#GaryShteyngart, the celebrated author of #SuperSadLoveStory, recounts on the
NYT site the lessons he learned from a week of binging on
Russian TV (“Out of My Mouth Comes Unimpeachable Manly Truth”). One of the highlights in his acerbic account is the way in which Russian programs portray the West as culturally and morally degenerate – which ostensibly leaves #Russia as
the only true bastion of spirituality and civilization. No surprise there – but this leaves me mulling the role of some Western cultural skeptics in the new theater
of ideological warfare. People like "TheodoreDalrymple, #J.G.Ballard, #ChristopherLash, etc. – who have long decried the alleged social and cultural
decadence, cult of personal disinhibition-cum-liberty, and casual
non-judgmentalism engulfing their own societies. Or some feminists critical of
seemingly pornographic or disempowering scoops on the mass culture market (like
the #50shades franchise). Come to think of it, such cultural hedgehogs could similarly
be seen as providing ideological fodder not just for Putin’s propaganda machine.
They could also be censured as unwitting contributors to the recruitment campaigns of ISIS, al Qaeda, and their smaller siblings and offshoots. Why does everything have to be
so super complicated, really?
