Ugh. We have to start with the disclaimer this morning. We have been waiting for the Israeli response to Iran’s startling weekend rocket assault. Part of the discussion echoed the mumbling on the other side of the River here in Your Nation’s Capital. Like many others, we are a little unclear as to who is responding to what in this emotional and kinetic matter. We will drill a bit deeper into that in a moment, but the Legal Section reminds us to be even-handed in our treatment of the players and issues, to respect religious integrity and the role of Directed Experts in World Affairs.

Is that enough to ensure this is intended as mild irony? It is not intended as a castigation of ancient religious figures. It is directed more at our ideas of the role of “Experts” and “Unintended Consequences.”

A certain cognitive bias is to be expected. We Salts are a small community of former experts in kinetic operations in a maritime context. Naturally, by training, we had lurched to the worst possible outcome when the word was flashing around about the massive size of the Iranian rocket assault. What was the likely response?

See? Three paragraphs into it and we have not even mentioned the first part while starting to consider the third or fourth path of the branches and sequels that spill out in the “consequences phase. Here is what struck the members of the circle, which includes members who by happenstance had once been blessed by the Holy Father in Rome.

That interjected thoughts of the resolution of today’s crisis response with some previous ones of even greater magnitude. In our shared history, the devastating impact of the nuclear demonstration in Japan in 1945 had the same sort of social impact as the awful scourge of another weapon of mass destruction:

The Black Death was the event most analogous in horror. It was a plague pandemic that erupted in Europe in the Mid-14th century and killed as many as 50 million people, or nearly half the population of the continent.

That is where we came to the modest revelation about the role of messaging and Experts in one of the most significant events in European history. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals and changed the course of European history.

The discussion about who has atomic weapons today and who may be close to having them is a sidebar to the startling story that emerged with some cursory research. The outbreak of the plague was accompanied with pleas for an answer, a solution that could come only from Heaven. The response is what led directly to the second and even deadlier outbreak.

In the context of both times, then and now, the response is analogous. In the Dark Ages, the ghastly disease was assumed to have an origin in the wrath of the Almighty. Accordingly, the Christian Primate in Rome’s views were considered directly appropriate. Pope Gregory the 14th took steps to call his Experts together and provide solutions that would blunt the anger of Heaven.

The Experts took the logical approach. The felines that roamed the houses and homes of Europe were known to be familiars of the Anti-Christ and thus should be eliminated as a matter of Public Health. A campaign was begun against the cats which had some success.

That success was measured mostly in the surge of the Yersinia pestis virus which was actually carried by rodents, notably the rats whose presence was less visible than that of the felines who managed their population.

We could count several similarities in progress today. A desire to “save the planet” could actually lower the percentage of an atmospheric trace gas necessary for photosynthesis and ife. Striking nuclear installations in any nation of the Middle East, regardless of malfeasance, could prompt a use-or-lose scenario.

The Experts once recommended a war on Cats to save civilization, only to produce a dramatic upsurge in the population of rats. That will all work itself out as our government encourages the Israelis to relax after an assault by hundreds of explosive devices.

It only makes sense, right?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com