The conclusion that the United States is in its bread-and-circuses phase is just about impossible to escape, and our response to it proves the point.
Opening up X this week, I noted that the present beverage brewing tempests were the Internet meltdown over Taylor Swift’s new love interest and the honoring of an alleged Nazi in the Canadian parliament during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit. The invisible thread binding them was the Culture Warriors claiming to fight for Jesus who made these the cause célèbre.
He who sits upon the throne in Revelation has a patent complaint against current events on Earth. “Behold, I make all things new” is how it’s put in Revelation 21:5. There’s another way of looking at it. The notoriously non-revelatory Karl Marx noted that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. As with most everything else (we have no reason to doubt that he spelled his name correctly), Marx was wrong in the particulars, though the general idea, that history repeats itself, has evidence in its support.
The phone rings in the White House and Bugout Joe Biden, his pre-existing cowardice now exacerbated by geriatric enfeeblement, answers. White House aides let him answer it himself because it’s the hot line from Russia, and every day at about this time it rings. Biden answers, the voice on the other end, Vladimir Putin, says, “BOO!”, and except for Biden’s attendant having to get him a fresh Depends, no harm is done.
As Vladimir Putin continues his best attempt to impersonate a schoolyard bully albeit with unimaginably horrible weapons at his disposal, the reason for staying back and watching is clear enough. Clear, but wrong. The time has come: we cannot be spectators or a mere supply chain: we must use the weight of NATO to stop by force the humanitarian disaster that is Russia’s unnecessary war.
The scene is a familiar one. Vladimir Putin is at the desk whence he has uttered his increasingly deranged speeches over the last few weeks. An off-camera voice is heard. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, it has been determined that you are impaired in your thinking. You are psikh. Given your advanced age and the unlikelihood of cure, the remedy is to be one with which you are familiar.” Does a flash of panic appear in the former KGB lieutenant colonel’s eyes?
Anyone familiar with the history of the last 100 years or so should be terrified, because they’ll remember that this is how it began last time. We’re not far from saying “if we’d only acted back then.” Right now is the “back then” we’ll be talking about.