To be blunt, both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a fast-approaching disaster to which there are no easy solutions. Cultural exceptionalism, together with the prospect of a clear 'win' over Russia, are draining rapidly away – but exiting delusion is both slow and humiliating.

The coming devastation is not just centred around the failed Ukraine offensive and NATO's weak showing. It comprises multiple vectors that have been building over the years, but which are reaching culmination synchronously.

In the U.S., the run-up to momentous elections is underway. The Democrats are in a fix: The party has long since turned its back on its old blue-collar constituency, engaging instead with an urban 'creative class' in an exalted, world-shaping 'social engineering' project of moral redress, in alliance with Silicon Valley and the Permanent Nomenklatura. But that experiment has run off into the weeds, becoming ever more extreme and absurd. Push-back is building.