I think that's what Rod Dreher is saying here. I don't disagree.
I’m getting a lot of blowback in the comments section from people who are appalled that I’m not spending all my time lambasting Putin, but instead complaining about how we in the West helped bring about this situation, or bitching about our own decadence. Fine, complain all you want. As I said, ultimately this war is Putin’s fault. He should not be doing this, and I hope he comes to grief because of it.
However, as uncomfortable as it is for some of you to hear it, you had better stop and think about how we got to this dangerous situation with Russia, and what things we in the West had under our control, that we failed to do right. That Hitler was responsible for World War II doesn’t obviate the role the victorious WWI allies played through the ruinous Versailles Treaty. If our goal in the post Cold War era was to rub Russia’s nose in the dirt, well, we gave it a go. We ought to have instead tried to create peace and stability. There is no possible scenario under which offering to bring Ukraine (and Georgia) into NATO, as President G.W. Bush did in 2008, could have led to anything other than what happened today.
What’s more, I know it is unpleasant for some of you to consider the decadence in the US and in the West in general in this context (e.g., “Bombs are falling in Ukraine, and you’re obsessing over trannies?!?”), but you should think twice about this. If we are now facing a renewal of the long struggle with Russia, and probably even a struggle against China too, allied with Putin’s Russia, then the leaders of Western countries had better think about how they are going to meet the demands of this struggle. They have no hope of doing so with a country in which they have abused and alienated a huge number of people for the crime of being white, heterosexual, culturally conservative, or clinging bitterly to their bigoted churches. We saw just the other day that Justin Trudeau actually seized the bank accounts of people supporting the trucker protests, under the guise of fighting domestic terrorism. I have absolutely no doubt that Washington will try the same.
