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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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but they easily dehumanized each other too

Yes, but this is war propaganda. You can not judge war propaganda on the same footing as genuine cultural standards. In the absence of war, nobody in Britain though Goethe, Schiller, Wagner, Bach, Beethoven, Strauss, (insert 9000 names here) were brute apelike savages. Nobody thought Euler, Gauss, Cantor, Bayer, Daimler, Zeiss, (insert another 9000 names here) were illiterate idiots. Yes, English, French, Germans (when they finally appeared, and every flavor of them before) and so on squabbled constantly and dissed on each other constantly. But there's no doubt they were closer culturally to each other - and they knew it - then, say, to Japanese, or Chinese, or Russians, or Mongolians, or Zimbabweans. Yes, that did not prevent them from killing each other, nothing ever does. But they never genuinely considered each other's cultures subhuman vermin.

Soviets bought the rational knowledge stuff hook line and sinker

It is true, the communists were modernist rationalists. But they also were internationalists - which meant, they wanted nothing to do with the old Russia (they tried to do away with everything traditional, including alphabet, calendar, holidays, names, etc. - with varied degrees of success, modernism has its limits, as they soon learned). And as soon as communists were overthrown - actually, as soon as their revolutionary fervor weakened - modernist rationalism went away. All kinds of esoteric new-age mysticism became popular already in 1970s, and in late 1980s-90s had absolutely bizarre things going on (read about Alan Chumak and Anatoly Kashpirovsky, for example). So, as Russia were returning to its traditional national values (Orthodox Christianity started its resurgence about the same time) rationalism's popularity faded.

even today Putin pretends to be an elected representative

I'm sure Chinese and North Koreans pretend even harder, but nobody - including themselves - believes in this pretense. And, what is very important, nobody cares, especially in Russia - Russians are completely fine with fake elections, because they don't really value free elections - they are completely ok with fake-electing the same Tzar for life, if he doesn't treat them too badly (in this case, they'd kill him and put on a new Tzar for life). Everybody in Russia knows elections are fake and the parliament is a dressing for what Putin wants, with less power than medieval nobles' assemblies under absolute monarchs. They are absolutely fine with it.

I'm sure Chinese and North Koreans pretend even harder, but nobody - including themselves - believes in this pretense. And, what is very important, nobody cares, especially in Russia - Russians are completely fine with fake elections, because they don't really value free elections - they are completely ok with fake-electing the same Tzar for life, if he doesn't treat them too badly (in this case, they'd kill him and put on a new Tzar for life). Everybody in Russia knows elections are fake and the parliament is a dressing for what Putin wants, with less power than medieval nobles' assemblies under absolute monarchs. They are absolutely fine with it.

This is the case all over the world. Every regime except Taliban and Gulf monarchies claim to represent "the people" and rule in their name, every colonel who just gained power by coup says he is really defending democracy. Last man who failed to conform to this unwritten rule was late Emperor Bokassa the First.

Looks like total Western cultural victory. When you start seeing various strongmen repudiating this charade and crowning themselves as kings, sultans and maharajahs, you will know that Western supremacy is fading and multipolar, multicultural world arrived for real.