Reading Melissa Lawford’s excellent analysis in the Sunday Telegraph, ‘Putin can’t afford peace – Russia’s economy is hooked on war’, I had a queasy sense of recognition. Lawford claims that Vladimir Putin has no real desire for a peace deal in Ukraine, because both his personal political power and his country’s militarised economy depend on the conflict. She quotes an IMF former chief economist as saying: ‘He’s enjoying the war. It’s awful. But he doesn’t want to end the war.’
Doing the podcast rounds in London during the past week, I’ve felt a sheepish kinship with Vladimir. Have I, too, been enjoying the war? The culture war, that is. If so, do I really not want it to end?
It may be too early to say if the woke wars are over. The perceived Trumpian ‘vibe shift’ may constitute a mere temporary setback for the inexorable ‘march through the institutions’ by the deranged progressives who’ve dominated us commonsensical normies for over a decade. More ideally, a loudly slammed door consigns all that racial hysteria and gender woo-woo behind it to the status of a bad dream. But the dogma is still out there, and the same brainwashed fanatics still occupy many positions of influence.
A sea change does seem to have taken place, from my perspective for the better. While more battles await, summary defeat of ‘the sacralisation of historically disadvantaged race, gender and sexual identity groups’ (thank you, Eric Kaufmann) now seems a real possibility. But that prospect makes me feel oddly empty and even a little panicked. Good lord, what would I write about then?
The opposition has their champions: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X.
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