The final-scene addiction

Modern power keeps trying to look like a final scene: a villain, a righteous strike, a body, a clean hinge in history. The crowd exhales, credits roll. That is the emotional offer behind the language of “Devil,” behind the idea that killing a leader is the climax of an era. But politics is not a genre. It’s machinery.

Why this isn’t Jewish

Armageddon, as it circulates in public speech today, is not Jewish. It is post-Christian end-time logic—one Beast, one ultimate confrontation, one decisive end where evil is removed by a closing act. Judaism knows end-time language too, but its reflex is anti-idolatrous: don’t crown forces, don’t turn enemies into metaphysical sovereigns, don’t give evil a throne by narrating it as a final boss. The oldest Jewish instinct is to deny evil the dignity of ultimate personhood.

“Devil” as a permission device

This matters the moment Trump declares someone “evil,” the moment the public repeats “Devil,” the moment the political imagination reaches for “the last battle.” Calling a leader Devil is not merely an insult; it is a theological import. It drags the conflict into a screenplay where proof becomes secondary, hesitation becomes suspect, and escalation becomes “obvious.” It is a permission device. Netanyahu doesn’t even need to say it; he can play the procedural statesman. Together they simulate both prophecy and responsibility: one supplies metaphysics, the other supplies plausibility, and the audience receives a simple instruction—treat this as closure.

The system doesn’t close. It switches.

Here is the second trap: the second you feel closure, the system performs the opposite move. While viewers stare at the face, the apparatus checks redundancy. Who answers the phone, who signs, who commands, who obeys; which gates still open, which deals still clear. The public sees a corpse. The machine sees a continuity test.

Death is a threshold, not a spectacle

Judaism does not treat death as spectacle. Death is handled with boundaries and restraint; even hatred does not license carnival. This is not sentimentality but operational wisdom: once death becomes theatre, societies learn to eat it, and what learns to eat death will always ask for more.

Faces are for viewers. Regimes are for continuity.

Modern power exploits the craving for a final scene by offering faces: faces are legible, shareable, content. Faces create the illusion that if the face disappears, the spell breaks. But regimes are not faces. Regimes are continuity systems: money routes, command chains, immunities, surveillance, the ability to punish without being punished back. The leader is the interface. The regime is the operating system.

Collapse isn’t freedom. It’s auction.

So when the interface is removed, the first question is never “what do the people want.” The first question is: does the system still breathe? Do internal gates still work? Do deals still clear? Do enforcers still obey because obedience still pays? If yes, then a “historic moment” is mostly a psychological event for viewers. And even if the regime collapses, the Hollywood script still lies. Collapse does not equal liberation; collapse often equals auction—auction of ministries, ports, police units, narrative, protection. Society is not a spring. Society is expensive infrastructure: predictable days, enforceable rules, basic services. You do not get that by killing a man. You get it by building it for years, and by protecting it against the forces that profit from the void.

The real levers are in flows

This is why the Middle East keeps teaching the same lesson: Iraq did not get a society back; it got a market in violence. Libya got fragmentation and external steering. Syria and Yemen showed that prolonged war dissolves institutional memory so thoroughly that “return” becomes a myth even when the top disappears. And here is the colder point: the most decisive levers today are not in Tehran or Damascus. They are in flows—insurance, credit, shipping risk, sanctions enforcement, energy pricing, platform visibility. A trader in Hong Kong can move more reality than a million bodies in a square; an algorithm on X can change the weather faster than a dissident network can build shelter. Not because people do not matter, but because modern power absorbs visible pressure while staying alive through invisible continuity.

So when someone announces that the Devil is dead, the Jewish question is not “is this the final battle?” The Jewish question is: what idolatry is being smuggled into my thinking right now? What false sovereignty am I granting to a face? What machinery am I failing to see because a screenplay has been offered to me as reality?

Armageddon-as-screenplay is a powerful narcotic. It feels ancient. It feels true. But modern power is procedural. It does not end. It switches interfaces. And the most dangerous moment is exactly when the audience thinks the credits should roll. The Devil may be declared dead. The machine isn’t.

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)