While Pentagon was fine-tuning pronoun protocols, Russia was fine-tuning missile technology

Timothy Garton Ash had an op-ed in the Globe yesterday, about how Western democracies must pull up their socks and dig a little deeper if our plucky Ukrainian ally is to prevail in this Russian war we manufactured for them. Professor Garton Ash is a big deal at Oxford, and also at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. That makes him an A-list public intellectual in the Western world. This paragraph in his op-ed caught my eye. Mr. Putin’s cultural and political analysis leads him to believe that time is on his side. In his view, the West is decadent, weakened by multiculturalism, immigration, the post-nationalism of the EU, LGBTQ+ genderism, atheism, pacifism, and democracy. No match, therefore, for carnivorous, martial great powers who still cleave to the old trinity of God, family, and nation. Well, when you put it like that, it’s not hard to see how Putin has arrived at his conclusion. When A-list public intellectuals spew such stupendous stupidity, I’m inclined to agree with him. Notice the binary the good professor sets up; family, God, and country on the one side, but “democracy” bundled with a bushel of wokery on the other. Where would Putin get the idea American culture is “decadent?” Surely Russians too have serious debates about women with wieners on the girls’ swim team, don’t they? I’m sure Moscow’s public libraries have been hosting Drag Queen Story Time since forever. And the West embraces pacifism?! Dear God, professor, what have you been smoking?