Remember the Saudi execution? No, not Jamal Khashoggi in October at the consulate in Turkey. We’re talking about the 47 New Years executions three years ago in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The American media didn’t make much fuss about it then, but in a Jan. 7, 2016, editorial, the Butler Eagle spotlighted one of those executed, a Shiite activist sheik who had been living in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family ordered the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia Muslim agitator. Sheik Nimr was convicted of “seeking ‘foreign meddling’ in their desert kingdom, ‘disobeying’ its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces.”

The Eagle wrote about the execution intending to point out the rising global influence that America’s Marcellus shale gas and oil industry was becoming. We wrote: “For the past couple of years the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — OPEC, led by chief oil exporter Saudi Arabia — has responded to the Marcellus Shale gas boom by increasing its own production. The logic is that Saudi Arabia can produce and market energy more cheaply than Pennsylvania and other U.S. oil and gas producers. The strategy is working, sort of. But the by-product is a worldwide glut of energy resources that has undercut the Saudi economy more than the U.S. economy.”

The point, we attempted to reason in 2016, was that developments in Pennsylvania were making a deep impact on the other side of the globe. The dissident Sheik Nimr presented a stunning problem to the Saudi princes: the Nimr was of the Shia Muslim sect, while the Saud family is Sunni. Al Nimr and the Shia were tiring of their second-class status and were seeking autonomy. And in a period of waning economic might and prestige, the Saudi leadership felt forced to take serious action to stop such break-away threats.

Sheik Nimr was one of 47 people beheaded that day in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Mass beheadings make a very clear statement to a kingdom’s minority populations and neighbors: Don’t meddle in our affairs.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was not the head of the Saudi government, but he was the minister of defense. Two days after the mass beheadings, in his first interview to the mainstream media — the Economist, a British conservative magazine — bin Salman defended the executions, saying all of those killed had been prosecuted in an open court and convicted of serious crimes.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Donald Trump was not yet the president. He was not yet even the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Hillary Clinton was battling Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. John Kerry had succeeded Clinton as secretary of State in February 2013 at the start of Barack Obama’s second term in the Oval Office.

It was Kerry who oversaw the deal that included the Jan. 16, 2016, release of four American detainees, including The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, from Tehran as a jumbo jet delivered $400 million in cash to the Tehran airport — purportedly a partial payment of an outstanding claim by Iran for U.S. military equipment that was never delivered. Soon after, another $1.3 billion in cash followed. This was a mere two weeks after the mass beheadings in Riyadh.

These events are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle — and there are a multitude of pieces.

And guess what? When the pieces get put together, we’re all part of the bigger picture.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Pennsylvania’s gasoline tax stood at 50 cents a gallon. The state average for a gallon of gas was $2.62, compared with a national average of $2.36.

Now, three years later, gasoline prices are actually lower than they were on New Year’s Day 2016. Today the average price is $2.35 a gallon around Butler.

What does all this have to do with Butler County? Consider what we wrote three years ago: “The U.S. is far less dependent on Saudi oil than it was before the Marcellus boom. The reduction of prestige frightens the Saudi princes more than the loss of market share. Their fears are only heightened by the recent U.S.-Iranian nuclear arms agreement, which signals a shift in the Mideast power structure.

The story did not end in January 2016. Thanks in large part to Butler County’s electorate, Trump carried Pennsylvania 11 months later. Yes, there was explosive coverage of an assassination that our CIA says was ordered by the Saudi prince Bin Salman. There has also been a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and growing prospects of troop draw-downs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is not the same Middle East that existed just three years ago. And yet it is. We’re not the same, either. And yet we are.

And there was that meme we encountered on social media the other day, the one depicting a smiling President Trump above the words: “I saw you pumping that $1.69 a gallon gas, and you say I’m not your president.”