A battle between the gods

The contemporary age of modernity that began, say, two centuries ago, is marked by a furious, almost titanic, ideological struggle. In the modern era the struggle of competing ideologies for the loyalty of massive populations has become the arena for the principle struggle for power on the planet. As a result,  the struggle for power has moved from the military battlefield, where it resided for most of the history of mankind, to the airwaves and the newspapers and cyberspace, and the hearts and minds of peoples everywhere in the world. That ideological struggle today has replaced what in the ancient world was seen as a battle between the gods and their several religions. Ideological allegiance has become the religious allegiance of yester-era. As, in those days, people were susceptible to the foolish attractions of this or that other god, in today's world people's minds can be easily bent to subscribe to this or that foolish ideology. That weakness of minds to the simple temptations of one ideological system after another, not to mention one religious system after another, is what the Bible condems as 'lusting after strange service' – avodah zara.