Darrell Castle talks about the use of politics to address the world's problems and how that use or lack of use, specifically regarding the disputes in the Middle East and in Ukraine, makes good political campaigning but fails to actually solve the problem.

Transcription / Notes

WHEN POLITICS FAILS

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday, the 9th day of May in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the use of politics to address the world’s problems and how that use repeatedly fails. Specifically, how the use or lack of use of politics to solve the disputes in the Middle East and in Ukraine make good political campaigning but when push comes to shove politics fails to solve the problems.

The dictionary defines politics as: “the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”

We might be able to glean something from that definition, but it really means that normally politics is a precursor to war rather than preventing war. This Report then is not really about politics but about war. Yes, I suppose you might be able to conclude that the Castle Report is a report on war and my opposition to it. Here is an analogy, your kid sister is waiting on the school bus to bring her home from school and some bully slaps her and runs away. When confronted the bully denies having anything to do with it but you know and everyone knows that he did it. Retaliation is therefore a must. That bully has to be shown that he cannot insult you and yours with impunity so you attack him when he is on the way home just as he did your sister.

Does it end there, not likely. The bully approaches his friends for help and since his friends compete with you in local business they agree to supply the bully with people and weapons knowing that it will hurt you. The story just goes on and on without ceasing and when great nations are involved, great destruction results but also great profits for those who make the weapons. Those who make weapons and those who gain power because they are financed by those who make weapons seem to delight in war and want war to continue without end. They talk about peace but they never do anything to bring peace because they don’t really want it to happen. Politics fails then to solve the problems as it almost always does because politics is quite often false and meant to fail.

I look at the Middle East, specifically Gaza, and I try to apply my human reasoning to what is going on there. The story seems to change week by week or even day by day and it becomes so murky that it is very hard to make sense of it. I suppose that is because war is idiotic and senseless so how can one make sense of the Middle East. The attacks of October 7th by Hamas against civilians in Israel killed about 1200 people most were innocent meaning non-military targets. In other words, the object was to create terror and you don’t do that by attacking military targets you do it by murdering women and children.

That is what Hamas appears to have done, murder women and children. Stories of murder, rape and torture have been documented and if anything, they tend to downplay what really happened. I understand now that many more than 1200 were killed because many died of wounds later. I can’t blame Israel for retaliating with the purpose of not letting their people continue to be exposed and vulnerable to such attacks. The question becomes then; how much retaliation is enough and how much goes way beyond what can be justified as self-protection.

I read many people who report the Israelis as genocidal maniacs because of their alleged intentional killing of Palestinian children, etc. What the reporters or commentators of that version don’t seem to realize is that is exactly what the Israelis accuse Hamas of doing. Those who support the Palestinians in the struggle say the...