As everyone knows, the balder, shorter and more repellent the seducer, the more lavish the lunch he produces for the dumb blonde. Lunch is that symptom of decadence and dalliance for which there is no longer room in today’s functional world. These days, a rare civilized lunch has only two purposes: the seduction of a lady or the exchange of serious ideas.
The latter was achieved last week at an outdoor lunch with impeccable service and views of snow-capped mountaintops. My friends John and Irina Mappin chose a fresh day and civilized surroundings to discuss Ukraine and introduce me to a twenty-six-year-old blonde, blue-eyed beauty, an AFAB, as we woke folk call a person with a cervix.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek is what used to be known as the type bishops would throw a rock through a stained-glass window for, and she’s as brainy as she’s beautiful. I immediately asked her to marry me and she agreed to an engagement first — “as we have plenty of time.” (I’m glad she thinks so.) Eva is a political and cultural commentator, as well as a legal philosopher. She’s a regular on Fox News in America and GB News in Blighty, as well as many other outlets across the world. Leonidas Goulandris, the other guest, couldn’t believe her looks, her brains and her niceness, and rhetorically asked where she had been all our life. (Hitting the books, instead of the nightspots like us fools, that’s where.)
Eva recently led a 40,000-strong march of Dutch farmers against a government that demands they sell their land to the state. The threat is sell or we’ll expropriate, and all this in order to please those numbskulls who glue themselves to motorways and wish to outlaw oil. Under the guise of a non-existent nitrogen crisis, Dutch farmers are about to be screwed by climate warriors and EU bureaucrooks who plan to cut nitrogen emissions. The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, hence the food supply will suffer, but so what? The eco-warriors come first.
Never mind. Surrounded by brains and looks, and partaking in an intelligent discussion, I for once felt that I was not being lunched against — as most times I do in New York — but actually lunching. Irina is the descendant of a Russian-Tartar prince, a Kazakh, and John is an old Wykehamist. His father and I used to solve the world’s problems at Eagle club lunches. Both John and Irina have repeatedly pointed out the folly of the West in encouraging the conflict by covertly training far-right nationalist groups in Ukraine prior to the conflict with Russia.
The harsh reality is that Putin has much more support in Russia than the western media give him credit for. I like to think that I’m not a total fool, but I’ve always suspected that turning Zelensky into a saint was a smart move by those in Washington who lobby for non-stop war, the military-industrial complex and the neocons. The other evening, while surfing TV channels, I heard someone making supposedly funny but rude remarks about our Lord Jesus. Had he made fun of Zelensky he would have been off the air, and for good. So what’s going on here?
My tea leaves tell me that the West will regret making Zelensky the new Messiah. The indispensable demand that Putin must go — some warmongers even insist on the dissolution of the Russian Federation — makes the Versailles Treaty seem to be pro-German. I understand and accept that neither Ukraine nor Russia can accept defeat. Except for the fact that Russia has the ultimate knockout punch, and Ukraine does not. The answer is to sit down and start talking. But Zelensky’s advisors are opposed to talking, and as soon as new Abrams-class tanks are delivered, he demands new F-16s. Arms manufacturers and merchants in the US and the West are greedy. The Messiah is doing their bidding, so why sit down and talk when to fight is far more profitable?
Biden and Blinken are like Abbot and Costello, two comedians playing roles unsuited for them. They don’t care that Uncle Sam will have to assume responsibility for supporting and defending a bankrupt state with borders that were arbitrarily drawn up by Lenin. The Europeans will look elsewhere when the bills have to be paid. Boris has hitched his wagon to Ukraine, so maybe he can come up with some cash from his books and speeches to upgrade Ukraine from a totally bankrupt and ruined nation.
Let’s face it: hypocrisy rules. Saudi crimes in Yemen are OK because Newcastle is playing well and could end up in the top four. Qatar persecutes gays and lesbians but owns most of London, so that’s fine. The ICC has declared Putin a war criminal, but Russia is neither the Sudan nor Libya, which makes the ICC commensurate to the mouse that roared. Last but not least, why should anyone believe anything the government tells us after the Covid fiasco? Ukraine and Russia have to sit down and talk otherwise there will be no more weapons and moolah. Why is it that I feel the poor little Greek boy is the only man left with any sense?
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
