another aspect. Thus, we analyze all.
Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant, so all these viewpoints are of value and will hinder any miscreants from hiding anything. And yet I can’t help but marvel at the tectonic shifts happening in the world, almost unnoticed in the west, or ignored in the west, that are rearranging the global geopolitical landscape in significant ways, for decades to come, and it’s like we’re not even paying attention.
The biggest, quietest movement must the the rise of BRICS, the affiliation of nine countries that have formed an alliance to ‘counter western influence’ and work to chart a new direction. The founding countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were joined by new members at the beginning of the year, including Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia (who has been coy about explicitly affirming membership but is considered member last I checked). These countries are not a chain of unpopulated tropical islands; they have a combined population of about 3.5 billion people and annual GDP of over $28 trillion.
The BRICS group is growing quickly; earlier this year, it was reported that an additional 34 countries have expressed an interest in joining, with many applications from Africa, South America and Asia. It would not be hard to envision Russian satellite countries looking that way as well.
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