Tea at Trianon: Ukraine and the Casualty of Truth

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Ukraine and the Casualty of Truth

From Charles Coulombe at 1P5:

It is ironic that three days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 of this year, I had the privilege of speaking with Franz Ferdinand’s great-great nephew, the Archduke Karl von Habsburg on another matter. On the one hand, he was certain Putin would invade, and I was just as certain he would not; as it happens, I was dead wrong, and His Imperial and Royal Highness was dead right. On the other hand, the Archduke had just worked with his daughter on the documentary Navalny, which “Follows the man [Alexander Navalny] who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020. During his months-long recovery he makes shocking discoveries about the attempt on his life and decides to return home,” as IMDB informs us. As might be expected – added to the warnings of his father Otto, son of the last Emperor of Austria, who made Putin’s acquaintance when the latter was still a KGB agent – this experience had not made the Archduke a fan of the current Russian government. He asked me why so many American Conservatives were fans of Putin.

Herein lies the rub, and to the best of my ability I shall try to tease out the various strands of ambiguity that enfold the current conflict for many American and other Conservatives. There are two major narratives to this war, and what seems obvious to the holders of one is invisible to those of the opposite persuasion. So let’s begin.
Firstly, for many Americans, before there was Putin, there was Obama. His gender-bending administration presided over a great many horrific things, from the imposition of gay marriage (thanks to the Supreme Court) to his own executive order cutting off Federal funding – that is, free lunches – to public schools that would not allow boys who self-identify as girls to use girls lavatories and shower-rooms. His cavalier dismissal of those who “cling to guns or religion” – indeed, his supercilious manner and obvious contempt for those who disagreed with him – made Putin look good.

This is an important thing to understand; all the while Obama was lashing what most believers held sacred, Putin was doing just the opposite – praising Christianity and promoting Russian Orthodoxy. Regardless of his sincerity or lack thereof, his words fell upon parched American ears. Nor was that all; while Obama was forcing gender confusion down his subjects’ throats, on June 30, 2013 Putin signed into law a “anti-Gay propaganda bill” which was designed to shield schoolchildren from early exposure to “alternative lifestyles.” For many in the United States, beset by officially sponsored “drag queen story hours,” this seemed like manna from heaven – but it predictably roused outrage in the breast of the American president. A year before the clashes in Syria and Ukraine, the American-Russian relationship took a dive from which it has not recovered. The overthrow of pro-Russian elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (a popular rising against a Russian stooge or an illegal Western-backed coup against a legal president, depending upon whom you are speaking to) in February of 2014 did not help matters.

Of course, the hatred of Putin by the Left was merged with their hatred of Trump after his insolent victory in 2016; thusly was manufactured the myth of “Russia stealing the election.” In time, Trump’s supporters would make the same claim about 2020’s snout-counting on a very different basis. Regardless of any of that, once Biden and company were resettled in the White House, it was inevitable that Obama’s feud with Putin would be picked up once more. It was just as inevitable that the new president would do his best to make Putin look good in the eyes of his Conservative opponents. These, in turn, whilst contemplating the fresh horrors pouring out of Pennsylvania Avenue, were reluctant to condemn or to find fault with a man who in their eyes looked so much better that the Sleepy if not Senile Chief Executive. In many ways, Biden has been Putin’s best propagandist. I myself have often said that because of Putin’s rhetoric – especially during his support of the anti-ISIS effort and in response to the social and “moral” policies of the Western leaders – he would one day be the most powerful politician in Europe. (Read more.)