Ukraine and the Zombiefication of America

 https://www.unz.com/article/ukraine-and-the-zombiefication-of-america/

Increasingly I despair of this country. The more I read and see, the more I am confirmed in my view that the “American Empire” is reaching a final phase and that our “shelf life” is expiring, just as all other great empires—Roman, Ottoman, British—have expired.

I keep coming back to William Butler Yeats’ lines (written one-hundred and three years ago, after the cataclysm that was World War I), in his poem, “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction; while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Yet, it is even more tragic, it is no longer a situation of “lacking conviction,” but rather the “best” now mimicking the enemies of civilization, the “best” acting as if under hypnosis and acceding to rampant evil with enthusiasm…what a friend of mine calls the “zombiefication” of those who were once charged with defending our culture and civilizational heritage. Now they ape our enemies and fall into line like lemmings.

This has been the response I have gotten from some friends over this Ukraine conflict. Their passion is often clothed in an hysteria that characterizes and shrouds what is occurring. On a more global level, I can cite example after example, from banning “Russian” vodka and banning Russian cats (!), to firing dozens of world-famous Russian classical artists (e.g., Valery Gergiev, Anna Netrebko, etc.), to expunging famous Russian novelists from our university classrooms, to removing Russian-made caviar from US sale, to banning Russian chess players from international competition, to (in Germany) banning the “z” symbol because in Russia it is similar to “V for victory” (conviction in Deutschland will get you three years in the slammer!)…the list is inexhaustible.