Isis, you just went too far

Remember the kid who lined up across from you, the kid who was fast, who was tough — who you hated?

Or the girl who played volleyball against you, who could jump a little higher and hit a little harder? Remember how you felt about her?

Then do you remember what happened a little further down the road, when your nemesis became your teammate? Suddenly, the animosity evaporated. Suddenly you could bask in that player’s success, because it translated into success for you. Conversely, your former foe became your friend, too, and from that point forward you both were able to accomplish more.

International strife is not sports, but there are parallels. Thank goodness, ISIS doesn’t see them.

The terrorist group has infuriated all the big boys on the block. Its cowardly acts of violence, from individual beheadings to the downed Russian jetliner to mass murder in Paris, have done nothing but unify and further embolden its enemy. And guess what? The enemy of ISIS is basically the rest of the world. Pockets of sympathetic terrorists and minor governmental players who support them have unwittingly mobilized most of the planet’s most powerful forces and made allies of strangers. Just months or even weeks ago, who would have seen the U.S. and Russia donning the same jerseys and stepping up together to the same line of scrimmage?

Domestically, ISIS has found at least a temporary solution to the divisive, sickening splintering of modern American society, where focus and fury on the differences between black and white and Republican and ultra-Republican, to say nothing of Republican and Democrat, have been making losers of everyone. Determination to crush the Islamic State cockroach transcends skin color, political preference — heck, we even saw the opposing professional and college teams over the weekend united in honoring France and damning ISIS.

It would be heartless to actually thank ISIS for doing what the world’s most powerful nations had not done through negotiation or attempted cooperation. Too many innocent people have died and many more have been scarred for life; we can’t express thanks for that.

But the day may come when we look at the trajectory of global stability and see a turning point in the autumn of 2015. By bringing peace loving citizens of planet Earth together, the horror unleashed by ISIS just might end up doing a world of good.