Reaping the Whirlwind
Today we are heading towards Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city where Angkor Wat is located in the place where over 1 million people once lived 1,000 years ago. When moving from Vietnam to Cambodia, it’s hard not to think back to the history of these lands back when I was moving from school to Wall Street in the 70s. When I think of Cambodia, I think of three things, I think of the killing fields, Pol Pot and I think of the Khmer Rouge. The three are synonymous with that awful time in SE Asia when there was a vacuum created by America’s abrupt evacuation from Saigon in 1975. That void gave Pol Pot his opening to both brutalize and kill 2 million of his own Cambodian people, almost as many as had died in 15 years of the Vietnam War. He got so bold that he actually started up with Vietnam and that was his fatal error. The battle-hardened Vietnamese were not the poor and ragged Cambodian peasants that he was used to trampling, so it took them no time to eradicate the renegade Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot sowed the wind and thereby reaped the Whirlwind in Siem Reap. But somehow, defeating the Khmer Rouge did not bring about an end to Pol Pot. He maintained his position as the Chairman of the Communist Party of Kampuchea for many more years and only died of old age in 1998. So following the old adage, that only the good die young, the ones who actually reaped the Whirlwind were the poor Cambodian peasants he left in the killing fields of rural Cambodia.
It was Hosea 8:7 that said about the Israelites and their worship of craven golden idols that, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: he hath no standing grain; the blade shall yield no meal; if so be it yield, strangers shall swallow it up.” This is yet again another prophetic passage from the Bible that seems to speak to those of us in the future about events that were not so much foretold as simply expected, given the imperfect nature of man. It is hard for me to read that Biblical quote about the Israelites and not think about what continues to happen in Gaza. The Palestinians certainly hath no standing grain or any grain to speak of. And none of their blades are yielding any meal for almost two million of them. And the right wing of Israel has such a command on their fearless leader Benjamin Netanyahu that settlers are being allowed to literally swallow up whatever the Palestinians have. I am mostly an ally of Israel, but every day that passes and every day that Netanyahu, the Pol Pot of the Holy Lands, is allowed to continue to push Palestinians into the sea, the Israeli cause loses more and more global support for its otherwise understandable Zionist yearnings. They are literally allowing their leader to sow the wind and all Jewish people will be forced to reap the whirlwind if this does not somehow reverse to a more peaceful approach to having a stable and secure homeland for the Jews.
I was recently sent such a prophetic passage by my friend Steve, not from the Bible, but from one of our founding fathers. It was a quote from Alexander Hamilton and it went like this, “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…despotic in his ordinary demeanor- known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty – when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity – to join in the cry of danger to liberty – to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion – to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day – It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.” Who do you suppose in present day America he might’ve been talking about? I doubt even the loyal followers of Donald Trump would deny that this description is almost perfect in capturing the nature of the man the Republican party is about to nominate as its candidate for the presidency in 2024. Naturally, Trump is a fervent ally of anything and everything being done by Benjamin Netanyahu as well.
The problem is bad enough for the world with Donald Trump and his minions sowing the wind, but there are so many other as well. There are Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un, Erdogan, Orban, Netanyahu, Maduro, MBS, and Khamenei, just to name the most obvious. While it is probably true that at no time in world history have we been devoid of totalitarians and dictators, it is probably also true that there are times when they are in abundance and causing greater harm to humanity. We all think things are worse for us than others before us, so it may be silly to suggest that we are in a particularly put-upon way in this age, but it sure as hell seems the case. This is especially so today as Putin ravages Ukraine and starts almost all 32 NATO member nations (save perhaps Erdogan’s Turkey and Orban’s Hungary) gearing up their military budgets and even their nuclear arsenals as they gird their loins for the likely and eventual Russian assault on Europe. Naturally, this all depends on what the U.S. does and, at the moment, that seems unbelievably dependent on what happens to Donald Trump. Trump’s whirlwind, just like Pol Pot’s fifty years ago, seems less inflicted on him than on his people…first his own GOP, then Americans in general and finally, the world at large. How the hell can that happen? Meanwhile, Xi prepares the ground for some South China Sea action against his own in Taiwan, Kim Jong-Un is building his nuclear arsenal to help both Putin and Xi and decimate his own to the south, Netanyahu stirs up the hornets nest of the Middle East enough so awaken the sleeping giant of Khamenei and there you have it. A world ablaze in a whirlwind of hate that finally does in the human race faster than demographic reversal can reduce the surplus population.
As we head into Siem Reap for two days of sightseeing, I want to keep in mind as we learn about the ancient civilizations that built this monumental temple and city, that some civilizations advance humanity with benign concern for the wellbeing of the governed and yet others steamroll over the people on the notion that no progress is made without great sacrifice, especially at the expense of those least able to advance or defend themselves. This latter approach is all too common and all too often racked up as the breakage of natural selection. I want to see signs that the kings of the Khmer Empire that ruled Angkor Wat were like the Pharaohs of Egypt that held one hand up in strength and another with their palm up and open, signifying justice and benevolence. So far I see almost no benevolence or justice from Trump or the rest of these leaders. And still the masses tend to line up to follow these false prophets. Such is the nature of populism. I will ponder all of this as I wander through Angkor Wat and consider how reaping the whirlwind can be avoided.