Opinion | Putin and the Myths of Western Decadence - The New York Times - 0 views
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How could he have made such a catastrophic mistake?
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there’s also reason to think Putin, like many of his admirers in the West, thought modern democracies were too decadent to offer effective resistance.
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I worry that the West is, in fact, being made weaker by decadence — but not the kind that obsesses Putin and those who think like him.
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Our vulnerability comes not from the decline of traditional family values, but from the decline of traditional democratic values, such as a belief in the rule of law and a willingness to accept the results of elections that don’t go your way.
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Today’s right-wingers seem bothered less by weakness from sexual license than by weakness from gender equality: Tucker Carlson warned that China’s military was becoming “more masculine”
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these days not a month goes by without further revelations that a large part of America’s body politic, very much including members of the political elite, has contempt for democratic principles and will do whatever it takes to win.
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In any case, the heavy casualties suffered by Russia’s anti-woke military as it failed to overrun vastly inferior Ukrainian forces have confirmed what anyone who has studied history knows: Modern wars aren’t won with swaggering machismo
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Rome retained its territorial integrity and military effectiveness for centuries after the emergence of that pampered, libertine elite.
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So what did go wrong? Historians have many theories, but surely a big factor was the erosion of norms that had helped establish political legitimacy, and the ever-growing willingness of some Romans, especially after around 180 C.E., to use violence against one another.
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Courage and endurance, physical and moral, are as essential as ever; but so are more mundane things like logistics, vehicle maintenance and communications systems that actually work.
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while Donald Trump’s effort to stay in office failed, most of his party has, in effect, retroactively backed that effort.
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the next time something like this happens, America might not lead an effective alliance of democracies, because we ourselves will have given up on democratic values.