THE ILLUSION OF METASTABILITY

Here's an insight into these global events by a man named Frank:

I think it was Yeltsin who said of the USSR that in the end the society had become a land of hypocrites where no one would dare speak the truth and the few who did were in grave danger. The malaise, the stagnation of everything was blamed on the US and a false front was put up of a land of equality, a place where there was universal health care, no homelessness, etc. We were told the USSR was nothing like America and even Dan Rather waxed warm on the pre-schools and day care for Soviet kids in one of his reports. But it was all a lie, self-deception, delusion. It is much like that with Islam. And as with the USSR, every reason for Islamic failure is projected outward and there is no self-criticism, no permissions to critical analysis, no alternatives are possible because no one is really free to dissent from the system.

I once read a description of the Soviet system as being "meta-stable". Apparently it's a word from physics that means a system appears very stable until outside forces are introduced and then it becomes violently unstable. The Islamic world, especially the Mideast, is affected by the transport and communications revolutions of the past 50 years and those revolutions are striking and shattering their metastable system. Islam is in a condition similar to the Soviet system but it's more dangerous and its potential for lethal violence is greater than the Soviet system. We are in a period of history more dangerous than the Cold War.