ON THE evening Russia’s throwback Czar, Vladimir Putin, declared war on his Slavic Ukrainian brethren for matters of imperialist conquest, the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden – a familiar face to the Ukrainian hierarchy – took decisive action.
That action, rather than a live address to the nation from the imposing corridors of the White House care home, seemingly amounted to a night’s beauty sleep, until commencing his daily dose of nightmarish oblivion in front of the world’s cameras the following day.
Such a tepid reaction summarised the ‘free world’s’ decades-long decline precisely. This, after all, is no longer a West of Winston Churchill, but a West of Woke. And my, how dangerous that decline has become.
Indeed, as Putin’s heavily-funded and restructured military might (the second largest in the world) finally received their orders to catapult their missiles over Ukraine’s sovereign border, the United Kingdom’s very own ‘Ministry of Defence LGBT+ Network’ Twitter account found the time to post (in a now-deleted tweet) about their #lgbthistorymonth ‘coffee morning’ where much was to be discussed about every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or ‘+’ type book available at all worthy bookstores.
Might I ask the obvious question: How does the Ministry of Defence have time for any of this? Now? On the brink of war? Are there not more pressing priorities?
This is a question relevant, too, for the country’s Secret Intelligence Service, employers of the MI5 and MI6 James Bond types. The previous day, they revealed a new document entitled ‘Mission Critical’, whereby British spies were being asked to consider their ‘white privilege’ and use of ‘pronouns’ in an all-out war (one they appear to be more active in) to improve ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’.
What price might we (not only as national citizens, but citizens in the context of global geopolitics) have to pay as a result of our armed forces, intelligence agencies, or general street policing, all of whom hold the fundamental remit of protecting our national security and preserving our safety, becoming so politically correct that human life is put at risk?
This is no exaggeration. Putin has made his move now because he knows the West is weak, but even more importantly he knows that the only world superpower (and world army) that has any real influence to stop his grand expansionist plans, the US, is the weakest it has ever been, thanks, in part, to the same politically-correct contagion. At the same time President Xi Jinping’s communist China, the planet’s soon-to-be unequalled world superpower, sides with the fellow nuclear-stockpiled rabid Russian bear. The West never looked so small.
America’s perceived weakness will come as no surprise to the millions who live there, whose ‘approval’ of their Commander-in-Chief has steadily declined, alongside his cognitive function, since he took his seat in the Oval Office last year. Contrast that with a recent US poll which found ‘62 per cent’ of Americans agreeing with the idea that a Russian invasion simply would not have taken place under the stewardship of one Donald J. Trump.
Such a weakness has drastic real-world consequences: many innocent lives will now be lost as a direct result of the West’s loss of strength, not just economically, but ideologically.
Putin addressed this exact issue in a speech in October last year:
‘We see with bemusement the paralysis unfolding in countries that have grown accustomed to viewing themselves as the flagships of progress. Of course, it’s none of our business or what is happening, the social and cultural shocks that are happening in some countries in the Western countries, some believe that aggressive blotting out of whole pages of your own history, the affirmative action in the interest of minorities, and the requirement to renounce the traditional interpretation of such basic values as mother, father, family, and the distinction between sexes are a milestone . . . a renewal of society.’
It is certainly true that Russia is no benchmark of ‘progress’, and when one considers the past and present pain and suffering Putin has inflicted upon his own, and other people, it can doubtless be hard for many of us in the West to stomach anything he has to say, let alone when his words can take the form of moral lecture. That doesn’t mean they still can’t ring true.
How can we, as so-called ‘free western democracies’ be the arbiters of ‘progress’ when the playbook for that ‘progress’ in the West is to censor or cancel anyonewho dares say something even remotely ‘offensive’?
We are wasting so much time (when others aren’t) giving oxygen to such abject and superficial nonsense that we have lost sight of our substance: what, and who, really matters, but also who we are and what our values are. So invested are we, and so wrapped up in social media-driven ‘social justice’ hokum as many of our infantile political class are, that we no longer have any standing — or respect — at home or on the world stage.
It’s why, in reaction to Ukraine coming under heavy bombardment from Russian artillery, the only political strategy our western ‘leaders’ ever seem to have is to implement an array of meaningless financial sanctions (despite continuing to pay for barrels of Russian oil), accepting the inevitable thousands of refugees (despite already broken infrastructures), all while simultaneously posting upon their social media accounts that assumes ‘standing in solidarity’ with the current victim, in this case, the heavily bombarded Ukraine.
Ultimately, until the West grows up, finds its backbone, and wakes up to the fact that ‘woke’ is simply a synonym for ‘weak’, I’m afraid war, internationally and domestically, may well become the rocket-laden trajectory for a generation.
As Great Britons, though we might have given up the notion of Empire and needlessly flagellated ourselves countless hours for it, our enemies have not. It’s high time we took such a threat more seriously and relinquished the victim-grift psyche for good. Or God help Western civilisation.
This appeared on The Commoner on February 26, 2022, and is republished by kind permission.
