The Dumbing Down of the West
The West won't just melt into air, mostly because it's already not very solid
“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!”
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images
In the spring of 2010, I was hiking through Corsica’s rugged landscape. It was the usual hell on earth in paradise lost, between myself and my Russian friend and travel companion, let’s call her Dasha.
Then came the news: Moscow’s metro had been bombed. Forty lives were lost in the chaos of rush hour — another gift from the Islamist separatists to Mother Russia.
Facing Dasha, I struggled for words. A half-witted “Heard about Moscow. It’s terrible. I’m sorry,” was all I managed. Dasha just shrugged. “Nah, it wasn’t as bad as Beslan,” she said. In 2004, a school in Beslan had seen 186 children perish, as Russian security forces stormed the building after Chechnya separatists had taken 1,000 people hostage. I saw it coming, but her response left me puzzled.
And here we are now, an age where we can use AI to decipher two-thousand-year-old Roman scrolls burnt to a crisp, yet we still can’t crack the Russian code. This thought was nagging at me as Tucker Carlson introduced his interview with Putin, promising a genuine glimpse into what’s in that man’s head.
Back to Corsica, a few days later, Dasha and I decided to tackle Monte Cinto, the island’s tallest peak. More a hike than a climb, truth be told.
She thought I had it all figured out. Little did she know, I was as clueless as they come, betting everything on this Garmin GPS piece of junk. It was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of the modern outdoor man. So I heard.
It was a bust, as expected. The damn thing couldn’t get a signal to save its life, and I couldn’t read those cryptic maps if they slapped me in the face. My ineptitude left me exposed as a complete fraud, unable to fend for myself without my high-tech crutch.
Things took a nosedive from there. Stuck in the wild as night crept in, cold and unforgiving, Dasha stepped up. Using skills she later told me she had learnt in ‘geography school’ back in Russia, she guided us to safety at the refuge. Safe, but not without cost. The ordeal was not just a blow to my ego; it was truly emasculating.
It was then I began to realise the real schism between Russians and Westerners. Growing up, I swallowed whole the tale of a post-Cold War Russia, beaten down, clawing at the West’s door, a bunch of barbarians begging to be assimilated.
The reverse seemed true as well. Russia had faith in the West, believed we were all made of the same stern stuff that had defeated communism. Yet, there I stood, the prototype of Western unreliability.
And there stands Europe today, acting as if it was a third-world country, unable to defend itself in the absence of foreign aid. It’s madness. Europe, once the heart of civilization and the pulse of history, now mirrors weakness, epitomised by the recent failure of the UK Navy’s trident missile. The crown jewel of Europe’s security policy, now the ultimate symbol of our civilisational emasculation.
You Gotta Fight For Your Right to Party
“Truth has nothing to do with language. Truth is like the Moon in the sky, and language is like the finger that points to the moon. A finger can point out where the Moon is, but the finger is not the truth. You can see the Moon without the help of any fingers, can’t you?”
Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
That’s why many have welcomed Trump’s calls for NATO to, effectively, man-up.
Not just ‘right-wing zealots’ like me, but also social-democrats — like the frontrunners for NATO’s top job come October. Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, fresh on the Kremlin’s hit list, thinks Trump’s barking is the alarm clock for “some of the allies who haven't done that much.”
Former Dutch PM Mark Rutte, likely the next NATO chief, admits Trump nailed it, pushing Europeans to own up. “Let’s stop moaning and nagging and whining about Trump,” he said.
Of course, there’s the proverbial village idiot looking at Trump’s finger instead of where it’s pointing. Idiots like Macron, who casually threatened to deploy French troops to Ukraine this week. (The fact that Macron was groomed by his wife, who was also his former high school teacher, speaks volumes about Europe’s ‘little boy complex.’ But heaven forbid anyone mentions that.)
The press was all too eager to slap the mobster label on Trump. Picture this: a gangster handing out free protection, with the only catch being to lock your own doors at night. Reasonable, one might argue. Nobody’s coughing up for NATO like it’s some back-alley racket. The expectation is for nations to pony up with their own cash for their own defence.
The true disgrace lies in countries blowing off their obligations, placing their most reliable ally in an untenable position, drumming up this ridiculous scene where NATO has to strong-arm nations for their own good.
Trump, in essence, is the one upholding Article 5. Because let’s face it, without the firepower to back it up, any threat of payback is just hot air. Keeping a fit-for-purpose defence system is a commitment that has kept NATO from getting a real test for 75 years, a blessing and a curse all wrapped in one.
Here’s the kicker: the same deadbeat leaders scared Trump’s gonna step over the line are the ones already dancing all over it.
Trump in the picture or not, with or without NATO, it doesn’t give Europe a free pass from looking out for themselves. Unless they’ve really given up the ghost on standing up for their own skin.
Europe’s playing the carefree teenager role, so Trump’s playing the tough-love dad — while grandad sleepwalks in the White House. He’s laying it out straight: you skip the coat, catch a cold, don’t come crying to me to drive you to the hospital.
And what do you know, Europe’s social-democrat dreamers keep chasing green herrings from their huts made of sticks and straws, convinced the little piggy with the brickhouse’s gonna bail them out every time.
Death of/to the Dollar
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”
Vladimir Lenin apud John Maynard Keynes
In his interview with Tucker, Putin avoided direct criticism of Europe’s military vulnerabilities or its economic fractures from reliance on Russian gas. Why would he? European weakness is his golden ticket.
Yet, he fixated on America’s $33 trillion debt abyss and lambasted the use of the Dollar as a geopolitical tool, calling it a “grand self-deceit.”
Subtly, he linked these issues, perhaps to stir anxieties within the American right, his intended audience, over excessive expenditures on foreign conflicts, not just in Ukraine but in Israel and beyond. This, he suggested, was the ‘geopolitical use’ of the dollar—financing foreign wars and imposing sanctions.
He may have a point about the debt stock. However, financing overseas conflicts is hardly the heaviest weight on America’s balance sheet. And leveraging the Dollar in international policy remains one of America’s most profitable lines of business.
You’re better off watching what Putin isn’t criticising. Consider Germany’s disastrous manipulation of the Deutsche Mark (aka Euro), practically a con job, shackling countries under the boot of the Fourth Reich (aka the EU):
The evolution of the balances under Target2, a settlement system among Eurozone banks, illustrates this. Germany’s central bank opts to waive the settlement of outstanding balances by other nations’ central banks, effectively creating debt out of thin air, and trapping economically weaker countries like Spain and Italy in an explosive, snowballing debt pattern.
For example, when an Italian buys a BMW, the payment journey from buyer to manufacturer never completes as expected. First, the customer’s bank sends the money to the Italian central bank. Under normal circumstances, the Italian central bank would forward the money to the German central bank, who would then pay BMW’s bank in Germany, which would finally transfer the money to BMW.
In reality, the German central bank leaves the Italian central bank debt unpaid, covering BMW’s cost internally, turning these imbalances into political leverage over EU members.
But it’s not only accounting tricks. Look at how the EU Commission played Poland, freezing a cool €137 billion over some trumped-up fear of “democratic backsliding” under the previous right-wing, nationalist government in the country.
Then, as soon as they got their puppet, Donald Tusk, and his globalist cabal back in charge, suddenly the cash flow’s back on. If that isn’t a move straight out of the mob’s playbook, what is? Not a peep from Putin on this one, perhaps not to disturb his enemies in the middle of another mistake.
Europe’s hedonistic double standards don’t stop there. Two years into the conflict, and Austria remains nearly fully reliant on Russian gas. Sanctions are laughably ineffective and circumvented, with indirect exports to/from Russia skyrocketing among its satellite states — a fact conveniently overlooked by Western officials:
While the West drools over green fantasies, China’s busy scooping up all the cheap energy we’re too high and mighty to touch, betting big on unreliable ‘renewable’ energy that we will soon find out is not as ‘renewable’ as we hope, when those wind turbines start faltering and begging for expensive repowering.
Energy costs are so ridiculously high in the West, they’re already kneecapping Germany’s once vaulted industrial park. Meanwhile, Putin’s boasting to Tucker that Russia’s now the largest economy in Europe, an absurd claim based on inflated wartime spending.
And things keep heating up. The EU has advanced legislation to seize the profits from frozen Russian central bank assets to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction. Since the invasion, the US, EU, and G7 have ‘immobilised’ $300 billion of Russian funds, now scratching their heads over what to do with that loot.
The interesting detail is the U.S. holds only $6 billion of the funds—geopolitical peanuts. The big pot, a whopping $200 billion, is held by EU countries, leaving them with the real headache.
In January, the Russian money was at the centre of a U.S. Senate committee decision approving the first-ever seizure of central bank assets from a non-warring nation. This marked the beginning of efforts to liquidate Russian holdings. The first dive into raiding Russia’s piggy bank.
The EU wavers, wary of legal complications and investor backlash. Yet, a group of ‘legal experts’, veterans of the Obama and Biden regimes, issued a letter justifying the seizures under international law, despite Russia’s outcry of “modern-day piracy.”
While this approach might lessen the financial load on American taxpayers, already $75 billion deep into aid for Ukraine, Russia warns of holding $288 billion in Western assets as potential targets for reprisal.
The Bidenisation of the West
“... while we are familiar with the adverse effect of drink on an empty stomach, we are now witnessing the far worse effect of drink on an empty mind.”
Roger Scruton
The West has forgotten the art of victory. It forgot it’s even playing the game. Our whole civilisation thinks like a collective, dementia-stricken Joe Biden. From adhering to obviously losing propositions like the One-China Policy to proposing the untenable Two-State solution, to NATO’s illogical expansion, it’s evident: the ‘rules-based’ West is not just devoid of good ideas; it’s devoid of any ideas.
Imagine the following scenario: somehow the West succeeds and pushes Putin to the edge, cornering him in his bunker. Do we really want him pondering his last resorts? Then, considering Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, do we trust the vacuum over Putin with those nuclear codes?
Would Western so-called leaders be willing to roll the dice and find out who gets to lord over 5,889 nuclear warheads?
What then is our strategy, if defeating Putin seems as desirable as it is possible? Neither endlessly pushing the Ukrainian resistance against Putin’s meat grinder nor capitulating to Russian demands presents a viable path forward.
Sergey Karaganov, once an advisor to Yeltsin and Putin and Lavrov’s protégé, argues a stark reality: “No American president will sacrifice New York or Boston for Poznan or Frankfurt.” So why do we keep surrendering the rulebook to Putin?
As the Russian ‘press’ is having a field day with the UK’s military fumbles, laughing at their dead-in-the-water flagship aircraft carrier and dud missiles; Karaganov lays it out plain what he sees as Western options: the West can either back off with a shred of dignity, crawl away in shame “like in Vietnam and Afghanistan,” or tango with nuclear annihilation.
Though we hope he’s wrong, against a Biden-Scholz-Macron-led West, his prediction covers itself in credibility. By default.
But Karaganov’s nuclear threats, parroting Putin and Dugin, hint at the Kremlin’s own desperation, perpetually fighting with their backs against the wall.
The West’s dilemma is obvious: what leverage remains against Russia? With every passing day, it’s glaringly obvious we’re bluffing on empty. And nobody dares to call Putin’s hand. Stuck without a clue on both sides, maybe it’s time to ask ourselves: what would China do?
Athens lost the edge of its navy, Rome the might of its legions, the Reich the blitz of its panzers. But Russia? It’s got the ultimate trump card: the boom of its nukes. We keep dreaming up this exchange—democracy for disarmament, just like we did for Ukraine. But democracy in Russia didn’t die with Navalny — it was always a non-starter.
Yet, negotiations hinge on understanding. Putin eyes 2024 as crucial, foreseeing a chance to tilt Ukraine’s conflict. He banks on a lapse in Western support, with U.S. aid potentially wavering due to election distractions and Europe divided within. Ukraine, too, might face turmoil, especially after Zaluzhny’s departure.
Putin aims to persuade the West to sideline Zelensky, hoping for a Ukrainian leadership less emboldened by the West, who he can strong-arm into folding. His goal isn’t compromise, he wants Kiev’s knees to buckle, setting the stage for a puppet regime. And with all this, Putin’s desperate for a Western ear.
The proposed ‘solution’ we’re being steered towards, ostensibly promoted over the years by Kremlin asset Dmitri Trenin—a purported Russia ‘expert’ showcased by Goldman Sachs, the Carnegie Endowment, and others, who is also a ‘former’ member of the Russian intelligence community (though we all know there’s no such thing as an ex-KGB man)—is the federalisation of Ukraine, slicing the country into manageable pieces.
Russia’s running on fumes, militarily and financially, clearly lacking the means for a full takeover of Ukraine. Annexing Eastern Ukraine might fit the budget but would undermine Moscow’s claim to legitimacy. The solution? A nuanced approach.
The Minsk Agreements hinted at a federal Ukraine, offering regional autonomy while maintaining national unity—a proposal that could tempt the West with a dignified exit. Over time, Russia could steer events so the Donbas ‘decides’ to leave Ukraine for Russia.
During the interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin subtly dropped hints of his endgame, suggesting the return of Donbas to Ukrainian statehood, under a common social environment, with “pension and social benefits” fully restored.
As a bonus, a federalised Ukraine would offer a blueprint for Transnistria, potentially bringing it under the Russian fold in the future, without a bullet being shot. Just like Crimea.
If you apply Lindy’s Law, each moment the conflict in Ukraine drags on, Russia gains ground, irrespective of the immediate outcome. The notion of appeasement has been dispelled; Schrödinger’s box is open. No pulse on that cat.
Now, Europe’s digging its own grave, creating a security crisis by skimping on defence, an energy crisis by killing off reliable sources, flinging the doors wide open to immigration chaos, and setting the stage for a full-blown food crisis by putting farmers at the bureaucrats’ crosshairs.
As the Bidenisation of the West unfolds, Putin’s probably cracking open a cold one, watching his fortunes rise.
