“But we should also hope, just as fervently, that the next time we get the opportunity, we elect more capable leaders than these weaklings.”
I doubt that will happen because we can’t agree on what we want from a leader. The populations of western countries are utterly divided. In Europe, coalition governments are becoming the norm. Give the Left its due: it has successfully peddled a doctrine that undermines pride and faith in our culture and institutions and left people adrift, not knowing who they are as a nation or where to turn for a way forward.
So now we’re doomed to a series of “compromise” candidates, people whose main qualification is they’re the least offensive among a field of useless and polarizing candidates. But politically these leaders are ineffective.
I started following Unherd in the plague year of 2020 because it was a voice of reason amid the insanity. I hoped to learn how we’d find our way out of the craziness of wokeness and liberal governments becoming illiberal. Unherd, like most of the press, doesn’t even try to offer answers. It’s dedicated solely to cultural history and cataloguing our slow decline (and it does that job very well).
I’m increasingly forced to the conclusion the west is finished. We’re in the beginning of the long and final night. I enjoy Unherd and a few other publications and Youtube channels, such as Triggernometry, that purport to challenge the status quo but they all seem increasingly irrelevant. It’s painfully obvious they avoid the question of how to get out of our current “progressive” mess, how to reinvigorate our culture and self-belief, because they don’t know. Not only don’t they have answers, they seem devoid of ideas.
The best each of us can do is adjust our own affairs to the reality of modern life in a fragmenting West. Meanwhile, Unherd is an amusing place to learn about the sociological significance of the first gay guy in Playboy and other such weighty matters.
While I cannot, in essence, disagree with your dismal appraisal of our leadership both politically and in the media (who have managed to make themselves even less respected, despite the dire state of political competence) I would argue that the solution is for civic society in all its forms to participate more fully and forcefully. This will be mocked, as ever, by the establishment as naïve, or populist, and of course hijacked by the permanently disgruntled (or mad). But participating in civic society in a serious manner has, historically, produced those things we hold dear. It brought about the end to the slave trade, and then slavery, it produced the union movement (once (not now) a great movement which changed the lives of millions of people), the Labour Party (also once a force for good, for a while). But it also encompassed self help societies, which fought for the education of working people, building societies, the women’s institute, charities who founded hospitals and sanatoria, I could go on. These institutions are usually mocked now, but they produced the structures upon which many (now considered state services) where founded, they were ground up, based on dignity and participation. Not the helping hand of the state but the helping hand of your fellow citizens. We have seen the state absorb such movements and many charities corporatise the remainder, sometimes via and for the aims of the political classes. Feeling disgruntled and fuming about it in such forums as this will not change any of that. Following the historical example of doing it ourself might. But probably not, sad to say.
Good for you. Most UnHerd commenters much prefer (I know I do) making chippy points about the other commenters or howling at the woke to actually doing anything. And the ‘doing’ is frequently dismal – I was at a local political party meeting last night and it’s NOT FUN, but organising to get people of sense to stand for election and then persuading others to vote for them is your first responsibility if you don’t like what you see about you. Otherwise you are voting for what you presently have, and should remain politely silent in political discussion.
Very good points Lee. The trouble is that you miss the big, underlying idea behind all the abolitionism, civic works, lower-class education, workers unions etc. which was Christianity, and a specific form of small-p protestantism. The Labour party perhaps being the only exception as I don’t buy the non-conformist roots of the party being very deep as they have been easily cast off under the guise of secularism. The effect of millions of people turning up to listen for an hour and a bit to a unified message is hard to overemphasise. Something that the BBC became a stand in for during the mid-20th century but is untenable now.
As said in the previous post there is no lack of analysis (on this site and others) of what is happening and why but solutions are in short supply. Go to church for a few weeks and if you really can’t bear it then thats fine. At least it will give you a baseline of how you can try to find something better. Getting involved in other areas of civil society can be difficult because so many institutions have been captured already. Shouldn’t stop you trying. If you don’t try then you’ve got no grounds on which to complain.
Good post. Most structures collapse without anything solid at the core given enough time. I returned to ‘Faith’ quite recently. Believing in: ‘The man in the sky wot created everything and loves everybody’ is a strange one. Guess it’s a private, personal thing. Organized religion is another matter. It seems as if we’ve gone from Little House On The Prairie to Blade Runner in the blink of an eye, anyone care to hazard a guess as to what comes next?
There is no need to guess. A study of the Old Testament will provide a sobering answer. Simply put, when God’s chosen people obeyed, they prospered. When they disobeyed, they got sacked by their enemies. Over and over and over again.
Of making many books (opinions) there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, Ecclesiastes 12:12-14 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13
“The effect of millions of people turning up to listen for an hour and a bit to a unified message is hard to overemphasise. “ Try GB News – it’s as close as you’ll get to that on the right of politics these days.
Listen to a message that doesn’t just stroke the ego or go along with what you already believe to be true. The CoE isnt exactly fire and brimstone but even the gentlest vicar has to challenge his flock on occasion. This is where current media is unfailingly au fait. I gave up on watching GB news after they sacked that chap for taking the knee. Similar to LBC sacking Maajid Nawaz who had a very good show on there and had the mildest and most politely put of heterodox opinions and got the axe. Hopefully LBC will see their mistake but i doubt it.
I agree. It is a tonic compared to the rolling news bulletins with their slanted version of reality. I particularly enjoy Mark Steyn who is witty and also unflinching in his assessments. He has a terrific number of really excellent,important guests whose expertise is interesting and impressive.
As I happens I have degrees in theology as well as history, so I am aware of the influence of Christianity on our civilisation. I also understand that others are aware of this too, so I generally refrain from patronising them with the pointless, pedantic or idiotic. I never assume others are stupid, unless, of course, they show themselves to be so…
We may not get any solutions here at Unherd, and I do agree we seem to be witnessing the fall of the West due to leftie/ progressive/ ‘woke’ self-loathing dogma
I personally take some heart from fellow BTL contributors. There’s plenty down here who’s opinion I value more than any journalist or public figure
(I like Ayaan Hirsi Ali a lot, also)
I avoid comments at YouTube and occasionally skim them at the Daily Wire and Bari Weiss’s substack, but I actually look forward to reading comments at Unherd at least as much as reading the original posts.
I come to Unherd for the Trans vs the Feminists war reporting – the coverage at Unherd, although more from the Feminist’s position, is unparalleled. Also strangely enough, is that the Trans/rad-Fems war is more earth shaking than any thing in Ukraine, as the entire West is split to its core by this postmodernist civil war, and may break up and sink from the destruction of its traditional core values and culture – wile Ukraine/Russia is just foreigners fighting and intriguing. amongst themselves.
I wait with bated breath for another ex-Guardian writer to write 40 paragraphs on how precarious her position is because of some thing she once said about changing rooms in the Selfridges Women’s clothing department last year on Twitter…..
I too find this this battle interesting. Only a few years ago, the feminists had the floor to themselves and were nodded along from step to step. Then came the Trans people and suddenly the feminists were boring and passé. The sisters reacted by becoming more and more extreme to try to get the headlines back. To no avail. The Trans people (Transists? Transients?) have won the battle.
Do they have Trans people in Ukraine? The Russians will stop them very quickly. The only thing you can say about the western ‘allies’ is that they talk a good talk and that they have good suits and very white shirts – excluding BJ of course.
The fatal mistake in the feminist argument was to insist that “Gender is a ocial construct”, i.e. there are no innate differences between men and women. Gender was then untethered from biological reality, and this opened the door to the transgenderists.
Problem here is that the gendered constructs of “masculine” and “feminine” dont actually fit the personalities of many many people of both sexes. “Gender” if summarised as personality traits shows two overlapping Bell curves. Most women are shorter than most men, and may well be less good at mathematics and more good at empathy. However, the existence of the overlap has made it really important that female mathematicians ARE encouraged, similarly caring males. Unfortunately, caring work is usually far less well remunerated than traditionally male occupations. Which is why I’m a liberation feminist not an equality feminist. Transideology feeds on the notion that personality traits make you male or female which is total poppycock. Feminine boys, if left alone to go through puberty, often end up gay, and vice versa for lesbians. This is the outrageousness of this pernicious “wrong body” ideology.
i think that same soul counted that she only used the word ” I ” a remarkably restrained 147 times too. Take that critics who say that Guardian writers are self obsessed, narcissists.
Yes, the Trans vs Feminist views aired on Unherd are timely and important. But to say the genital worshipers of the Trans movement are “more earth shaking than any thing in Ukraine” is exactly an indication of the nadir of society that you are so critical of.
“Ukraine/Russia is just foreigners fighting and intriguing amougst themselves.” Huh? This is a murderous thug, destroying a country and its people. I think that killing people is a bit more serious than laughing about the gender junk.
It’s no good blaming our leaders. We elect them. Neither they nor the electorate really believes in democracy or democratic values.
When we elect leaders who really believe in democratic values, then we have a chance of recovering. But that is a sacrifice too big for us at present, it would seem.
you’ve got that completely backwards Billy Bob, If you vote then you can’t really complain about the quality of those that win elections. I prefer to do my pissing from outside the tent pointing in, standing inside the tent spraying piss everywhere well that just sounds like something President Biden would do these days.
We have compulsory voting in Australia – and a very good thing it is. But then we have better voting systems than the U.K. so our parliaments better represent the will of the people. You can vote against the government and have that publicly recorded. If you vote for a smaller, protest party, they will get the money the government gives out to parties depending on the number of votes they get, so you are encouraging alternative viewpoints.
has Chicago been learning from the labour party? who even want the inconvenience of voting when your ballot can be collected by your local religious community leader to make sure your vote is in accord with the Koran
In Canada almost no one in Western Canada voted for Trudeau – yet there he is – twice! Both times there were more votes for the Conservative party – but their vote distribution is less efficient. Getting the vote out doesn’t solve structural problems.
In the US they have the ‘write-in’. You can fill in the name of someone who isn’t standing.
In the UK that’s a spoiled ballot, discarded.
You can’t vote for what’s not there, so it’s likely that I won’t vote at all come the next election.
I, or my Wife, as proxy, have voted in every local and national election since 1964. The last election I was first in the queue at the polling station then deliberately spoiled my ballot paper. The only thing they got from me was a notation that the boxes were empty and that they were then properly sealed.(It’s just a mark against your name on their list) If you find that you cannot think of a “least evil” candidate then please go and say so by spoiling your paper.
It’s worth spoiling your ballot by writing something usful and constructive on it. I was told by a teller that they do read comments and take note of them, although she didn’t know what was done with the comments.. The ballot is not counted, of course.
The papers reported , with photos, on what was written on spoiled ballots in the recent Southend by-election. I was shot down by gleeful (presumably because the comments scrawled on the ballots were anti-Tory or anti-Boris) commentators when I queried it at Times Online. As if it were perfectly normal to show photos of ballot papers in the media.
Given that thousands of workers are temporarily employed to count ballots I’d seriously doubt any notice is taken of comments written on ballots. People who spoil their vote are generally regarded as being eccentric (at best or needing help for their mental health (at worst).
That’s all very well, but what happens when, like here in the UK, you have the two main left & right parties with policies so similar you couldn’t wedge a cigarette paper between them?
I think it is harsh to blame the electorate. A revolution in governance – unheralded – has unfolded in the UK (and all EU states) since the 1990s. The levers of power were transferred from national parliaments to unelected technocratic organisations (NMIs) and a mass of laws which had same effect. We have seen a deliberate diffusion of power from elected MPs to what we call the Blob and also to the judiciary. Voters sense something has gone wrong. But they cannot vote the Blob out. It is the duty of the Executive to push back against that legacy and so make democracy work.
All the current western leaders are way down in popularity, 30-40%. The trouble with democracy is that there are fixed terms. Perhaps we should have elections when popularity falls below 40%.
I alternate between sharing your despair and thinking “it was ever thus.”
I’m sure a comments page such as this, in the 1930’s, could have contained much of the same commentary. Yet when the hour came, so did the men.
There was an article yesterday about Finlandisation, which describes how that country’s establishment was completely taken over by Russian apologists … for a decade.
At the other extreme, McCarthyism ran rampant but then ran out of steam.
Bastions of progressive thought like Denmark have moved significantly right.
If Zemmour does well in France that will shift the dial, even without a win.
Possibly clutching at straws, but the idea we have just lost and can only shrug our shoulders is unattractive.
Part of the problem is the time spent on sites like this. Out in the street common sense people will continue to do common sense things, blissfully unaware of the woke. As various school boards are showing, when they overreach there will be a reaction.
Agreed. It internet boards are to be believed our elected leaders are some kind of evil geniuses herding us all unthinkingly towards some despotic future. Talk to people in the pub and the general consensus is that those same leaders are just a bunch of chancers who make it up as they go along.
I think the second theory is much more accurate personally
Quite simply the media, along with the WOKE liberal elite, should take a good long hard look at themselves and recognise why they have the comfortable standard of living and the ability to say whatever they wish (unlike their targets) that they are afforded. It is of course because of the hard work, determination and self-belief of the people, all of the people, that made this the great country it was and still is in many respects. Otherwise, why would so many millions of “migrants” from across the globe, not forgetting the majority of Russki oligarchs, so desperately want to come and live here? The WOKEists need to stop running the country, and those who are proud to be British, down, like the defeatists they are. And the higher education system should be purged to stop the dissemination of the fruit-loop ideas that so dominate academia and social media. A tiny minority is dominating the discourse; they need to be shut up in every sense.
You are correct to identify the lack of solutions being offered here. I myself have been working on exactly this problem for many years but it is only now that many other people are recognising there even is a problem needing my solution. I would put more details here but I know that that would just result in people jumping to conclusions and wasting several tons of time – this matter needs a small book to explain about adequately. However, if you are someone who wants to join in a very thorough practical project of positivity, to rescue our society, then please contact me for further information in due course. Probably my best email for this is AUTISM [AT] BK[DOT]RU Yes, that’s a Russian email address. No, I am not autistic, but I did write the World Champion theory of autism: for proof see link www pseudoexpertise com/biogr6.pdf (which I will repeat in a reply to myself here.
Yes, they are weaklings. Green, incompetent and often under educated. But the wonder of humanity is that it can learn. I see a sharp learning curve in my crystal ball. I see a rapid maturing. In the Chinese language (or one of them) the word for crisis is also the word for opportunity. Let us embrace an opportunity for the government to grow up and become adults.
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago
Russia, a twice failed empire grasping to regain former glory.
America, a failing empire which doesn’t yet realize the sun has set.
Europe, a want-to-be empire that will never happen.
China, laughing all the way to the bank.
This essay is great. It really should be read by those on the illiberal left who have been driving these nonsensical policies. They need to be made to understand that the quest for transgender toilets, net zero at all costs, and zero covid, are not only senseless and self-defeating, but they are tearing our societies apart.
When they have Russian tanks driving through their streets, you can be sure these people will quickly cease to care about a 2 degree rise in temperatures in 50 years. And if you think I’m fearmongering, just read this morning’s news.
Impending invasion of a sovereign country is” the best thing that’s happened in a very long time”? You appear to have a topsey-turvey idea of what is good.
No, it’s a wake-up call for a West which has been heavily drugged by QE and ever-rising asset prices, and which (through ignorance) has no desire to try and comprehend other civilisations or ways of thinking which are much older, and in some ways more valid, than their own.
Graham, what you get wrong is that the bad side effects of nonsensical polices are some kind of accident. Not at all. The effort to turn Western society into an absurd pantomime is both diabolical and deliberate. The emergence of weakling leaders (Biden is just the latest) is a conspiracy of powerful one-world utopians to undermine America, the UK, Canada and every strong Judeo-Christian nation so that out of the chaos a new world order can arise.
The plan is no secret, written in black and whilte by the World Economic Forum – “The Great Reset” . The control exerted by Big Tech, BIg Pharma, the Scientific Climate change establishment, Bill Gates, George Soros and of course Klaus Schwab is overwhelming. They are writing Biden’s teleprompter script.
Trump was the antidote. Notice that he had to be impeached – not just voted down. Trump reversed the narrative for a while. So he had to go.
So where to begin? Here’s where: DISSENT. Speaking up loudly and clearly against every error of policy in every forum imaginable. IF the voting system works,and IF enough people can vote for rational policies which build society and don’t tear it down, then this can be turned around. But it begins with exposing lies made in the name of science, starting with COVID vaccine mandates, climate change and gender fluidity.
You know, this is an ongoing debate: to what extent is the current nonsense a carefully plotted conspiracy, and to what extent is it an organically arising effect of late-stage post-modernism?
I refer to you Eugyppius’ most excellent substack, wherein he thoughtfully goes over these arguments. I’m not saying your wrong, but please do have a read of his thoughts on this: Why People Believe Wrong Things (eugyppius.com)
James Joyce
2 years ago
There is no doubt that the West, America in particular, has declined since a decade or so after WW II. Although some of this has to do with the ebb and flows of empires, the industriousness or lack thereof of a particular people (Germany, Japan), much of these wounds are self-harm. In the US, we have had incredibly bad leadership in an almost unbroken streak for the last 60 or so years, and the US is currently run by a bunch of VERY old men and women who have been in Washington so long that they will only be carried out in a box. I spent about 15 minutes in politics. It was a rare combination of circumstances, a resignation (the only really reliable way to get the pols out, though he assumed a higher office) that led to my putting forth a candidate who had a real shot to get elected. Being the only real election nationwide at that time, so it served as a proxy for George Bush’s presidency after his disastrous wars of choice.
As a complete outsider, the process provided huge insight but also sickened me. I was never much interested in how the sausage was made, so to speak, but even my 15 minutes (figuratively) took me into the bowels of the slaughterhouse and I still have PTSD from it. It has caused me to hate, truly hate, the political process in the US.
The thing I came away with most was how mediocre or worse the people were. My guy was not involved in politics, and truly had the best motives for running. But the process is so complex that once he gained some steam, he had to surround himself with the, often very young (twenty somethings–by 25, one would be a seasoned veteran if not an Eminence Griese). I never really knew what a “political operative” was; now I do.
The main goal of a candidate is to fund raise–“dialing for dollars.” Many potential Big Donors and ALL then-current politicians essentially said–go raise $500K and then I might take you seriously. So step 1 means that you are already deeply in the system. This process is beyond disgusting, and sort of a huge grift, but that’s how the process works; no hope for real change. $$$$ buys access, buys laws, buys favors.
Finally, although VP Kamala Harris is not even mentioned, let me take a swipe at this vile, incompetent, disgusting piece of rubbish: her performance in Germany, including the comment that Europe has had uninterrupted peace for 70 years, is so completely moronic that it seems that the US gets what it deserves. This is leadership? 41% approve of Biden? How is that possible?
As a Brit I haven’t had much exposure to Harris. The recent coverage of her speeches at the Munich conference has been frightening. A competent HR director of a mid size company, maybe, but VP of the US, dear god!
Her lack of gravitas, fumbling of questions, spouting of obvious nonsense (the west is fully aligned) has been depressing to watch.
I’ve just finished watching the Ozark series. From what you say, that depiction of US politics isn’t too far of the truth.
With respect, how could you omit her signature “cackle?” Biden appears to often act inappropriately because of senility; with Harris, the disconnect is somewhat different, where one laughs inappropriately at serious things:
Q. What do you think of the massive convoys invading America from the South?
KH: Cackle, cackle, cackle…..
Something is seriously wrong with that disgusting piece of rubbish.
Re OZARK, I have not seen it and was about to thank you for the recommendation, but upon reflection, I think it was deeply insensitive to mention it at all, let alone not include a trigger warning, given my acknowledged history of PTSD with politics….
Unfortunately, describing people as ‘a disgusting piece of rubbish’, which you’ve now said twice, completely detracts from any substantive point you want to make. So this is how we explain the world, do we, by invoking ‘goodies and baddies’? A point enthusiastly in accord with those of the ‘woke’ activists. Just leave out the personal abuse.
Sadly the shoe does fit. You have to wonder what kind of political process elevated a creature like this to 1 heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world. I muse in the same vein about the obnoxious Trudeau in the context of Canada.
If you’re replying to me, directly or indirectly, I, and perhaps “we,” don’t act like “them.”
But since “they” call “us” names, racist, white supremacist, homophobe, transphobic–and endless list–“we” must call them out EVERY time, and admit nothing. It is fair play to call them out in words that are clear and easily understandable. Concede nothing.
I was called out here–repeatedly–for sometimes signing off “Lock and load,” and some suggested I try “Talk and listen.”
With respect, one can’t “talk and listen” to what are essentially religious fanatics, people who cannot be persuaded by reason.
I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it.
In respect of my abject failure to acknowledge your PTSD and, indeed, the dreadful lived experiences that must have contributed, please accept, from the depths of my soul, my most humble apologies.
I’m not on Tw atter but will join immediately, confess of my sins, and willingly undergo the scourging of the t w a ts in the hope of some forgiveness.
Oops, sorry, I believe you’re white cis male hetero- you deserve all you get, meh.
I’v enjoyed Ozark, but the writers should have educated themselves a bit more about money laundering before writing a five-season series about it. The bit where they showed banknotes being put into a tumble dryer to make them look old, which is part of money laundering apparently…sheesh.
The term that describes our American leaders most precisely is narcissism. We constantly twist facts, reorder data, morph our own bodies, feign our emotions to take advantage and capitalize on any given situation. Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay ,On Bullshit, which elaborates on just one of the byproducts, of living in a world dominated by these cretins. This behavior has pushed the world to a dangerous place which revalues the “good” for only its profit. On the most, people here are stupid, they can’t think. can’t read and are either too obsessed with looking in the mirror, or sadly too depressed by the same act. It’s high time we start getting called out on our follies, ultimately it is what the good people of this nation need—a wakeup call
Think I’ve heard of him. Liked his policies. Is it logical to give an automatic “approve” to anyone not Trump? Even if the recipient of the approval is a demented, doddering dotard? Who is really in charge? Hint: it’s not Biden…..
Please explain.
Some very good points completely ruined by the absurd phrase “climate change is real and a pressing problem”. All you needed to add was “and rain is wet and getting wetter.” It’s statements like this that make us look weak and ridiculous – particularly ironic when your article is about how weak and ridiculous we look to Russia and China.
If you take that literally, what does it even mean? Are you suggesting the climate was some strict ‘mono-temperature’ before us evil humans came along and had the outrageous desire to improve our standard of living and double our life expectancy by burning fossil fuels? Putin and Xi must be almost hospitalised laughing at our deranged obsession over how much trace gas plant food we put into the atmosphere and our relentlessly performative guilt over our ever improving way of life.
Meanwhile the Russians, the Indians and the Chinese merrily get on with building more coal fired power stations per year than we have in the last 70, while we close ours down and stuff our money into the pockets of billionaire grifters and politicians who promise us a ‘green energy’ future but whose theatrical schemes still only produce 3% of the world’s energy supply.
We live in one of the lowest periods of CO2 in the Earth’s history. The world has warmed barely 1 degree over the past 120 years – the difference between the upstairs and downstairs of your house. The UK puts out 1% of all global emissions (0.00001%) of a trace gas plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive, but is now framed as our greatest threat by architects of the biggest pyramid scheme in human history.
As high priests of the pyramid scheme Al Gore, Di’Caprio, Prince Harry and Obama party in their giant beach front mansions and travel by private jet to polo matches and exclusive islands in the Maldives (who by the way are currently building 15 brand new underwater airports across their string of underwater islands), us serfs are on the hook for £3 trillion to apparently reduce our emissions of plant food to ‘net zero’. Forced from now on to incorporate into our lives 15 degree homes, Islamabad style electricity supplies, limited transport, hyperinflation, bankruptcy and a shattered economy while our Feudalist overlords who offered us the ‘solutions to climate change’ (whatever that means) ride off into the sunset in re-purposed UN aid trucks full of our money – all cheered on enthusiastically by a fully bought and reprogrammed main stream press.
As I said, Putin and Xi must actually need wheelchairs they’re laughing so much.
So apart from turning us back into 17th century commoners and prostrating ourselves at the feet of our enemies, here’s what else Boris Johnson’s £3 trillion net zero plan could buy in actual stuff:
-636 missions to Mars.
-The cost of an Uber journey across our entire solar system and back.
-3 million KLFs with 3 million furnaces.
-6000 brand new hospitals with free parking.
-16 million fully trained NHS nurses for ten years.
– 6 million fully trained police officers for ten years.
-12 million ambulances.
-750 million ICU ventilators.
-24.8 million affordable homes or social housing.
-Free university education for 60 million students.
-A cheap briefcase containing £100,000 cash for every household in the UK.
-200 billion clean water tanks in Sudan.
-500 billion plastic taps in Sierra Leone.
-60 billion hand washing stations in Mozambique.
-3 trillion pounds towards cyber and physical defence against attacks by our enemies.
-3 trillion pounds towards recycling and cleaning our oceans of plastic waste.
-3 trillion pounds towards protecting elephants, tigers, rhinos, whales and many other rare and endangered species across the world.
-3 trillion pounds towards finding a cure for Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Altzheimers, AIDS, Malaria or any other devastating disease you can think of.
Sorry, but climate change is real. I find it hard to line up with the anti-mandate lot (who I utterly support) when they throw in the climate b******s. Ive been following the biology since the 60s and it is patently obvious bad things are happening. It’s possible that our current answers for dealing with it are wrong (im in favour of reducing energy use and nuclear) but it is definitely happening and is seriously affecting both humans AND the rest of the natural world. Which is why I find the Green Party (UK) stance on transgenderism UTTERLY baffling!! Biology is real and important and we are in a web of life with all other living things, destroying it at our peril.
You deserve at least a trillion up ticks for that! An absolutely brilliant, amusing and erudite appreciation of the greatest scam in history, even exceeding the recent Great Covid-19 Con. Bravo indeed!
Frankly the West has now become such a bunch of moronic bed –wetters that it is enough to make one misanthropic at the very least.
Last edited 2 years ago by SULPICIA LEPIDINA
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago
“In the record of our civilisation, the Roman achievement in the realm of grand strategy remains entirely unsurpassed, and even two millennia of technological change have not invalidated its lessons”.*
One of those those lessons was that it was obligatory to do some form of military service before you achieved high public office. That lesson is all too sadly missing these days, although there are one or two notable exceptions.
By the time a man like Pontius Pilate became Prefect (Governor) of Judea, he would have served for about ten years in local government (as we would call it) a further ten years as a military commander in three different ranks, another five to ten years as a Procurator ( a financial/tax official) before finally taking command of a Province, with full Capital powers.
That he could command military units without what we would call ‘training’ eg West Point, Sandhurst, Staff College etc, was irrelevant.
All that mattered was did he speak with the voice of authority, in other words did he give orders that were obeyed.
Give the present state of politics in the West it is very unlikely that we will ever be able to emulate the Roman achievement, and thus must prepare for the worse. In fact it is now a case of “Look on my works ye mighty and despair”.**
(* Edward Luttwak: The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: 1976.)
It also time anyone in Britain aspiring to become a politician in Westminster should have to have worked in a real job for some years first! We might get a better standard and more intelligent policies and respect for their effect on us,the taxpayers who supposedly are their employers!
Yes a good idea and probably not impossible to implement.
The Romans also imposed an age limit of 24 before one could enter the Senate, and start to climb the ‘greasy pole’.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is always exposing the inadequacies of Western leaders but from a place of genuine concern for democracy and liberalism. She is one of my favourite writers on UnHerd!
This is a great essay by Ms. Ali, but as always it missed the inherent biases that are fundamental to the relationship with the Eastern Europe. Let it be clear that I am not defending Putin, but I am also not sure what moral high ground does the West have in Ukraine after hundreds of years of doodling with other people’s borders. Also why does Putin get labeled as “kid” when he appears to be even tempered, “irrational” when he is clearly calculating, and a “killer” when he hasn’t >>yet!<< done what Xi has. In other words I am wondering if Putin was Muslim, Chinese or Black, would the same vocabulary be used. After all Farage can say whatever he wants about the Eastern Europeans, but as soon as he mentions BLM he gets fired. And ever since 16th century there has always existed some kind of version of Farage.
In practical terms, this entire escalation has been started by EU/American backed elections, and since dominated by the voices of the likes of BJ, Uncle Joe or EU-whatevers. Only voices that are lacking are the ones of Ukrainians, those that will be stuck with the bill and a death-toll. In my former country we have a saying “nobody gives a sh** about 20 million Slavs”, referring to civilians that lost lives at the hands of Nazis, as I am positive nobody in the West gives a sh** about Ukrainians or Russians or Ukrainian-Russian (or as you call them the “rebels). So let’s not pretend this is some kind of new operation “Ukraine Freedom”… or maybe we should, because it smells more and more like “Operation Iraqi Freedom”
Last edited 2 years ago by B Nikolic
Max Price
2 years ago
I’ve still got my money on the West in the medium term.
The continental USA has vast: Intellectual resources, as well as vast – Industrial (it really does), labour, agricultural, mineral, natural, water, sea ports, rail roads, oil, coal, gas, military, wealth – resources, Infrastructure, Plus a great constitution. It has no land bridge to any hostile.
USA has it all, and although is doing a very bad job now, it will always be strong.
Think of a 4 leg table as an analogy. the legs, Industrial capacity, Natural Resources, Intellectual Resources, and skilled labour resources. No other land has all four like USA – and so USA will always be able to stand strong and stable- and by standing will keep the West viable.
Never count USA out – it always will be a Super Power – it has it all.
Political divisions will have turned the U.S into a second rate power within twenty years. It will be talked of fondly in the same tone we use for the Ottoman Empire or Achaemenid Persia
I think the pace of American decline is likely to be akin to that of the Ottoman empire, but decline it will, and it has already started. We are already over 30 years in, I would say.
The Ottoman Empire started its inexorably decline when it failed to take Vienna in 1683.
However it staggered on until 1918, so there is ‘no need to panic’ as far as the USA is concerned.
The US Empire is in fact the continuation of the British Empire under another name. Very similar legal and commercial systems, much shared culture and obviously the same language.
As you say “never count the USA out. If the Chinese really thinks it’s their turn, they are deluding themselves.
The Pax Americana has plenty of life yet. Thank God.
I agree with you, there is plenty of life left in the, “Good ole US of A”.
I live in the UK. I have been lucky enough to spent time in 19 of the states in the US. The US has so many advantages and strengths, whatever way you cut the cake it rises high over its rivals worldwide. If you believed the MSM it seems like the United States going down the drain faster than a Greta Thunberg ice-cream melts in the sun!
Cut away the pro-China froth and the U.S. is still really the only true superpower, and the country’s domination of the world order should continue for a few more decades………at least.
It is still a simple fact that the US,as you correctly point out, has a mass of strengths while, comparatively, its enemies/rivals have many weaknesses. That may change, especially if the Washington swamp remains undrained. But, equally the chances are, perhaps higher, that the US might continue to reign supreme.But I have a gut feeling that things probably won’t go as badly for the United States as many western "experts" predict ( I sometimes think that they pray for and wish for!). Even its geographical position is miles superior to Chinas, it is a natural fortress ( although I admit cyber attacks change that a bit). The US is bordered by just two countries and they are pretty tame, the US has great communications , road networks, air networks and more waterways and ports than probably the rest of the world rolled up together. China on the other hand is surrounded a dozen suspicious neighbours.
The US has a very big lead by the most vital measures of national power. Yes China comes closest, but the US still has perhaps x4 China’s wealth and x4 times its military capabilities? Such gaps would several decades to close even if things go downhill for the US
So, its a fair bet that things probably wont go as badly for the United States as so many seem to conclude, because whatever is said, it has to be recognised, that it has the best long-term growth prospects among the major powers, because the United States simply has all the “necessities” in spades.
It is also worthwhile recalling that, although an imperfect calculation, it took the Roman Empire 300 years to totally bite the dust…
I hope you are right Galeti. But don’t overdo your faith in the long term. Remember that in the long term we are all dead. And what with Putin today, possibly Trump again in a few years, and huge nuclear arsenals around the world it might be the short term.
If the USA and the UK copied where needed the Applied Science /Engineering training of Switzerland and the Maths/Pure Science Training of SE Asia with a welfare system of Switzerland, we would solve most of our problems. Have a highly technically and scientifically skilled workforce with a welfare system which helps the needy but does not support the feckless in their lifestyle.
Michael K
2 years ago
Joe Biden, 41%; Justin Trudeau, 40%; Scott Morrison, 39%; Jacinda Ardern, 35%; Boris Johnson, 25%.
Those numbers alone should prove how deeply we are submerged in cow dung.
Last edited 2 years ago by Michael K
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
“Covid-19. No Western Democracy has managed to minimize excess mortality without significant restrictions on individual liberty.”
Reminds me of the old first year Philosophy logic fallacy:
1) ‘No Western Democracy has ever’….. (minimized excess mortality)
2) ‘We are no Western Democracy’, (but Western Republics), therefore….
(Florida, Sweden, South Dakota minimized deaths as well as any lockdown Westerners – without significant restrictions on liberty)
But I am here to argue about excess deaths meaning what they are taken to mean by the agenda, and the Writer, as this is mere conjecture and correlation. VAERS shows a million adverse reactions to The Vax, and many say that is 5 to 50 times under reported. People like McCullough and Malone and Kory and Matheson infer (sometimes say even) that a great many of these excess deaths may be vaccine induced deaths – as a vast number of them seem to happen within a relatively short time after taking the vaccine. There is talk of the care homes frail people dieing off after vaccination faster than from the virus…. But then people will say anything. and to see some of it, search on ‘VAERS adverse reaction to covid vaccine’ – and be amazed at what pops up….
Every day another tale of how the vax has hot done anything useful at all – wile the ‘Response’ has caused untold death and destruction and economic and education and business and social – disaster…
yesterday I posted the below link to McCullough ‘Drop all Mandates Immediately’ from the Australian Woman on youtube and several people posted right back that it had disappeared in those minutes… Now days you have to go to ‘Rumble’ to avoid the insane censoring of Youtube.
Just responding to the article saying reducing excess mortality was helped by reducing liberty – it was not. Search Rumble for Dr Malone – he is really great….
Leto McAllister
2 years ago
For a forum of self-identifying intellectuals, who think for themselevs, this a rather weak piece, which follows every trope of the Western narrative on Russia of the last mmm…. 8-10 years. 1) Russian=Putin. 2) Putin = evil. 3) Russia is as evil as West is good. 4) What evil? Homophobia, obvsly! 5) West is a bit weak, otherwise should have long gone full steam “reaching the Final Solution for the Russian Question”.
Exactly Leto. There are many comments on here over the past few weeks lauding that bullying weasel fascist Putin as some ‘man on a horse’ strong man figure that the West should emulate in some way. Disgusting frankly. 80 of the passengers blown to pieces by a Russian BUK missile system were children for God’s sake.
About as many as the number that are murdered every year in certain neighborhoods in Chicago. And certainly not even close to 1% of the number of aborted children over the last 20+ years.
The self loathing about the West on here from ‘the right’ is as bad as that from the wokeist left. Last time I checked, a Western opposition leader hasn’t actually been poisoned and then sent to a hell hole in Siberia.
Gayle Rosenthal
2 years ago
Government coercion and compelled speech have become acceptable tools in the protection of the general welfare. This standard has replaced liberty as default status. Toleration has become promotion. Safety guarantees are the order of the day. From my vantage point, I would tell the boosting and reboosting public to wear hazmat suits if they want guarantees. I’ve had the 2- jab Pfizer and I don’t want any more jabs. I’m tired of masks, and I don’t want transgendered kindergarten teachers in my grandchild’s school where they will serve up the propaganda. No thank you.
David Bullard
2 years ago
That King Lear quote was so apposite. Mr Putin probably can’t believe his good luck. But with COVID vaccine tyranny rampant in much of Europe (and Canada, Australia and NZ) one almost believes that many so called democratically elected European leaders can’t wait for the Russian tanks to roll in. Interesting times…..
Alongside ‘so-called democratically elected European leaders’ waiting for the Russian tanks to roll in’, there are plenty of ordinary citizens who used to think Western values were superior to autocratic regimes and dictatorships. These Western values were underpinned by ‘inalienable rights’ under various constitutions/UN and European charters etc.
Many people now see that these ‘inalienable rights’ aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. The response of Western governments to Covid has effectively thrashed the very concept of inalienable rights – and liberal democracy along with them.
What exactly is worth fighting for post Covid?
Everything to prevent China from rising any further.
China represent a greater menace than Adolph or the Soviet Union ever did. Time to act whilst ‘we’ still have the advantage don’t you think?
Giles Chance
2 years ago
We are seeing a shift to the right everywhere (France, UK, USA) and we will soon get leaders of the same flavour. Who’s to say that is a bad development? Can’t be much worse than the corrupt, useless bunch we have now (Boris, Biden, Macron etc.).
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago
In the case of the US, Joe Biden was installed in office with the aid of the deep state and its allies in the Democrat Party, the elite legacy media, Silicon Valley, the globalist companies that dance to China’s hornpipe (including the NBA and Nike), Hollywood which craves access to that vast audience of moviegoers and now tailors its product accordingly, the Marxist-inclined academy that washes the brains of children in higher education and is busily dumbing down standards in STEM in the interests of equity, the woke young people who infest the HR departments of spineless corporations that want no trouble from the snowflakes, the racialist demogogues, the twitter mobs needing only the slightest excuse to destroy lives and careers to flaunt their virtue, the climate hysterics, and so on. It’s surprising the other half of the country has any power whatever. Trump is a good example of what happens when it tries to gain a meaningful share. His candidacy and his presidency were sabotaged by the deep state and then a man with brain rot was allowed to take over for manipulation purposes.
Fintan Power
2 years ago
Putin has been running rings around NATO, the EU and the USA. And he will continue to do so until someone stands up to him and says “enough”.
You don’t surely mean this? The problem is not saying “enough” as that’s happened plenty. The problem is that Putin will only listen to real physical weapons, the kind employed by the military, and I do not believe the West will ever use them against him, so he has virtual impunity.
He’s a good poker player, and has made all his calculations. He’s going to win.
Rod McLaughlin
2 years ago
There was always a neocon streak to AHA’s arguments, but here, it’s clear. Maybe it’s something to do with being an employee of war criminal Condoleeza Rice, who justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the preposterous claim that it might be able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Penny Mcwilliams
2 years ago
While this was an interesting commentary on The Way We Live Now, it was a bit short on solutions. We can all whinge and whine, but working out what to do its more difficult. What would she like Western leaders to do? Roll the tanks? Launch the Minutemen ?
N T
2 years ago
The demise of NATO is probably coming, and the US turning isolationist would be coming if China would just let it. Ultimately, until the EU faces a real security crisis, which this is not, it won’t stand up for itself and decide to get involved. Self-interest will make deconstruction slowly take hold, and we’ll be back to European history repeating itself.
Again.
Insufficiently Sensitive
2 years ago
‘Elect more capable people than these weaklings’.
Huzzah AYAAN HIRSI ALI!
And let them not be ‘capable’ along the lines of Fascists-nouveau like Justinian Trudeau.
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
It may be that the Russians are big into family values and see the West as going firmly to the dogs. With the family in their mind as the basic unit of society, the Russians may be led to believe that should Ukraine buddy up with the West, the West’s diluted or immoral values will end up suffusing through Russia. The Russians may drive like crazy, immorally, on their roads, but to them it’s wide open spaces their land, just as the God-fearing, even churchgoing pioneers raced off on horseback, at some risk, everywhere in the American West during the Wild West days. The Wild West, eh? The ramshackle and violent behaviour on city streets day in and day out of young, trendily-dressed and well-fed Americans in 2020, up in arms over a multitude of grievances, that was also quickly mimicked in Western Europe, must have been a daily diet of sourness that all good Russians shook their heads at on their evening news channels. Confirmation indeed of the dissolute West. The EU’s castigation of naughty Poland and Hungary must not have gone unnoticed by all good Russians either.
I suppose the Russians see no-one of stature leading the West. Someone whom the Kremlin could respect and who could pressure it to stand down its armies. A leader who conveys morals and strength and has a good sense of humour. The sort of westerner the Russians could have faith in. The Russians see no-one like that in the West today, and so they then find themselves resigned to a family life in Russia. And so they are inclined to support the status quo in Russia. They always have family, at least. Just a wild guess. Just a fanciful guess on my part.
Cristina Bodor
2 years ago
We all long for “ more capable leaders”. Where would they get their education from? What is the pertinence of political career in today’s society?
I’d say its more an issue of one’s character over one’s education.
Dermot O'Sullivan
2 years ago
Insight from the other side by Navalny. Translation by Google Translate.
Yesterday I looked at the “security council meeting”, this is a gathering of seniles and thieves (it seems that our FBK did investigations into the corruption of each of them), and I thought about the same gathering of nomenclature seniles from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, who are about the same, on their own whim , imagining themselves as geopoliticians at the “grand chessboard”, decided to send Soviet troops into Afghanistan.
The result was hundreds of thousands of victims, injuries to entire nations, the consequences of which neither we nor Afghanistan can overcome, and the emergence of one of the key reasons for the collapse of the USSR.
Those morons from the Politburo covered themselves with a two-faced ideology. These Putin seniles do not even have an ideology – only a constant and undisguised lie. They don’t even bother to make their casus belli have the slightest credibility.
Both of them need one thing: diverting the attention of the people of Russia from real problems – the development of the economy, rising prices, reigning lawlessness – and switching it to the format of “imperial hysteria.”
Have you watched the news of federal channels for a long time? I only watch them and I assure you, there is NO news about Russia AT ALL. Literally. From the first to the latest news: Ukraine – USA – Europe.
There is no longer enough naked propaganda for seniles and thieves. They want blood. I would like to move tank figures on the map of hostilities.
And now – the head of the Politburo of the XXI century makes a truly insane speech. The most accurate metaphor about it was given, of course, by Twitter: “Well, purely my grandfather got drunk at a family holiday and gets everyone with his story about how world politics actually works.”
It would be funny if the drunken grandfather was not a man of 69 who holds power in a country with nuclear weapons.
Replace “Ukraine” in his speech with “Kazakhstan”, “Belarus”, “Baltic countries”, “Azerbaijan”, “Uzbekistan” and so on, even including “Finland”. And think about where the geopolitical thought of the senile grandfather will carry on. All this ended very badly for everyone in 1979. And now it ends badly. Afghanistan was destroyed, but the USSR also received a mortal wound.
Through Putin’s fault, hundreds, and in the future, tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russian citizens may die now. Yes, he will not allow Ukraine to develop, he will drag it into the swamp, but Russia will pay the same price.
We have everything for powerful development in the 21st century – from oil to educated citizens – but we will lose money again, squander the historical chance for a normal rich life for the sake of war, dirt, lies and a palace with golden eagles in Gelendzhik.
Putin and his senile thieves from the Security Council and United Russia are the enemies of Russia and its main threat, not Ukraine and not the West. Putin kills and wants to kill more. The Kremlin is making you poorer, not Washington. It is not in London that economic policy is being conducted in such a way that a pensioner’s “borscht set” has doubled in price, but in Moscow.
To fight for Russia, to save it, is to fight for the removal of Putin and his kleptocrats from power. But now it also means the banal “fight for peace”.
Why should we be interested in the opinion of a Farage-like Russian character, whose competence as president material can be only compared to that of Zelensky, who, before he became a president was a comedian, who once played a comedian who became a president.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
Britain’s problem is that the lower middle classes were bred and designed by Victorian newly industrialised society, to be clerks and functionaries a la Mr. Pooter, and manifestly not to lead, manage or organise anything, let alone run most of the country.
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
You’ve heard of mission creep? This pot pourri of huge generalisations stirred in a pot has crept too far. They’re illiberally weak? Hmm. That plus an inferred supine admiration for the weaselly Putin and the thuggish Xi ( strong men? Really?) doesn’t look good. I guess she won’t be risking ending up in a burnt out APC herself. Of course.
Last edited 2 years ago by Terence Fitch
Charles Hedges
2 years ago
A people get the rulers they deserve. The Archbishop of York said ” The desire to be spoon fed, to have our problems solved by others, to be given short snappy answers has sunk deep into our culture”. All we need is a spiritual Renaissance which enables us to pursue excellence, no matter the pain, the sacrifices, the hardships and obstacles which have to be overcome combined with a sense of fair play and sportsmanship.
Produce a nation of craftsmen, technicians, farmers, sailors, doctors of medicine and engineers who box, play rugby and cricket and one has group, who can build and maintain a civilisation. These three sports create an unusual but important balance of toughness and fair play.
The RIEC, HMS Conway, East India and HMS Worcester /Thames Nautical Training College plus others produced tough technically skilled leaders. Royal Indian Engineering College – Wikipedia East India Company College – Wikipedia Thames Nautical Training College – Wikipedia
I suggest the main problem is the massive decline in the proportion tough technically skilled leaders and the massive increase in effete ineffectual affluent types within the middle and upper classes.
I suggest the recreation of schools producing leaders with the same toughness and technical skill as above would help reduce the problem.
Carmel Shortall
2 years ago
Their most recent approval numbers are remarkable — not least because the hapless Joe Biden comes top: Joe Biden, 41%; Justin Trudeau, 40%; Scott Morrison, 39%; Jacinda Ardern, 35%; Boris Johnson, 25%.
Aren’t they all (apart from Boris maybe) minions of Klaus Schwab’s WEF?
János Klein
2 years ago
We only get what we deserve, it seems.
God knows – we’re only gossiping, discussing or whistling in the dark, but He’s not listening.
Join and enjoy the discussion. Vanity of vanities..
“But we should also hope, just as fervently, that the next time we get the opportunity, we elect more capable leaders than these weaklings.”
I doubt that will happen because we can’t agree on what we want from a leader. The populations of western countries are utterly divided. In Europe, coalition governments are becoming the norm. Give the Left its due: it has successfully peddled a doctrine that undermines pride and faith in our culture and institutions and left people adrift, not knowing who they are as a nation or where to turn for a way forward.
So now we’re doomed to a series of “compromise” candidates, people whose main qualification is they’re the least offensive among a field of useless and polarizing candidates. But politically these leaders are ineffective.
I started following Unherd in the plague year of 2020 because it was a voice of reason amid the insanity. I hoped to learn how we’d find our way out of the craziness of wokeness and liberal governments becoming illiberal. Unherd, like most of the press, doesn’t even try to offer answers. It’s dedicated solely to cultural history and cataloguing our slow decline (and it does that job very well).
I’m increasingly forced to the conclusion the west is finished. We’re in the beginning of the long and final night. I enjoy Unherd and a few other publications and Youtube channels, such as Triggernometry, that purport to challenge the status quo but they all seem increasingly irrelevant. It’s painfully obvious they avoid the question of how to get out of our current “progressive” mess, how to reinvigorate our culture and self-belief, because they don’t know. Not only don’t they have answers, they seem devoid of ideas.
The best each of us can do is adjust our own affairs to the reality of modern life in a fragmenting West. Meanwhile, Unherd is an amusing place to learn about the sociological significance of the first gay guy in Playboy and other such weighty matters.
While I cannot, in essence, disagree with your dismal appraisal of our leadership both politically and in the media (who have managed to make themselves even less respected, despite the dire state of political competence) I would argue that the solution is for civic society in all its forms to participate more fully and forcefully. This will be mocked, as ever, by the establishment as naïve, or populist, and of course hijacked by the permanently disgruntled (or mad). But participating in civic society in a serious manner has, historically, produced those things we hold dear. It brought about the end to the slave trade, and then slavery, it produced the union movement (once (not now) a great movement which changed the lives of millions of people), the Labour Party (also once a force for good, for a while). But it also encompassed self help societies, which fought for the education of working people, building societies, the women’s institute, charities who founded hospitals and sanatoria, I could go on. These institutions are usually mocked now, but they produced the structures upon which many (now considered state services) where founded, they were ground up, based on dignity and participation. Not the helping hand of the state but the helping hand of your fellow citizens. We have seen the state absorb such movements and many charities corporatise the remainder, sometimes via and for the aims of the political classes. Feeling disgruntled and fuming about it in such forums as this will not change any of that. Following the historical example of doing it ourself might. But probably not, sad to say.
Good for you. Most UnHerd commenters much prefer (I know I do) making chippy points about the other commenters or howling at the woke to actually doing anything. And the ‘doing’ is frequently dismal – I was at a local political party meeting last night and it’s NOT FUN, but organising to get people of sense to stand for election and then persuading others to vote for them is your first responsibility if you don’t like what you see about you. Otherwise you are voting for what you presently have, and should remain politely silent in political discussion.
Very good points Lee. The trouble is that you miss the big, underlying idea behind all the abolitionism, civic works, lower-class education, workers unions etc. which was Christianity, and a specific form of small-p protestantism. The Labour party perhaps being the only exception as I don’t buy the non-conformist roots of the party being very deep as they have been easily cast off under the guise of secularism. The effect of millions of people turning up to listen for an hour and a bit to a unified message is hard to overemphasise. Something that the BBC became a stand in for during the mid-20th century but is untenable now.
As said in the previous post there is no lack of analysis (on this site and others) of what is happening and why but solutions are in short supply. Go to church for a few weeks and if you really can’t bear it then thats fine. At least it will give you a baseline of how you can try to find something better. Getting involved in other areas of civil society can be difficult because so many institutions have been captured already. Shouldn’t stop you trying. If you don’t try then you’ve got no grounds on which to complain.
Good post. Most structures collapse without anything solid at the core given enough time. I returned to ‘Faith’ quite recently. Believing in: ‘The man in the sky wot created everything and loves everybody’ is a strange one. Guess it’s a private, personal thing. Organized religion is another matter. It seems as if we’ve gone from Little House On The Prairie to Blade Runner in the blink of an eye, anyone care to hazard a guess as to what comes next?
There is no need to guess. A study of the Old Testament will provide a sobering answer. Simply put, when God’s chosen people obeyed, they prospered. When they disobeyed, they got sacked by their enemies. Over and over and over again.
Thankyou.
Of making many books (opinions) there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
Ecclesiastes 12:12-14
for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Romans 10:13
Just like that! – as Tommy Cooper used to say.
You might enjoy the analysis by Carl Trueman in, ‘The Rise and Triumph of the Self.’
“The effect of millions of people turning up to listen for an hour and a bit to a unified message is hard to overemphasise. “
Try GB News – it’s as close as you’ll get to that on the right of politics these days.
Listen to a message that doesn’t just stroke the ego or go along with what you already believe to be true. The CoE isnt exactly fire and brimstone but even the gentlest vicar has to challenge his flock on occasion. This is where current media is unfailingly au fait. I gave up on watching GB news after they sacked that chap for taking the knee. Similar to LBC sacking Maajid Nawaz who had a very good show on there and had the mildest and most politely put of heterodox opinions and got the axe. Hopefully LBC will see their mistake but i doubt it.
I agree. It is a tonic compared to the rolling news bulletins with their slanted version of reality. I particularly enjoy Mark Steyn who is witty and also unflinching in his assessments. He has a terrific number of really excellent,important guests whose expertise is interesting and impressive.
Very good point you say, sadly, it appears, you did not get it!
As I happens I have degrees in theology as well as history, so I am aware of the influence of Christianity on our civilisation. I also understand that others are aware of this too, so I generally refrain from patronising them with the pointless, pedantic or idiotic. I never assume others are stupid, unless, of course, they show themselves to be so…
Thank you…
We may not get any solutions here at Unherd, and I do agree we seem to be witnessing the fall of the West due to leftie/ progressive/ ‘woke’ self-loathing dogma
I personally take some heart from fellow BTL contributors. There’s plenty down here who’s opinion I value more than any journalist or public figure
(I like Ayaan Hirsi Ali a lot, also)
BTL?
Below The Line = comments
Ah! Many thanks.
Often the best part of many iterms.
The downfall of democracy … people vote out of self interest (leftie policies) rather than the good of country.
I avoid comments at YouTube and occasionally skim them at the Daily Wire and Bari Weiss’s substack, but I actually look forward to reading comments at Unherd at least as much as reading the original posts.
I come to Unherd for the Trans vs the Feminists war reporting – the coverage at Unherd, although more from the Feminist’s position, is unparalleled. Also strangely enough, is that the Trans/rad-Fems war is more earth shaking than any thing in Ukraine, as the entire West is split to its core by this postmodernist civil war, and may break up and sink from the destruction of its traditional core values and culture – wile Ukraine/Russia is just foreigners fighting and intriguing. amongst themselves.
I wait with bated breath for another ex-Guardian writer to write 40 paragraphs on how precarious her position is because of some thing she once said about changing rooms in the Selfridges Women’s clothing department last year on Twitter…..
I too find this this battle interesting. Only a few years ago, the feminists had the floor to themselves and were nodded along from step to step. Then came the Trans people and suddenly the feminists were boring and passé. The sisters reacted by becoming more and more extreme to try to get the headlines back. To no avail. The Trans people (Transists? Transients?) have won the battle.
Do they have Trans people in Ukraine? The Russians will stop them very quickly. The only thing you can say about the western ‘allies’ is that they talk a good talk and that they have good suits and very white shirts – excluding BJ of course.
Transisters!!!!
Transisters, brilliant!
“Transisters are doing it to themselves” could be a catchy song… and biologically possible.
I recently saw a meme where a very fat person was claiming he identified as a slim person. He called himself “translendered”.
Love it!
The fatal mistake in the feminist argument was to insist that “Gender is a ocial construct”, i.e. there are no innate differences between men and women. Gender was then untethered from biological reality, and this opened the door to the transgenderists.
Problem here is that the gendered constructs of “masculine” and “feminine” dont actually fit the personalities of many many people of both sexes. “Gender” if summarised as personality traits shows two overlapping Bell curves. Most women are shorter than most men, and may well be less good at mathematics and more good at empathy. However, the existence of the overlap has made it really important that female mathematicians ARE encouraged, similarly caring males. Unfortunately, caring work is usually far less well remunerated than traditionally male occupations. Which is why I’m a liberation feminist not an equality feminist. Transideology feeds on the notion that personality traits make you male or female which is total poppycock. Feminine boys, if left alone to go through puberty, often end up gay, and vice versa for lesbians. This is the outrageousness of this pernicious “wrong body” ideology.
Women are not “less good at mathematics”
i think that same soul counted that she only used the word ” I ” a remarkably restrained 147 times too. Take that critics who say that Guardian writers are self obsessed, narcissists.
Fair play.
So much virtual signalling and cringing to the Trans/leftists about how she respects their views while claiming victimhood!!
Yes, the Trans vs Feminist views aired on Unherd are timely and important. But to say the genital worshipers of the Trans movement are “more earth shaking than any thing in Ukraine” is exactly an indication of the nadir of society that you are so critical of.
“Ukraine/Russia is just foreigners fighting and intriguing amougst themselves.” Huh? This is a murderous thug, destroying a country and its people. I think that killing people is a bit more serious than laughing about the gender junk.
Countering madness with something that is sightly more mad is madness!
It’s no good blaming our leaders. We elect them. Neither they nor the electorate really believes in democracy or democratic values.
When we elect leaders who really believe in democratic values, then we have a chance of recovering. But that is a sacrifice too big for us at present, it would seem.
“It’s no good blaming our leaders. We elect them.”
Who is this ‘We’?
You and I.
If you don’t vote then you can’t really complain about the quality of those that win elections
you’ve got that completely backwards Billy Bob, If you vote then you can’t really complain about the quality of those that win elections. I prefer to do my pissing from outside the tent pointing in, standing inside the tent spraying piss everywhere well that just sounds like something President Biden would do these days.
We have compulsory voting in Australia – and a very good thing it is. But then we have better voting systems than the U.K. so our parliaments better represent the will of the people. You can vote against the government and have that publicly recorded. If you vote for a smaller, protest party, they will get the money the government gives out to parties depending on the number of votes they get, so you are encouraging alternative viewpoints.
Compulsory voting. Now that sounds pretty liberal to me! Here in Chicago, USA, we have early, on time and late voting. All by the same person.
has Chicago been learning from the labour party? who even want the inconvenience of voting when your ballot can be collected by your local religious community leader to make sure your vote is in accord with the Koran
In Canada almost no one in Western Canada voted for Trudeau – yet there he is – twice! Both times there were more votes for the Conservative party – but their vote distribution is less efficient. Getting the vote out doesn’t solve structural problems.
In the US they have the ‘write-in’. You can fill in the name of someone who isn’t standing.
In the UK that’s a spoiled ballot, discarded.
You can’t vote for what’s not there, so it’s likely that I won’t vote at all come the next election.
I, or my Wife, as proxy, have voted in every local and national election since 1964. The last election I was first in the queue at the polling station then deliberately spoiled my ballot paper. The only thing they got from me was a notation that the boxes were empty and that they were then properly sealed.(It’s just a mark against your name on their list) If you find that you cannot think of a “least evil” candidate then please go and say so by spoiling your paper.
Interesting. In the U.S. that would have automatically been counted as a vote for Biden. Because “all votes count!”
It’s worth spoiling your ballot by writing something usful and constructive on it. I was told by a teller that they do read comments and take note of them, although she didn’t know what was done with the comments.. The ballot is not counted, of course.
The papers reported , with photos, on what was written on spoiled ballots in the recent Southend by-election. I was shot down by gleeful (presumably because the comments scrawled on the ballots were anti-Tory or anti-Boris) commentators when I queried it at Times Online. As if it were perfectly normal to show photos of ballot papers in the media.
Given that thousands of workers are temporarily employed to count ballots I’d seriously doubt any notice is taken of comments written on ballots. People who spoil their vote are generally regarded as being eccentric (at best or needing help for their mental health (at worst).
That’s all very well, but what happens when, like here in the UK, you have the two main left & right parties with policies so similar you couldn’t wedge a cigarette paper between them?
We have to be given the choice of such candidates.
The question is why are we denied it, for what reason and who is responsible?
I think it is harsh to blame the electorate. A revolution in governance – unheralded – has unfolded in the UK (and all EU states) since the 1990s. The levers of power were transferred from national parliaments to unelected technocratic organisations (NMIs) and a mass of laws which had same effect. We have seen a deliberate diffusion of power from elected MPs to what we call the Blob and also to the judiciary. Voters sense something has gone wrong. But they cannot vote the Blob out. It is the duty of the Executive to push back against that legacy and so make democracy work.
Elections are largely rigged. Who counts the votes, and all that.
Perfectly trust-worthy people do the counting under the eyes of the candidates, it is abominable to smear these people by implication.
All the current western leaders are way down in popularity, 30-40%. The trouble with democracy is that there are fixed terms. Perhaps we should have elections when popularity falls below 40%.
Very well said, sir
I alternate between sharing your despair and thinking “it was ever thus.”
I’m sure a comments page such as this, in the 1930’s, could have contained much of the same commentary. Yet when the hour came, so did the men.
There was an article yesterday about Finlandisation, which describes how that country’s establishment was completely taken over by Russian apologists … for a decade.
At the other extreme, McCarthyism ran rampant but then ran out of steam.
Bastions of progressive thought like Denmark have moved significantly right.
If Zemmour does well in France that will shift the dial, even without a win.
Possibly clutching at straws, but the idea we have just lost and can only shrug our shoulders is unattractive.
Part of the problem is the time spent on sites like this. Out in the street common sense people will continue to do common sense things, blissfully unaware of the woke. As various school boards are showing, when they overreach there will be a reaction.
Agreed. It internet boards are to be believed our elected leaders are some kind of evil geniuses herding us all unthinkingly towards some despotic future. Talk to people in the pub and the general consensus is that those same leaders are just a bunch of chancers who make it up as they go along.
I think the second theory is much more accurate personally
Back to: –
Hard times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times create weak men,
Weak men create hard times.
Who said that if I may ask? My guess would be Orwell.
The coming Revival in our faith and following God’s prescribed ways has been, and continues to be, the answer for mankind.
Quite simply the media, along with the WOKE liberal elite, should take a good long hard look at themselves and recognise why they have the comfortable standard of living and the ability to say whatever they wish (unlike their targets) that they are afforded. It is of course because of the hard work, determination and self-belief of the people, all of the people, that made this the great country it was and still is in many respects. Otherwise, why would so many millions of “migrants” from across the globe, not forgetting the majority of Russki oligarchs, so desperately want to come and live here? The WOKEists need to stop running the country, and those who are proud to be British, down, like the defeatists they are. And the higher education system should be purged to stop the dissemination of the fruit-loop ideas that so dominate academia and social media. A tiny minority is dominating the discourse; they need to be shut up in every sense.
You are correct to identify the lack of solutions being offered here. I myself have been working on exactly this problem for many years but it is only now that many other people are recognising there even is a problem needing my solution. I would put more details here but I know that that would just result in people jumping to conclusions and wasting several tons of time – this matter needs a small book to explain about adequately. However, if you are someone who wants to join in a very thorough practical project of positivity, to rescue our society, then please contact me for further information in due course. Probably my best email for this is AUTISM [AT] BK[DOT]RU Yes, that’s a Russian email address. No, I am not autistic, but I did write the World Champion theory of autism: for proof see link www pseudoexpertise com/biogr6.pdf (which I will repeat in a reply to myself here.
Link to proof of World Champion: http://www.pseudoexpertise.com/biogr6.pdf
And you can read the theory itself at http://www.pseudoexpertise.com/ch-7.pdf
Yes, they are weaklings. Green, incompetent and often under educated. But the wonder of humanity is that it can learn. I see a sharp learning curve in my crystal ball. I see a rapid maturing. In the Chinese language (or one of them) the word for crisis is also the word for opportunity. Let us embrace an opportunity for the government to grow up and become adults.
Russia, a twice failed empire grasping to regain former glory.
America, a failing empire which doesn’t yet realize the sun has set.
Europe, a want-to-be empire that will never happen.
China, laughing all the way to the bank.
Very good.
This essay is great. It really should be read by those on the illiberal left who have been driving these nonsensical policies. They need to be made to understand that the quest for transgender toilets, net zero at all costs, and zero covid, are not only senseless and self-defeating, but they are tearing our societies apart.
When they have Russian tanks driving through their streets, you can be sure these people will quickly cease to care about a 2 degree rise in temperatures in 50 years. And if you think I’m fearmongering, just read this morning’s news.
Correct. It’s the best thing that’s happened for a very long time !
Impending invasion of a sovereign country is” the best thing that’s happened in a very long time”? You appear to have a topsey-turvey idea of what is good.
Or a Russian bot.
No, it’s a wake-up call for a West which has been heavily drugged by QE and ever-rising asset prices, and which (through ignorance) has no desire to try and comprehend other civilisations or ways of thinking which are much older, and in some ways more valid, than their own.
Graham, what you get wrong is that the bad side effects of nonsensical polices are some kind of accident. Not at all. The effort to turn Western society into an absurd pantomime is both diabolical and deliberate. The emergence of weakling leaders (Biden is just the latest) is a conspiracy of powerful one-world utopians to undermine America, the UK, Canada and every strong Judeo-Christian nation so that out of the chaos a new world order can arise.
The plan is no secret, written in black and whilte by the World Economic Forum – “The Great Reset” . The control exerted by Big Tech, BIg Pharma, the Scientific Climate change establishment, Bill Gates, George Soros and of course Klaus Schwab is overwhelming. They are writing Biden’s teleprompter script.
Trump was the antidote. Notice that he had to be impeached – not just voted down. Trump reversed the narrative for a while. So he had to go.
So where to begin? Here’s where: DISSENT. Speaking up loudly and clearly against every error of policy in every forum imaginable. IF the voting system works,and IF enough people can vote for rational policies which build society and don’t tear it down, then this can be turned around. But it begins with exposing lies made in the name of science, starting with COVID vaccine mandates, climate change and gender fluidity.
You know, this is an ongoing debate: to what extent is the current nonsense a carefully plotted conspiracy, and to what extent is it an organically arising effect of late-stage post-modernism?
I refer to you Eugyppius’ most excellent substack, wherein he thoughtfully goes over these arguments. I’m not saying your wrong, but please do have a read of his thoughts on this:
Why People Believe Wrong Things (eugyppius.com)
There is no doubt that the West, America in particular, has declined since a decade or so after WW II. Although some of this has to do with the ebb and flows of empires, the industriousness or lack thereof of a particular people (Germany, Japan), much of these wounds are self-harm. In the US, we have had incredibly bad leadership in an almost unbroken streak for the last 60 or so years, and the US is currently run by a bunch of VERY old men and women who have been in Washington so long that they will only be carried out in a box.
I spent about 15 minutes in politics. It was a rare combination of circumstances, a resignation (the only really reliable way to get the pols out, though he assumed a higher office) that led to my putting forth a candidate who had a real shot to get elected. Being the only real election nationwide at that time, so it served as a proxy for George Bush’s presidency after his disastrous wars of choice.
As a complete outsider, the process provided huge insight but also sickened me. I was never much interested in how the sausage was made, so to speak, but even my 15 minutes (figuratively) took me into the bowels of the slaughterhouse and I still have PTSD from it. It has caused me to hate, truly hate, the political process in the US.
The thing I came away with most was how mediocre or worse the people were. My guy was not involved in politics, and truly had the best motives for running. But the process is so complex that once he gained some steam, he had to surround himself with the, often very young (twenty somethings–by 25, one would be a seasoned veteran if not an Eminence Griese). I never really knew what a “political operative” was; now I do.
The main goal of a candidate is to fund raise–“dialing for dollars.” Many potential Big Donors and ALL then-current politicians essentially said–go raise $500K and then I might take you seriously. So step 1 means that you are already deeply in the system. This process is beyond disgusting, and sort of a huge grift, but that’s how the process works; no hope for real change. $$$$ buys access, buys laws, buys favors.
Finally, although VP Kamala Harris is not even mentioned, let me take a swipe at this vile, incompetent, disgusting piece of rubbish: her performance in Germany, including the comment that Europe has had uninterrupted peace for 70 years, is so completely moronic that it seems that the US gets what it deserves. This is leadership? 41% approve of Biden? How is that possible?
As a Brit I haven’t had much exposure to Harris. The recent coverage of her speeches at the Munich conference has been frightening. A competent HR director of a mid size company, maybe, but VP of the US, dear god!
Her lack of gravitas, fumbling of questions, spouting of obvious nonsense (the west is fully aligned) has been depressing to watch.
I’ve just finished watching the Ozark series. From what you say, that depiction of US politics isn’t too far of the truth.
With respect, how could you omit her signature “cackle?” Biden appears to often act inappropriately because of senility; with Harris, the disconnect is somewhat different, where one laughs inappropriately at serious things:
Q. What do you think of the massive convoys invading America from the South?
KH: Cackle, cackle, cackle…..
Something is seriously wrong with that disgusting piece of rubbish.
Re OZARK, I have not seen it and was about to thank you for the recommendation, but upon reflection, I think it was deeply insensitive to mention it at all, let alone not include a trigger warning, given my acknowledged history of PTSD with politics….
Unfortunately, describing people as ‘a disgusting piece of rubbish’, which you’ve now said twice, completely detracts from any substantive point you want to make. So this is how we explain the world, do we, by invoking ‘goodies and baddies’? A point enthusiastly in accord with those of the ‘woke’ activists. Just leave out the personal abuse.
Fair play. I almost agree, don’t want to take the focus off the main point, but I can’t help myself. I’ll try harder. Still, if the shoe fits….
Sadly the shoe does fit. You have to wonder what kind of political process elevated a creature like this to 1 heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world. I muse in the same vein about the obnoxious Trudeau in the context of Canada.
Very good point. We can’t act like them and then demand that our opinions get respected.
If you’re replying to me, directly or indirectly, I, and perhaps “we,” don’t act like “them.”
But since “they” call “us” names, racist, white supremacist, homophobe, transphobic–and endless list–“we” must call them out EVERY time, and admit nothing. It is fair play to call them out in words that are clear and easily understandable. Concede nothing.
I was called out here–repeatedly–for sometimes signing off “Lock and load,” and some suggested I try “Talk and listen.”
With respect, one can’t “talk and listen” to what are essentially religious fanatics, people who cannot be persuaded by reason.
I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it.
In respect of my abject failure to acknowledge your PTSD and, indeed, the dreadful lived experiences that must have contributed, please accept, from the depths of my soul, my most humble apologies.
I’m not on Tw atter but will join immediately, confess of my sins, and willingly undergo the scourging of the t w a ts in the hope of some forgiveness.
Oops, sorry, I believe you’re white cis male hetero- you deserve all you get, meh.
I’v enjoyed Ozark, but the writers should have educated themselves a bit more about money laundering before writing a five-season series about it. The bit where they showed banknotes being put into a tumble dryer to make them look old, which is part of money laundering apparently…sheesh.
The term that describes our American leaders most precisely is narcissism. We constantly twist facts, reorder data, morph our own bodies, feign our emotions to take advantage and capitalize on any given situation. Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay ,On Bullshit, which elaborates on just one of the byproducts, of living in a world dominated by these cretins. This behavior has pushed the world to a dangerous place which revalues the “good” for only its profit. On the most, people here are stupid, they can’t think. can’t read and are either too obsessed with looking in the mirror, or sadly too depressed by the same act. It’s high time we start getting called out on our follies, ultimately it is what the good people of this nation need—a wakeup call
You can’t understand why 41% “approve” of Biden? Everything is relative. Have you not heard of Donald Trump?
Think I’ve heard of him. Liked his policies. Is it logical to give an automatic “approve” to anyone not Trump? Even if the recipient of the approval is a demented, doddering dotard? Who is really in charge? Hint: it’s not Biden…..
Please explain.
It is the MSM watchers.
Some very good points completely ruined by the absurd phrase “climate change is real and a pressing problem”. All you needed to add was “and rain is wet and getting wetter.” It’s statements like this that make us look weak and ridiculous – particularly ironic when your article is about how weak and ridiculous we look to Russia and China.
If you take that literally, what does it even mean? Are you suggesting the climate was some strict ‘mono-temperature’ before us evil humans came along and had the outrageous desire to improve our standard of living and double our life expectancy by burning fossil fuels? Putin and Xi must be almost hospitalised laughing at our deranged obsession over how much trace gas plant food we put into the atmosphere and our relentlessly performative guilt over our ever improving way of life.
Meanwhile the Russians, the Indians and the Chinese merrily get on with building more coal fired power stations per year than we have in the last 70, while we close ours down and stuff our money into the pockets of billionaire grifters and politicians who promise us a ‘green energy’ future but whose theatrical schemes still only produce 3% of the world’s energy supply.
We live in one of the lowest periods of CO2 in the Earth’s history. The world has warmed barely 1 degree over the past 120 years – the difference between the upstairs and downstairs of your house. The UK puts out 1% of all global emissions (0.00001%) of a trace gas plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive, but is now framed as our greatest threat by architects of the biggest pyramid scheme in human history.
As high priests of the pyramid scheme Al Gore, Di’Caprio, Prince Harry and Obama party in their giant beach front mansions and travel by private jet to polo matches and exclusive islands in the Maldives (who by the way are currently building 15 brand new underwater airports across their string of underwater islands), us serfs are on the hook for £3 trillion to apparently reduce our emissions of plant food to ‘net zero’. Forced from now on to incorporate into our lives 15 degree homes, Islamabad style electricity supplies, limited transport, hyperinflation, bankruptcy and a shattered economy while our Feudalist overlords who offered us the ‘solutions to climate change’ (whatever that means) ride off into the sunset in re-purposed UN aid trucks full of our money – all cheered on enthusiastically by a fully bought and reprogrammed main stream press.
As I said, Putin and Xi must actually need wheelchairs they’re laughing so much.
So apart from turning us back into 17th century commoners and prostrating ourselves at the feet of our enemies, here’s what else Boris Johnson’s £3 trillion net zero plan could buy in actual stuff:
-636 missions to Mars.
-The cost of an Uber journey across our entire solar system and back.
-3 million KLFs with 3 million furnaces.
-6000 brand new hospitals with free parking.
-16 million fully trained NHS nurses for ten years.
– 6 million fully trained police officers for ten years.
-12 million ambulances.
-750 million ICU ventilators.
-24.8 million affordable homes or social housing.
-Free university education for 60 million students.
-A cheap briefcase containing £100,000 cash for every household in the UK.
-200 billion clean water tanks in Sudan.
-500 billion plastic taps in Sierra Leone.
-60 billion hand washing stations in Mozambique.
-3 trillion pounds towards cyber and physical defence against attacks by our enemies.
-3 trillion pounds towards recycling and cleaning our oceans of plastic waste.
-3 trillion pounds towards protecting elephants, tigers, rhinos, whales and many other rare and endangered species across the world.
-3 trillion pounds towards finding a cure for Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Altzheimers, AIDS, Malaria or any other devastating disease you can think of.
I’ll go for option two if I may?
Brilliantly done.
..
god I feel better for reading that …send it in a letter to Boris cc`d to the Conservative Party Chairman.
Sorry, but climate change is real. I find it hard to line up with the anti-mandate lot (who I utterly support) when they throw in the climate b******s. Ive been following the biology since the 60s and it is patently obvious bad things are happening. It’s possible that our current answers for dealing with it are wrong (im in favour of reducing energy use and nuclear) but it is definitely happening and is seriously affecting both humans AND the rest of the natural world. Which is why I find the Green Party (UK) stance on transgenderism UTTERLY baffling!! Biology is real and important and we are in a web of life with all other living things, destroying it at our peril.
Seconded.
You deserve at least a trillion up ticks for that! An absolutely brilliant, amusing and erudite appreciation of the greatest scam in history, even exceeding the recent Great Covid-19 Con. Bravo indeed!
Frankly the West has now become such a bunch of moronic bed –wetters that it is enough to make one misanthropic at the very least.
“In the record of our civilisation, the Roman achievement in the realm of grand strategy remains entirely unsurpassed, and even two millennia of technological change have not invalidated its lessons”.*
One of those those lessons was that it was obligatory to do some form of military service before you achieved high public office. That lesson is all too sadly missing these days, although there are one or two notable exceptions.
By the time a man like Pontius Pilate became Prefect (Governor) of Judea, he would have served for about ten years in local government (as we would call it) a further ten years as a military commander in three different ranks, another five to ten years as a Procurator ( a financial/tax official) before finally taking command of a Province, with full Capital powers.
That he could command military units without what we would call ‘training’ eg West Point, Sandhurst, Staff College etc, was irrelevant.
All that mattered was did he speak with the voice of authority, in other words did he give orders that were obeyed.
Give the present state of politics in the West it is very unlikely that we will ever be able to emulate the Roman achievement, and thus must prepare for the worse. In fact it is now a case of “Look on my works ye mighty and despair”.**
(* Edward Luttwak: The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: 1976.)
(** Shelley.)
It also time anyone in Britain aspiring to become a politician in Westminster should have to have worked in a real job for some years first! We might get a better standard and more intelligent policies and respect for their effect on us,the taxpayers who supposedly are their employers!
Yes a good idea and probably not impossible to implement.
The Romans also imposed an age limit of 24 before one could enter the Senate, and start to climb the ‘greasy pole’.
30 in the Athens of Pericles.
Always nice to gear Luttwak quoted.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is always exposing the inadequacies of Western leaders but from a place of genuine concern for democracy and liberalism. She is one of my favourite writers on UnHerd!
She’s right, but it’s going in the opposite direction to liberalism and democracy. You wait and see.
If you like liberalism and democracy, move to Portland Oregon and see how you like their application.
I didn’t say I did like liberalism and democracy.
Yes.
This is a great essay by Ms. Ali, but as always it missed the inherent biases that are fundamental to the relationship with the Eastern Europe. Let it be clear that I am not defending Putin, but I am also not sure what moral high ground does the West have in Ukraine after hundreds of years of doodling with other people’s borders. Also why does Putin get labeled as “kid” when he appears to be even tempered, “irrational” when he is clearly calculating, and a “killer” when he hasn’t >>yet!<< done what Xi has. In other words I am wondering if Putin was Muslim, Chinese or Black, would the same vocabulary be used. After all Farage can say whatever he wants about the Eastern Europeans, but as soon as he mentions BLM he gets fired. And ever since 16th century there has always existed some kind of version of Farage.
In practical terms, this entire escalation has been started by EU/American backed elections, and since dominated by the voices of the likes of BJ, Uncle Joe or EU-whatevers. Only voices that are lacking are the ones of Ukrainians, those that will be stuck with the bill and a death-toll. In my former country we have a saying “nobody gives a sh** about 20 million Slavs”, referring to civilians that lost lives at the hands of Nazis, as I am positive nobody in the West gives a sh** about Ukrainians or Russians or Ukrainian-Russian (or as you call them the “rebels). So let’s not pretend this is some kind of new operation “Ukraine Freedom”… or maybe we should, because it smells more and more like “Operation Iraqi Freedom”
I’ve still got my money on the West in the medium term.
Me too. Long term too. Because of USA.
The continental USA has vast: Intellectual resources, as well as vast – Industrial (it really does), labour, agricultural, mineral, natural, water, sea ports, rail roads, oil, coal, gas, military, wealth – resources, Infrastructure, Plus a great constitution. It has no land bridge to any hostile.
USA has it all, and although is doing a very bad job now, it will always be strong.
Think of a 4 leg table as an analogy. the legs, Industrial capacity, Natural Resources, Intellectual Resources, and skilled labour resources. No other land has all four like USA – and so USA will always be able to stand strong and stable- and by standing will keep the West viable.
Never count USA out – it always will be a Super Power – it has it all.
Without self belief and the rule of law all the other advantages count for nothing. History is littered with the ruins of lost empires.
Political divisions will have turned the U.S into a second rate power within twenty years. It will be talked of fondly in the same tone we use for the Ottoman Empire or Achaemenid Persia
I think the pace of American decline is likely to be akin to that of the Ottoman empire, but decline it will, and it has already started. We are already over 30 years in, I would say.
The Ottoman Empire started its inexorably decline when it failed to take Vienna in 1683.
However it staggered on until 1918, so there is ‘no need to panic’ as far as the USA is concerned.
… but the tabletop is riddled with woodworm.
The US Empire is in fact the continuation of the British Empire under another name. Very similar legal and commercial systems, much shared culture and obviously the same language.
As you say “never count the USA out. If the Chinese really thinks it’s their turn, they are deluding themselves.
The Pax Americana has plenty of life yet. Thank God.
Thank God indeed. Who else would hold the torch of liberty?
I think you should have said could not would.
I agree with you, there is plenty of life left in the, “Good ole US of A”.
I live in the UK. I have been lucky enough to spent time in 19 of the states in the US. The US has so many advantages and strengths, whatever way you cut the cake it rises high over its rivals worldwide. If you believed the MSM it seems like the United States going down the drain faster than a Greta Thunberg ice-cream melts in the sun!
Cut away the pro-China froth and the U.S. is still really the only true superpower, and the country’s domination of the world order should continue for a few more decades………at least.
It is still a simple fact that the US,as you correctly point out, has a mass of strengths while, comparatively, it
s enemies/rivals have many weaknesses. That may change, especially if the Washington swamp remains undrained. But, equally the chances are, perhaps higher, that the US might continue to reign supreme.But I have a gut feeling that things probably won’t go as badly for the United States as many western "experts" predict ( I sometimes think that they pray for and wish for!). Even its geographical position is miles superior to Chinas, it is a natural fortress ( although I admit cyber attacks change that a bit). The US is bordered by just two countries and they are pretty tame, the US has great communications , road networks, air networks and more waterways and ports than probably the rest of the world rolled up together. China on the other hand is surrounded a dozen suspicious neighbours.The US has a very big lead by the most vital measures of national power. Yes China comes closest, but the US still has perhaps x4 China’s wealth and x4 times its military capabilities? Such gaps would several decades to close even if things go downhill for the US
So, its a fair bet that things probably wont go as badly for the United States as so many seem to conclude, because whatever is said, it has to be recognised, that it has the best long-term growth prospects among the major powers, because the United States simply has all the “necessities” in spades.
It is also worthwhile recalling that, although an imperfect calculation, it took the Roman Empire 300 years to totally bite the dust…
I hope you are right Galeti. But don’t overdo your faith in the long term. Remember that in the long term we are all dead. And what with Putin today, possibly Trump again in a few years, and huge nuclear arsenals around the world it might be the short term.
If the USA and the UK copied where needed the Applied Science /Engineering training of Switzerland and the Maths/Pure Science Training of SE Asia with a welfare system of Switzerland, we would solve most of our problems. Have a highly technically and scientifically skilled workforce with a welfare system which helps the needy but does not support the feckless in their lifestyle.
Those numbers alone should prove how deeply we are submerged in cow dung.
“Covid-19. No Western Democracy has managed to minimize excess mortality without significant restrictions on individual liberty.”
Reminds me of the old first year Philosophy logic fallacy:
1) ‘No Western Democracy has ever’….. (minimized excess mortality)
2) ‘We are no Western Democracy’, (but Western Republics), therefore….
(Florida, Sweden, South Dakota minimized deaths as well as any lockdown Westerners – without significant restrictions on liberty)
But I am here to argue about excess deaths meaning what they are taken to mean by the agenda, and the Writer, as this is mere conjecture and correlation. VAERS shows a million adverse reactions to The Vax, and many say that is 5 to 50 times under reported. People like McCullough and Malone and Kory and Matheson infer (sometimes say even) that a great many of these excess deaths may be vaccine induced deaths – as a vast number of them seem to happen within a relatively short time after taking the vaccine. There is talk of the care homes frail people dieing off after vaccination faster than from the virus…. But then people will say anything. and to see some of it, search on ‘VAERS adverse reaction to covid vaccine’ – and be amazed at what pops up….
Every day another tale of how the vax has hot done anything useful at all – wile the ‘Response’ has caused untold death and destruction and economic and education and business and social – disaster…
https://rumble.com/vvd7l9-dr.-peter-mccullough-the-science-has-not-changed…fact.html
yesterday I posted the below link to McCullough ‘Drop all Mandates Immediately’ from the Australian Woman on youtube and several people posted right back that it had disappeared in those minutes… Now days you have to go to ‘Rumble’ to avoid the insane censoring of Youtube.
https://rumble.com/vvdh3j-the-caldron-pool-show-episode-5-dr-peter-mccullough.html
Just responding to the article saying reducing excess mortality was helped by reducing liberty – it was not. Search Rumble for Dr Malone – he is really great….
For a forum of self-identifying intellectuals, who think for themselevs, this a rather weak piece, which follows every trope of the Western narrative on Russia of the last mmm…. 8-10 years. 1) Russian=Putin. 2) Putin = evil. 3) Russia is as evil as West is good. 4) What evil? Homophobia, obvsly! 5) West is a bit weak, otherwise should have long gone full steam “reaching the Final Solution for the Russian Question”.
Exactly Leto. There are many comments on here over the past few weeks lauding that bullying weasel fascist Putin as some ‘man on a horse’ strong man figure that the West should emulate in some way. Disgusting frankly. 80 of the passengers blown to pieces by a Russian BUK missile system were children for God’s sake.
And for God’s sake, how many children across the Middle East have been blown to bits by US and UK missiles and bombs over the past 20+ years?
About as many as the number that are murdered every year in certain neighborhoods in Chicago. And certainly not even close to 1% of the number of aborted children over the last 20+ years.
As Putin in Syria etc. Your point?
The self loathing about the West on here from ‘the right’ is as bad as that from the wokeist left. Last time I checked, a Western opposition leader hasn’t actually been poisoned and then sent to a hell hole in Siberia.
Government coercion and compelled speech have become acceptable tools in the protection of the general welfare. This standard has replaced liberty as default status. Toleration has become promotion. Safety guarantees are the order of the day. From my vantage point, I would tell the boosting and reboosting public to wear hazmat suits if they want guarantees. I’ve had the 2- jab Pfizer and I don’t want any more jabs. I’m tired of masks, and I don’t want transgendered kindergarten teachers in my grandchild’s school where they will serve up the propaganda. No thank you.
That King Lear quote was so apposite. Mr Putin probably can’t believe his good luck. But with COVID vaccine tyranny rampant in much of Europe (and Canada, Australia and NZ) one almost believes that many so called democratically elected European leaders can’t wait for the Russian tanks to roll in. Interesting times…..
Reply to davidgbullard.
Alongside ‘so-called democratically elected European leaders’ waiting for the Russian tanks to roll in’, there are plenty of ordinary citizens who used to think Western values were superior to autocratic regimes and dictatorships. These Western values were underpinned by ‘inalienable rights’ under various constitutions/UN and European charters etc.
Many people now see that these ‘inalienable rights’ aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. The response of Western governments to Covid has effectively thrashed the very concept of inalienable rights – and liberal democracy along with them.
What exactly is worth fighting for post Covid?
Everything to prevent China from rising any further.
China represent a greater menace than Adolph or the Soviet Union ever did. Time to act whilst ‘we’ still have the advantage don’t you think?
We are seeing a shift to the right everywhere (France, UK, USA) and we will soon get leaders of the same flavour. Who’s to say that is a bad development? Can’t be much worse than the corrupt, useless bunch we have now (Boris, Biden, Macron etc.).
In the case of the US, Joe Biden was installed in office with the aid of the deep state and its allies in the Democrat Party, the elite legacy media, Silicon Valley, the globalist companies that dance to China’s hornpipe (including the NBA and Nike), Hollywood which craves access to that vast audience of moviegoers and now tailors its product accordingly, the Marxist-inclined academy that washes the brains of children in higher education and is busily dumbing down standards in STEM in the interests of equity, the woke young people who infest the HR departments of spineless corporations that want no trouble from the snowflakes, the racialist demogogues, the twitter mobs needing only the slightest excuse to destroy lives and careers to flaunt their virtue, the climate hysterics, and so on. It’s surprising the other half of the country has any power whatever. Trump is a good example of what happens when it tries to gain a meaningful share. His candidacy and his presidency were sabotaged by the deep state and then a man with brain rot was allowed to take over for manipulation purposes.
Putin has been running rings around NATO, the EU and the USA. And he will continue to do so until someone stands up to him and says “enough”.
You don’t surely mean this? The problem is not saying “enough” as that’s happened plenty. The problem is that Putin will only listen to real physical weapons, the kind employed by the military, and I do not believe the West will ever use them against him, so he has virtual impunity.
He’s a good poker player, and has made all his calculations. He’s going to win.
There was always a neocon streak to AHA’s arguments, but here, it’s clear. Maybe it’s something to do with being an employee of war criminal Condoleeza Rice, who justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the preposterous claim that it might be able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
While this was an interesting commentary on The Way We Live Now, it was a bit short on solutions. We can all whinge and whine, but working out what to do its more difficult. What would she like Western leaders to do? Roll the tanks? Launch the Minutemen ?
The demise of NATO is probably coming, and the US turning isolationist would be coming if China would just let it. Ultimately, until the EU faces a real security crisis, which this is not, it won’t stand up for itself and decide to get involved. Self-interest will make deconstruction slowly take hold, and we’ll be back to European history repeating itself.
Again.
‘Elect more capable people than these weaklings’.
Huzzah AYAAN HIRSI ALI!
And let them not be ‘capable’ along the lines of Fascists-nouveau like Justinian Trudeau.
It may be that the Russians are big into family values and see the West as going firmly to the dogs. With the family in their mind as the basic unit of society, the Russians may be led to believe that should Ukraine buddy up with the West, the West’s diluted or immoral values will end up suffusing through Russia. The Russians may drive like crazy, immorally, on their roads, but to them it’s wide open spaces their land, just as the God-fearing, even churchgoing pioneers raced off on horseback, at some risk, everywhere in the American West during the Wild West days. The Wild West, eh? The ramshackle and violent behaviour on city streets day in and day out of young, trendily-dressed and well-fed Americans in 2020, up in arms over a multitude of grievances, that was also quickly mimicked in Western Europe, must have been a daily diet of sourness that all good Russians shook their heads at on their evening news channels. Confirmation indeed of the dissolute West. The EU’s castigation of naughty Poland and Hungary must not have gone unnoticed by all good Russians either.
I suppose the Russians see no-one of stature leading the West. Someone whom the Kremlin could respect and who could pressure it to stand down its armies. A leader who conveys morals and strength and has a good sense of humour. The sort of westerner the Russians could have faith in. The Russians see no-one like that in the West today, and so they then find themselves resigned to a family life in Russia. And so they are inclined to support the status quo in Russia. They always have family, at least. Just a wild guess. Just a fanciful guess on my part.
We all long for “ more capable leaders”. Where would they get their education from? What is the pertinence of political career in today’s society?
I’d say its more an issue of one’s character over one’s education.
Insight from the other side by Navalny. Translation by Google Translate.
Yesterday I looked at the “security council meeting”, this is a gathering of seniles and thieves (it seems that our FBK did investigations into the corruption of each of them), and I thought about the same gathering of nomenclature seniles from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, who are about the same, on their own whim , imagining themselves as geopoliticians at the “grand chessboard”, decided to send Soviet troops into Afghanistan.
The result was hundreds of thousands of victims, injuries to entire nations, the consequences of which neither we nor Afghanistan can overcome, and the emergence of one of the key reasons for the collapse of the USSR.
Those morons from the Politburo covered themselves with a two-faced ideology. These Putin seniles do not even have an ideology – only a constant and undisguised lie. They don’t even bother to make their casus belli have the slightest credibility.
Both of them need one thing: diverting the attention of the people of Russia from real problems – the development of the economy, rising prices, reigning lawlessness – and switching it to the format of “imperial hysteria.”
Have you watched the news of federal channels for a long time? I only watch them and I assure you, there is NO news about Russia AT ALL. Literally. From the first to the latest news: Ukraine – USA – Europe.
There is no longer enough naked propaganda for seniles and thieves. They want blood. I would like to move tank figures on the map of hostilities.
And now – the head of the Politburo of the XXI century makes a truly insane speech. The most accurate metaphor about it was given, of course, by Twitter: “Well, purely my grandfather got drunk at a family holiday and gets everyone with his story about how world politics actually works.”
It would be funny if the drunken grandfather was not a man of 69 who holds power in a country with nuclear weapons.
Replace “Ukraine” in his speech with “Kazakhstan”, “Belarus”, “Baltic countries”, “Azerbaijan”, “Uzbekistan” and so on, even including “Finland”. And think about where the geopolitical thought of the senile grandfather will carry on. All this ended very badly for everyone in 1979. And now it ends badly. Afghanistan was destroyed, but the USSR also received a mortal wound.
Through Putin’s fault, hundreds, and in the future, tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russian citizens may die now. Yes, he will not allow Ukraine to develop, he will drag it into the swamp, but Russia will pay the same price.
We have everything for powerful development in the 21st century – from oil to educated citizens – but we will lose money again, squander the historical chance for a normal rich life for the sake of war, dirt, lies and a palace with golden eagles in Gelendzhik.
Putin and his senile thieves from the Security Council and United Russia are the enemies of Russia and its main threat, not Ukraine and not the West. Putin kills and wants to kill more. The Kremlin is making you poorer, not Washington. It is not in London that economic policy is being conducted in such a way that a pensioner’s “borscht set” has doubled in price, but in Moscow.
To fight for Russia, to save it, is to fight for the removal of Putin and his kleptocrats from power. But now it also means the banal “fight for peace”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaR4GuwtOqE/
Why should we be interested in the opinion of a Farage-like Russian character, whose competence as president material can be only compared to that of Zelensky, who, before he became a president was a comedian, who once played a comedian who became a president.
Britain’s problem is that the lower middle classes were bred and designed by Victorian newly industrialised society, to be clerks and functionaries a la Mr. Pooter, and manifestly not to lead, manage or organise anything, let alone run most of the country.
You’ve heard of mission creep? This pot pourri of huge generalisations stirred in a pot has crept too far. They’re illiberally weak? Hmm. That plus an inferred supine admiration for the weaselly Putin and the thuggish Xi ( strong men? Really?) doesn’t look good. I guess she won’t be risking ending up in a burnt out APC herself. Of course.
A people get the rulers they deserve. The Archbishop of York said ” The desire to be spoon fed, to have our problems solved by others, to be given short snappy answers has sunk deep into our culture”. All we need is a spiritual Renaissance which enables us to pursue excellence, no matter the pain, the sacrifices, the hardships and obstacles which have to be overcome combined with a sense of fair play and sportsmanship.
Produce a nation of craftsmen, technicians, farmers, sailors, doctors of medicine and engineers who box, play rugby and cricket and one has group, who can build and maintain a civilisation. These three sports create an unusual but important balance of toughness and fair play.
The RIEC, HMS Conway, East India and HMS Worcester /Thames Nautical Training College plus others produced tough technically skilled leaders.
Royal Indian Engineering College – Wikipedia
East India Company College – Wikipedia
Thames Nautical Training College – Wikipedia
I suggest the main problem is the massive decline in the proportion tough technically skilled leaders and the massive increase in effete ineffectual affluent types within the middle and upper classes.
I suggest the recreation of schools producing leaders with the same toughness and technical skill as above would help reduce the problem.
Their most recent approval numbers are remarkable — not least because the hapless Joe Biden comes top: Joe Biden, 41%; Justin Trudeau, 40%; Scott Morrison, 39%; Jacinda Ardern, 35%; Boris Johnson, 25%.
Aren’t they all (apart from Boris maybe) minions of Klaus Schwab’s WEF?
We only get what we deserve, it seems.
God knows – we’re only gossiping, discussing or whistling in the dark, but He’s not listening.
Join and enjoy the discussion. Vanity of vanities..