Culture Death

The new age of decadence

The decadence of the West

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde (Many thanks to illya kuryakin here on Substack for that quote!)

It is hard for the West to accept the decadence of its culture, its moral and social decay.

The rise of Russia and China and the Global South economically and culturally threaten Western assumptions rooted in faux civilizational values and fake history.

Civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. Oscar Wilde (again).

Of course, Wilde is talking about Western civilization. He knew no other.

Among the tests of an authentic “civilization”, logically speaking, should be respect for diversity of ideas and values – all that constitutes the “other”. Another marker is respect for truth. Still another is the ability to acknowledge mistakes.

Does the US qualify?

How about its leaders?

Does it matter?

Vladimir Putin is someone who passes all these tests, which means…

…he is hated in the West, left, right, and center.

• · There is no defending Putin’s war. It is a disaster for Ukraine, for Europe, and for the Russian people themselves.

• · Putin’s regime murdered Alexei Navalny. His death in prison is a testament to the thuggish, cowardly nature of Russian authoritarianism.

• · Navalny’s courage exposed Putin’s gangster state. That’s why they silenced him—through poison, imprisonment, and now death.

• · Putin has systematically crushed every vestige of democracy in Russia. Opposition figures are jailed, media is muzzled, and protests are met with violence.

• · Russia under Putin is a police state. Dissent is treason, truth is suppressed, and fear is the currency of control.

• · Putin presides over a kleptocracy. He and his cronies have looted Russia’s wealth while ordinary citizens struggle.

• · The opulence of Putin’s palaces and the fortunes of his oligarchs are built on corruption and the theft of Russia’s resources.

• · Putin is a cynical autocrat who uses nationalism as a shield for repression at home and aggression abroad.

• · His regime is defined by lies, violence, and the grotesque accumulation of power and wealth.

That covers a lot of territory. Putin is definitely a Big Bad.

Who wrote it? Some NeoCon in Trump’s team? One of Biden’s team? Some nutcase, who didn’t take the 15 minutes of internet time necessary to debunk each of these claims, or at least identify the lack of real evidence to support any of them.

Nope. The author of this tripe is a well-. educated man -- Syracuse University, Berkeley, Yale, Stanford, fellow at this place and that place. He’s Clinical Professor Of Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. He’s published everywhere and writes regularly for Huff Post. At least eight books, if I count right. He’s considered “Left Wing”. He is an icon of AltMedia.

Wait for it…..

Robert Scheer.

There are so many others like him, all with credentials that give weight to their opinions within their respective constituencies. But few are as intelligent or as experienced as he is – right about many things – just wrong on Russia and Putin.

John Mearsheimer is like that.

After so many appearances on the Duran, Larry Johnson’s site and elsewhere, he needs not introduction. mean he needs—just like Jeffrey Sachs, a Full Professor at Columbia and media and academic luminary who wrote:

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crime. It violates the UN Charter, international law, and the most basic norms of civilized behavior,

The “Judge” and Larry Johnson and the Duran boys genuflect and kiss the ring.

Which is to say that they defer to academic authority which is holy in the public mind and media of any kind.

If you go to an AI and ask about Putin, it will also give you opinions identical with those of Scheer, Mearsheimer, Sachs and the rest of the pack – because that is the consensus view in all disciplines. It is a priori. You must run with the pack or be eaten by it.

In the case of an AI such consensus is understandable -- it is a machine, and its answers are determined by a program using available data which channels cultural beliefs.

An AI does not think critically –ergo it is not intelligent. Just an idiot with a lot of information, which it doesn’t’ really understand.

We are supposedly the best educated — ever.

But critical thinking skills are declining, Cognitive decline is accelerating. And empathy levels are tanking

But is this “civilization”?

Wilde was right. It is just decadence. Another word for cultural death.

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