Our cause, our guiding star

Russia continues to attack the civilian population in Ukraine. White phosphorus rains down over Kostyantynivka in Donetsk, and the aim is the same as when Churchill and “Bomber” Harris carried out the terror bombings over Germany during the Second World War. The logic of the sadists is brutally clear: slaughter civilians in the most savage ways, and the will to fight will be broken.

At the same time, I watch as the United States and Israel launch attacks against Iran. In his speech, Trump leaves open the possibility of avoiding a ground invasion — something that would in fact be required to remove the mullahs’ regime. He urges the Iranian people to do it themselves instead. Many would likely wish to, but to confront regime-loyal militias, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, loyalist police, the military, and an entire security apparatus with no intention of surrendering power … that is probably beyond their strength. And as I said, American ground troops marching in under their flags — that we are unlikely to see. Perhaps a special forces unit or two with specific targets, but nothing like Iraq in 2003. At least, that is how I see it.

Whenever such things occur, I think of the words in Matthew 24:6: “And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.”

No, it is not the end.

Rather, what we witness are the continuing birth pangs of a new age.

I am convinced that we are not living in the last days, but in the first. We have left the Kali Yuga behind us, and if one waits for Christ, one may have to wait a very long time. What was to be done has been done, and now it is up to us. Just as Nietzsche explained.

That is why I went out into the forest instead.

On SVT they reported live as I busied myself around the house. The coffee brewed and I dug out my outdoor clothes. They are neither modern nor fashionable. I look more like a vagabond, and that warms me from within.

Then off I went, out into the forest. The car was parked and already fifty metres in, what always happens — and what I always forget — happened again. The world changed. The mind grew still and I felt my blood pressure drop. A bird sang. Otherwise, complete silence.

When I later managed to get a small fire going, I simply sat there staring at it.

To hell with Putin and the Russian and Trump and Bibi and the mullahs. To hell with every last one of them. “Leaders” and politicians and disconnected pundits and “experts” everywhere. To hell with Rosengård and Rinkeby and whatever all the other areas are called. And to hell with the Muslims … and the Jews … and the Sámi.

To hell with the Swedes as well, for that matter. Damn fools who do not understand how to tend their own hearth. Thomas Glahn appears in my thoughts. Lasse in the Mountain follows. He was real, and far closer to where I now sit and think of him.

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Yet this is not the nineteenth century, and states — with their institutions and their tentacles — are a reality we must reckon with. That damned Putin and Trump as well. And every EU bureaucrat. The simple thing would be to remain there in the forest and let the world take care of itself. But that is neither right nor adult nor manly.

So I tell myself that there must be a golden mean.

To be defiant and weary of both the authorities and people in general, like Lasse in the Mountain, and at the same time to do one’s damned duty as a Swede and as a man. It should be possible. It has to be.

I have no idea how. I move between misanthrope and philanthropist. My condition on any given day determines how far my love of mankind extends. At times it does not even reach myself. Those are the days when I would laughingly welcome news of a planet-killer, only to strip off my clothes and run for the woods with a pipe and a bottle of gin. On other days I am responsible, filled with compassion and a will to serve.

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The middle way is there. Our Cause. This higher cause to lean upon. That bastard Putin and that fool Trump and the whole parliament can go to hell. The people came first … the people will outlive us all. And the people are Lasse in the Mountain and arrogant Stockholmers. More than that. The people are me as well. You will simply have to put up with that.

Yet the people are not every two-legged Homo sapiens sapiens wandering the earth. They are not the mullahs in Iran or kaftan-clad Jews, whether in Israel or in “Volvo City”. For me, they are Swedes, Nordics and Germanic peoples … and that circle may widen across Europe and the West. Beyond that, it more or less ends.

Towards them I have a duty. Not towards every individual, of course, but towards “my people”. That duty is like a lifebuoy. It is what keeps me in the world and makes me want to improve it here and now, and above all to leave firm ground for those who come after us.

Our cause makes me lift my gaze from the fire, eat the last sausage that has been grilled, and stride back towards the car and the modern world. I do not look back, because I am certain that both Lasse and Thomas are standing there among the trees, shaking their heads at me.