The saddest sight I've seen since Inauguration Day was the Confederate battle flag being waved to greet El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago upon his arrival in Poland on Thursday morning. I remember when it was a Polish labor union that got the ball rolling in bringing historic political change to Eastern Europe, with a considerable push from an upwardly mobile former Archbishop of Krakow. Now, a president* of dubious legitimacy shows up and someone in the crowd celebrates by waving the historic banner of American treason and white supremacy.

And then the president* gives a speech that's half John Birch, half Jack D. Ripper. From The New York Times:

"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"

If I thought he knew the full ramifications of what he's appealing to, I might cut the man some slack. But I don't think he knows the full ramifications of what he had for lunch. Politicians who start talking about "will" in defense of the proposition that civilization is synonymous with culture give me the shakes. The problem with this is that I don't trust the president* or his inner circle to come up with a definition of The West that isn't based in ethnocentric white nationalism.

(I also am fairly sure that they would like to count Russia as part of The West, which is bizarre and absurd, but which will certainly give the president* and Vladimir Putin something to laugh about later this week.)

Politicians who start talking about "will" in defense of the proposition that civilization is synonymous with culture give me the shakes.

Certainly, that's the way Poland's been bending ever since the Law and Justice Party took control of the government. Since it came to power, the party has worked at devising for Poland an identity that is so hypernationalistic that it serves to isolate the country from much of the rest of Europe. And with it, of course, comes the inevitable authoritarian mechanisms that are such a regime's only guarantees of survival.

The Law and Justice party has made a point of attacking Poland's free press, of undermining the country's faith in its democratic institutions generally, including the Polish military, and set about virtually demolishing the country's independent judiciary, all in the name of the familiar beast that the American president* summoned up on a day in which Lech Walesa, the hero of the Solidarity movement, got booed, and some Pole who's never been to Gettysburg, nor stood outside the gates of Parchman Prison in the Mississippi Delta, waved a Confederate flag in celebration.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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