I have never said to you “Pay attention to Sacramento, Springfield, Lansing, or Harrisburg, without first taking care of your face, your home, and your community.”
And you know what, I can promise you this much — your face, your home, and your community are not all being well handled. Excellence is still out of grasp. It is not yet spreading as it could. The conclusive victories are not yet being won. When that day comes, it will be unmistakable.
That Which Decays
Similarly, you will not catch me talking about the need to pay attention to the Ukraine before your face, your family, your home, or your community. I love the Ukraine, I love the people, the culture, the land. I spent years of my adult life in the region (www.52inSk.com tells that story). I love the toughness of the Ukraine. As just one illustration, I love that so many people used to (and probably still do) travel across the country by train in a third-class, glorified cattle car (platskartny). There is a toughness to the place.
America once knew such toughness. As an example, vast parts of the US with no indoor plumbing existed during the lives of many people who are today alive. That is almost impossible to imagine for most Americans. Those times before every man was entitled to a spa in his home, a five blade razor, and as much flourless chocolate lava cake bonbons as he can stomach delivered 24-7 seemed to provide advantages to society, advantages no longer recognized.
Decadence means “that which decays.” The toughness of America has decayed.
Do I dislike prosperity? Absolutely not. Prosperity is not a reason for decadence. Prosperity is a reason for increased discipline and vigilance around the most vital qualities of an individual and a culture. Weakness of men causes prosperity to lead to decay.
Don’t Get Me Wrong
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of modernized, comfortable, effete male Ukrainians, but it is not the norm among their men. It is an aberration, as it should be.
This very moment, as you read this, a Ukrainian has bumped his forehead badly, leaving him with a gash in his eyebrow, and he is not running scared to the medicine cabinet, or hospital, but is reaching under his chair or desk for the ever-present bottle and pouring a little vodka over his wound. He will have a seat, take a swig, let it bleed a little, and clean it up after it clots.
In contrast, in the United States, how many seconds would it be before someone suggests that he go to the hospital? How many minutes would it be before someone perhaps even calls an ambulance to rush him to the emergency room? Doing so costs someone a few thousand dollars, occupies the partial attention of five or ten members of the medical staff, and perhaps worst of all, it eats up half a day in frivolity.
The Ukraine is a tough and beautiful culture of strong men and feminine women. As is Russia.
America Can Learn
America can learn a great deal from that culture about individual fortitude. I do say “that” culture. Knowing as much as I do about the place, it is very hard to separate the Ukraine from Russia. Rather than having a strong cultural uniqueness, the Ukraine is almost an in-between place, culturally befitting the name “the Ukraine” — “the borderlands.”
Funny how language tells you so much about what you need to know, if you just listen to the wisdom that a previous generation captured in words.
The Ukraine — The Borderlands
Lviv (Russian: Lvov, Polish: Lwów, German: Lemberg), in the west of the Ukraine, is caught culturally between the present day and the influence of the Lithuanian and Polish empires of old. Kiev, in contrast, is about as Russian and as modern of a city as can be. In the days before the Maidan color revolution led by the meddling United States, I strolled through the streets of Kiev looking for young people who could tell me the difference between a Russian and Ukrainian, and whether the person I was speaking to was Russian or Ukrainian. I was unsuccessful in getting that answered with much more than quizzical questions back.
You may say all manner of things about the history of how that came to be, and why no one under 40-years-old in Kiev, who I encountered was able to easily say how they identified nationally.
Regardless of the past, the truth is, that was the situation before Maidan. They were confused that such a distinction would even exist enough for this foreigner to ask about it. That is what my man-on-the-street research told me — there was hardly a Ukrainian national sentiment in the capital city of the Ukraine.
Extreme Leftist Totalitarians
A bunch of extreme leftist totalitarians in American are waving a national flag from a region they can not begin to comprehend, reading cherry-picked stories. It is so tempting to tell them what idiots they are.
Do not bite. They are idiots. Do not even bring it up. They buy into bad science, and they behave extreme (Covid, global warming, economics, et cetera). They buy into pat narratives about complex places they have no clue about (Ukraine, inner city America, George Floyd riots…), and behave extreme. Their hallmark is their ignorance alongside their extreme behavior. That is who they are and who they choose to be.
Some would say “What else can you expect from a culture who were not raised by men but by absent, pre-occupied, or otherwise castrated males?” And that can be true. However, your childhood does not determine your future, not a single second of it. Only by either your choice or your neglect can the shortcomings of your childhood haunt you through life.
Your Childhood Does Not Determine A Single Second Of Your Future
A man reborn is a man who parts from the past. Every minute in this country a new man is determining it is time to be reborn, and with immediacy that change happens.
But if you choose to dwell in your childhood, in the mistakes of the past, in the harms of yesteryear, then you choose not to be reborn as a man.
Covid was that; Ukraine is that; their self-occupation in an identity of ignorance plus emotion is so central to their life. This is how a male like that chooses to live his life. Do not engage such a fool, unless he makes the mistake of daring to stand in your way.
Focus
Focus not on the denazification of Kiev or the imperialist ambitions of Russia. Focus on the denazification of your community and the imperialism that your state seeks to exercise over your home.
The Ukraine is distraction. They are going to be just fine. They do not need your Bitcoin or your attention. They do not need your prayers or your weapons.
The world in your immediate vicinity needs all of that. The world that you can impact needs all of that. The Ukraine is going to be fine. The Slavs of that region will continue to sustain themselves and perhaps even to thrive as long as the planet exists.
You, on the other hand, are in the midst of a faltering culture, a breath away from extinction.
The USSR Beats America On Some Basics
The regime was never able to close the churches in the USSR, not even during the most brutal atheist, communist oppression. The people would not allow it. That is a culture with some powerful individual boundaries, even under the most oppressive of regimes.
That was not what happened in America. In this regard, America in 2020 was worse than the USSR in the ugly times of 1934 or 1951, alike. Some American churches remain closed to this day. Please leave your church if it closed. Please get off of Zoom worship. Please go in person to support a bold lion of a pastor each Sunday who never closed.
They were never able to mask the population in Russia to the extent that America was masked or vaxxed, especially not with an mRNA vaccine. It is the Wild West in so many ways. In such a place, individual, family, and community all being grounded in a strong sense of what is right is so necessary for survival.
You Must Not Live That Way Any Longer
Please get the mask off of you, off of your family. Not once in a while, but every single time. Do not put it on for school, do not put it on for a job interview, do not put it on “just to get through the door,” do not put it on for an airplane ride, do not put it on “just to visit grandma.”
Do whatever it takes to never again be that weak-willed coward. No matter what the past held, be born anew. If you cannot, the world will eat you up, and you will not see the damage your acquiescence has caused in your own life until it is too late to remedy.
The Nature Of Psychological War
You see, we are not in the midst of a kinetic war. We are in the middle of a psychological war. The terrain being fought over is your mind. Through the enemy winning on the battlefield of your mind — your family, your home, and your community can be captured.
It is the nature of a psychological war to distract you and lull you into the fact that you face no kinetic war, so all must be well. Be distracted and you lose. It is that simple. One battle at a time the distracted lose.
What Is A Man?
If you can not find a good church, if you can not otherwise get yourself good, nourishing teaching from somewhere — teaching that will feed the soul of even an atheist and will provide wisdom to even an atheist — if you can not get yourself good teaching from somewhere, if you can not draw bold boundaries in your life, if you can not make the tough stands, what are you worth as a man?
Are you a paycheck?
Women make more than men in so many ways.
Are you the carrier of male gametes?
Those are for sale online.
If you are not the protector of something, the leader of something, the restorer of something, then what are you as a man?
The Ukraine Does Not Need You
The Ukraine does not need you. Russia does not need you. It is fair to say the government you pay taxes to has done enough harm in that region already. More American “help” is the last thing anyone there needs.
You need your attention. Your home needs your attention. Your community needs your attention. In that order. Only in that order. Do not let your local board meeting be a distracting Ukraine to you as your home cries out for you in need.
Everything around us will fall apart slowly, or it will fall apart quickly, but it is falling apart as we speak, and something new will replace it. A new America needs your full attention at being the best man you can be, at ushering out the old sick and dead parts of the culture, and defending that which is worth defending, nurturing, reintroducing, and building anew.
You can be no man if you are obsessed with the Ukraine, yet neglectful of yourself, your family, and your home. A male, perhaps. But not a man.
The Frivolous Will Obsess Over Frivolity, That Is, After All, Why They Are Called “Frivolous”
It does not escape me that the least man-like, least admirable, least trustworthy of males in our society refuse to focus on the world immediately around them, a world they can take ownership of and impact. Yes, to fritter away time and energy is exactly what can be expected of a frivolous person, in a frivolous time, and in a frivolous culture.
But that does not trouble me. It is to my benefit for the frivolous to be distracted in frivolity. Why would I want to expend energy opening their eyes? The impact of that would only be to encourage them to fight me in the battles that matter. Let the Ukraine be the opiate of the frivolous.
Do not let it be the opiate of he who matters. Do not let it be a distraction to you. Do not let it be another way to lull a lion back to sleep.
All This And More
And at the same time, it is pretty crazy what is going on in the Ukraine, isn’t it? All this and more will be ginned up to distract you from a toxic culture in its death throes.
It will get crazier yet as the regime tries to keep itself alive. That is what happens with every crumbling regime. That is what happens with every scared person nearing his last breath.
And then it all just ends, as anti-climactically as you can imagine, so suddenly and naturally that any reasonable onlooker is left asking “Was that really it?…What was all the fuss about?”
That is how frightened lives come to an end, and that is how illegitimate regimes topple.
Faith, Not Fear
Be filled with faith, not fear. Be filled with values, not distraction. Be filled with the authority that you have over the space around you, not some place so foreign to you in which you have no authority.
Do you see what is happening? If you can be convinced to take your eyes off of that which matters, you lose all authority and power to operate.
If you focus on that which matters, the regime crumbles, accountability is had, a new culture is born out of the wreck, and life goes on.
You get to choose life or death in every moment of your walk through this life. You get to walk in that which makes your life dead, or you get to walk in that which makes your life meaningful. I want you to choose life.
But it is not up to me or anyone else, so what will be your choice?
Because you have got a powerful enemy who wants to distract you from that which matters, in fact needs to distract you from that in order to ensure his very survival. Your focus brings his destruction. Your focus frees you, your home, and your community.
The choice is yours, my friend.
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