A strange excitement has taken hold around the movements and preparations for war in the Middle East.
The scent of other people’s blood, carried on the wind, stirs something primal across TV sets and social networks—each trying to be the first to announce that the real war has begun.
Has the desire for war become an aphrodisiac as potent as powdered unicorn horn?
Fantasies are taking flight, with all eyes turned skyward, thrilled by visions of airstrikes.
There is something unseemly, uninhibited—even eerily virtual and disembodied—about this spectacle.
And when the target becomes Iran, the tone escalates beyond anything we’ve seen before.
Yes, the October 7 pogrom, the rhetoric of the Islamic Revolution, the deadly repression of Iran’s youth, and its declared hostility all bear a share of responsibility.
But something even more disturbing looms: the collective blindness to the devastating potential of mass civilian casualties and the chaos they would unleash.
Israel’s media campaign—supported by allies—to sell the fantasy of a smooth regime transition is speculative at best, comectic at worse case scenario.
And here’s the paradox:
This intoxication with bloodshed, this theatrical urge to topple the supposed “epicenter of evil” is being orchestrated by a trans-illiberal axis—from Washington to Tel Aviv—and possibly soon including Moscow.
Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin, too, harbor a shared fascination with fundamentalist visions, each laced with a messianic tone.
An axis that cannot seriously be mistaken for the camp of virtue.
War is not an aphrodisiac.
En attendant la Renaissance 