The Cost of Waging World War Trans

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.

More:

At one time, the Nazis reached the point of burning books, and now the Western “guardians of liberalism and progress” have reached the point of banning Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky. The so-called “cancel culture” and in reality – as we said many times – the real cancellation of culture is eradicating everything that is alive and creative and stifles free thought in all areas, be it economics, politics or culture.

Today, liberal ideology itself has changed beyond recognition. If initially, classic liberalism was understood to mean the freedom of every person to do and say as they pleased, in the 20^th century the liberals started saying that the so-called open society had enemies and that the freedom of these enemies could and should be restricted if not cancelled. It has reached the absurd point where any alternative opinion is declared subversive propaganda and a threat to democracy.

Whatever comes from Russia is all branded as “Kremlin intrigues.” But look at yourselves. Are we really so all-powerful? Any criticism of our opponents – any – is perceived as “Kremlin intrigues,” “the hand of the Kremlin.” This is insane. What have you sunk to? Use your brain, at least, say something more interesting, lay out your viewpoint conceptually. You cannot blame everything on the Kremlin’s scheming.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky prophetically foretold all this back in the 19^th century. One of the characters of his novel Demons, the nihilist Shigalev, described the bright future he imagined in the following way: “Emerging from boundless freedom, I conclude with boundless despotism.” This is what our Western opponents have come to. Another character of the novel, Pyotr Verkhovensky echoes him, talking about the need for universal treason, reporting and spying, and claiming that society does not need talents or greater abilities: “Cicero’s tongue is cut out, Copernicus has his eyes gouged out and Shakespeare is stoned.” This is what our Western opponents are arriving at. What is this if not Western cancel culture?

And:

As is customary, Washington continues to refer to the current international order as liberal American-style, but in fact, this notorious “order” is multiplying chaos every day and, I might even add, is becoming increasingly intolerant even towards the Western countries and their attempts to act independently. Everything is nipped in the bud, and they do not even hesitate to impose sanctions on their allies, who lower their heads in acquiescence.

For example, the Hungarian MPs’ July proposals to codify the commitment to European Christian values and culture in the Treaty on European Union were taken not even as an affront, but as an outright and hostile act of sabotage. What is that? What does it mean? Indeed, some people may like it, some not.

Putin could have mentioned the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling that exonerated a French feminist who crawled onto an altar during a Catholic service, pretended to abort Jesus, then peed all over the altar. Look, I don’t have any problem recognizing the hypocrisy here in Putin, who jails antiwar critics, but the man is not wrong about Western decadence and arrogance. The corruption of the messenger does not negate the truth of the message. Let me say to you once again that if you travel throughout the democratic countries of Central Europe, you will meet lots of people who used to love America, but who regard us now with wariness and even contempt. Why? Because of what we have come to stand for, and the way we, and our corporations, bully them into accepting wokeness.

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.

One more thing about the West and World War Trans. Take a look at these numbers:

Frank Newport of the Gallup poll analyzed these findings a couple of years ago, and found that the increase in support for polygamy has to do with the representation of polygamists in entertainment media, and a general liberalization of moral beliefs around sex and sexuality. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for gay-rights activists like Andrew Sullivan who are now frustrated and angry that trans activists are trying to erase homosexuality. Once you smash the marriage norm, anything goes. It’s not that same-sex marriage requires affirmation of transgenderism, but that the basis for ruling same-sex marriage as a right — sexual autonomy and individual liberty — naturally leads people to wonder why society should draw the line at transgenderism. Or, for that matter, polygamy. Love is love, right?

This is what people around the world see when they see America, and the West: collapse of fundamental moral standards. They see a male flibbertigibbet masquerading as a woman on Tiktok, invited to the White House to jabber with the semi-senile president, who tells that pseudo-man that no state should have the right to keep children from cross-sex hormones and bodily mutilation for the sake of becoming trans. To my knowledge, there has never been a major civilization in world history that has experimented with rapidly dismantling family and sexual norms as the modern West has. Plus, the United States elites have been engaged for at least a decade in running a social experiment to make all Americans more conscious of racial difference, and in demonizing half the people of the country on the basis of their race. When we have an economic crash, and people are cold and hungry and desperate, I hope somebody asks Joe Biden, Ibram X. Kendi, Dylan Mulvaney, and all the woke militants how they plan to reweave the social fabric that they so gleefully unraveled in the name of progress.

Vladimir Putin is a bad man. But he’s not wrong about the West. Brussels and Washington do not have the best interest of the peoples of Europe and the United States at heart. As European peoples are learning now, and as the American people are going to learn when the diesel runs out.

UPDATE: Take a look at this June 27 white paper from Christopher Mott, in which he explains how the social justice warriors learned to love neocon imperialism. Here are the key findings:

The advocates of American primacy within the United States foreign policy establishment historically rely on prevailing ideological trends of the time to justify interventionism abroad. The new ‘woke’ face of American hegemony and projects of empire is designed to project the U.S. as an international moral police rather than a conventional great power—and the result is neo-imperialism with a moral face.

This is an iterative and systemic process with an internal logic, not one controlled by a global cabal: when the older rationalizations for primacy, hegemony, and interventionism appear antiquated or are no longer persuasive, a new rationale that better reflects the ruling class norms of the era is adopted as a substitute. This is because the new schema is useful for the maintenance of the existing system of power.

The rise of a ‘woke’ activist-driven, social justice-oriented politics—particularly among the members of academia, media, and the professional managerial class—has provided the latest ideological justification for interventionism, and it has become readily adopted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment. These groups now have an even greater level of symbiotic relationship with state actors.

Professional selection and advancement under these conditions require elite signaling of loyalty to ‘progressive’ universalism as the trending state-sanctioned ideology, which further fuels the push towards interventionism. This combination of factors encourages a new institutional and elite consensus around trending shibboleths.

The emerging hegemonic posture and its moral imperialism are at odds with a sober and realistic appraisal of U.S. interests on the world stage, as they create untenable, maximalist, and utopian goals that clash with the concrete realities on which U.S. grand strategy must be based.

The liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash in foreign, especially non-Western, societies that will come to identify the West as a whole with niche, late-modern progressive ideals—thus motivating new forms of anti-Westernism.

UPDATE.2: A reader writes:

Just an observation from an upper Midwest farmer. We are about a month late on harvesting corn and soybeans. 

Soy is usually finished harvested by the first week of October, there are still 100’s of acres locally still unpicked. Corn has not dried down and with the cost of propane, farmers are leaving it in the field to dry down naturally, which is delaying the harvest.

Due to weather conditions in past years, sometimes we have had to pick corn into December. Between the potential diesel shortage and railroad worker strike. We could be looking at a disastrous late fall if we get a heavy weather event that delays our harvest.

This is not to mention that the Mississippi River is currently so low that barges cannot get up the river to move grain effectively.

Our entire food security and ag export market relies on the three R’s: Rail, Road, and River. Currently all three are in the process of being broken down.

Please pray for the farmers.

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