In October of 1973 I’d lived in Colorado for just a year when the Yom Kippur War broke out between Israel and its Arabic neighbors. I had kind of lost track of the fact that I could still be recalled to duty as a Naval Reserve officer. The telegram I received ordering me to report to Buckley Air Force Base, preparatory to traveling to Norfolk, Virginia and an assignment that would take me to the Middle East, came as a considerable jolt. Unlike my Vietnam era service, I now had two small children and a career developing with Mountain Bell. Then the war halted after just 19 days, and my orders were canceled.

The following summer I joined a group to climb Cottonwood Peak in the Sangre de Cristos, overlooking the San Luis Valley. Our guide to the top was a U.S. Forest Service employee familiar with the route. Once atop the peak he offered an observation which has stuck with me for half-a-century. Looking down at the San Luis Valley, he remarked the entire state of Israel would fit comfortably between our location near Villa Grove to Round Mountain, visible just across the New Mexico boundary south of Antonito. It struck me as puzzling a nation so small could lie at the center of so much endless contention.

As I write this, Israel is once again at war, not just with its neighbors but also with the Islamic Republic of Iran. An additional aircraft carrier has been dispatched through the Mediterranean with an expectation of American entanglement in a dispute not of our making. Yes, Iran’s nuclear program has been a matter of concern throughout the region. The June issue of The Atlantic magazine features a profile of President Donald Trump featuring his claim, “I run the country and the world.” Not so much, it’s starting to appear. Russians and Ukrainians continue to strike blows against one another undeterred by our president’s demand for a ceasefire. Neither does it appear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought American permission for an escalation of hostilities which has been simmering for a decade.

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Atlantic reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer note our president “…has always been convinced of his own genius, his pure gut instincts. But never more so than today.” Those gut instincts prompted President Trump to to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by then-President Barack Obama, the Iran nuclear deal supported by both Russia and China, during his first term. Even our adversaries shared reservations about a nuclear-armed Islamic theocracy sitting near their borders. I presume it was still his gut instincts that had Trump back at the negotiating table in recent weeks, attempting to revive a similar agreement to the one he walked away from eight years ago — small surprise the Ayatollah harbors doubt regarding the reliability of the self-declared Master of the Deal. While he showed no hesitancy in publicly berating Volodymyr Zelenskyy for “risking World War III” by defending his country against an unprovoked invasion from Russia, he has ignored the far greater risk now posed by Netanyahu’s belligerence.

I can’t think of a national political figure I would less like to see in charge of American diplomacy under present circumstances than Donald J. Trump. His propensity for prevarication has been expanding from simple, “scene-setting” (alternative facts) to the utterly ridiculous. Is there a single American who believes Joe Biden paid off people to stay home and skip Dear Leader’s military parade on June 14? Did anyone see the Craigslist ads for the thousands of foot soldiers required to bribe millions of voters into boycotting Trump’s birthday bash? And, just who was simultaneously paying the actual millions of “No Kings” demonstrators that showed up at thousands of rallies? Even George Soros can’t afford that. So, we find ourselves facing a crisis that puts our planet at risk and decisions will be made by an impulsive hothead who can’t distinguish fact from fiction.

Last week David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, labeled the fear-mongering propaganda emerging from the White House and Trump’s disciples as intentional disinformation. “None of this is remotely true,” he charged. In the same vein, Steve Kaagan observes in Common Dreams, “What are the implications for those of us who seek to contain a wildfire threatening our political, social, cultural and economic base? This wildfire is barely 5% contained… the stakes are the upholding of a political framework grounded in a set of moral values that has remained largely intact for 250 years. Much of what will happen in the months ahead will cause us to grieve. We are confronting a collapse of a way of living we have taken for granted.”

This sounds nearly as pessimistic as the tripe spewed out by the “carnage King” himself. David Holmes, editor-at-large for Esquire magazine, lists 25 things he’s learned in the 21st century. Number one is, “Everyone will sell out, and the ones who don’t will be considered suckers.” Democracy thrives on courage, while tyranny feeds on fear. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned Americans during the depths of the Great Depression that, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” it took a few years to translate his warning into hope and eventually confidence. I remain hopeful today and refuse to allow fear to take up residence in my head. Recently, I heard pollster Frank Luntz say, “We may be running out of time to turn things around.” I doubt that. Under even darker circumstances, Martin Luther King noted, “The time is always right to do the right thing.” Right now is the time for courage.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.