The National Delusion: How World Powers Pretend to Progress While Walking in Circles

Every nation believes it’s special.

They craft stories about destiny, progress, and their righteous place in history while ignoring the obvious circular tracks they leave in the sand.

Watch the news about Iran-Israel-US tensions and you’ll witness a magnificent theatrical production – nations posturing with missiles and threats, politicians speaking of peace through strength, military strategists plotting defensive strikes – all while the audience nods along, believing this particular chapter of human conflict somehow differs from the thousands before it.

The costumes change but the play remains identical: good versus evil, defense versus aggression, civilization versus barbarism.

This isn’t progress or evolution, just a carousel of conflict with fresh paint…

…while the riders mistake motion for advancement.

The Eternal Playground

Nations are nothing but overgrown children with nuclear toys.

These massive, tax-funded entities operate from the same emotional triggers as four-year-olds fighting over sandbox territory, just with better vocabularies and deadlier consequences.

Notice how every military action gets wrapped in the language of necessity and defense. Iran develops nuclear capabilities as “protection,” Israel launches strikes for “security,” America deploys carriers for “regional stability.” Strip away the diplomatic veneer and what remains? Fear, pride, and dominance – the primitive emotional palette of children unable to transcend their base programming. These emotion-driven machines march forward claiming rational calculation while their actions reveal the tantrum-throwing toddlers beneath the suits and military uniforms. The intellectual justifications come after the emotional decisions, not before.

National identity itself requires perpetual childhood – a state maintained through propaganda, selective history, and emotional manipulation that keeps citizens in a permanent state of unquestioning loyalty…

…just as nursery rhymes keep children comfortably numb.

The Staged Drama

Every conflict needs both heroes and villains.

Without Iran as the villain, what purpose would American military might serve? Without America as the imperial aggressor, how would Iranian leadership maintain control?

Examine the Iran-Israel-US triangle through this lens and the absurdity becomes clear. Each nation casts itself as Dudley Do-Right – the noble protector of righteousness – while painting opponents as Snidely Whiplash twirling their mustaches and plotting destruction. Yet step outside the national narrative and you’ll see three Snidelys all claiming to be Dudley. The Western media portrays Iran as irrational religious zealots, while Iranian media portrays America as imperial invaders. Both narratives serve their creators while obscuring the fact that neither contains truth. Both are simply props in a drama designed to keep populations emotionally invested.

Watch how each act of aggression gets justified as a response to the other’s provocation, creating an infinite loop of righteous retaliation…

…a perpetual motion machine powered by selective memory.

Stepping Outside

True freedom begins with seeing the loop.

Nation-states cannot escape their circular paths because their existence depends on maintaining the illusion of forward movement toward some imagined future glory.

Those trapped in national narratives will never grasp that their “side” operates from the same playbook as the “enemy.” They’ll continue justifying bombings, sanctions, and military deployments as necessary steps toward peace, failing to notice they’ve been walking the same blood-soaked path for centuries. The loop persists because it must – without enemies and threats, the entire power structure would collapse. Breaking free requires seeing how completely you’ve been manipulated to support “your” team in a game where the real winners are always those who sell the weapons and control the resources.

The next time headlines scream of threats and necessary interventions, recognize the ancient patterns beneath modern conflicts…

…and refuse to be another unconscious extra in humanity’s oldest production.

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