Putin is a bad man, but he’s right about the imperialistic decadence of the West
Hate to say it, because I believe Vladimir Putin is a nasty dictator who had no business invading Ukraine … but he’s correct in his remarks about the West and moral decadence. Putin said at Valdai this week:
It is notable that the West proclaims the universal value of its culture and worldview. Even if they do not say so openly, which they actually often do, they behave as if this is so, that it is a fact of life, and the policy they pursue is designed to show that these values must be unconditionally accepted by all other members of the international community.
I would like to quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous Harvard Commencement Address delivered in 1978. He said that typical of the West is “a continuous blindness of superiority”– and it continues to this day – which “upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present-day Western systems.” He said this in 1978. Nothing has changed.
Over the nearly 50 years since then, the blindness about which Solzhenitsyn spoke and which is openly racist and neocolonial, has acquired especially distorted forms, in particular, after the emergence of the so-called unipolar world. What am I referring to? Belief in one’s infallibility is very dangerous; it is only one step away from the desire of the infallible to destroy those they do not like, or as they say, to cancel them. Just think about the meaning of this word.
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You’re thinking, Don’t fall for the bait! Don’t let Putin make this about the culture war!
Let me introduce you to Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who released this statement expressing gratitude that his progressive Democrat colleagues withdrew their letter urging the Biden administration to push for peace negotiations in Ukraine. Among Russia’s many sins, according to Raskin:
Moscow right now is a hub of corrupt tyranny, censorship, authoritarian repression, police violence, propaganda, government lies and disinformation, and planning for war crimes. It is a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export.
You know, I think he’s more or less right about Moscow’s corruption, but it’s the second line that’s the tell. We have to fight Russia because its World War Trans! And immigration! Watch Tucker Carlson’s must-see monologue from last night, in which he characterized the US war effort in Ukraine as a progressive “jihad.” Meanwhile, says Tucker, America is going to run out of diesel fuel in 25 days. That would mean no trains, no big trucks making deliveries, no school buses, etc. That would mean our economy may well fall apart. As Tucker points out, here in Europe, where I live now, people are gearing down for a lot of suffering this winter because of the war and fuel prices. I keep hearing from economists and others over here that we could well be seeing riots in the streets and governments falling by the end of this winter — in Europe! This is the cost of pursuing war in Ukraine. None of this makes Putin right to have pursued this war, but it does raise the question of who, exactly, this war is for. After the diesel runs out, are we going to have trannies taking American schoolchildren to class in rickshaws? For the first time in a long time, the American people are going to feel the pain of bipartisan Washington’s wars.
R&I – FS
