W,

But since we’re probably not going to live forever anyway, those interested might as well pour themselves a cup of coffee and stay up to watch the show.

I don’t know. I’m kinda counting on that eternal life thing. If I’m giving up on that, it’ll take more than a cup of joe to keep me going…

Seriously, seems to me that the issue is whether there is a Western “core” left in Europe (including the UK). I’ve toured these buildings that look beautiful at a distance – grand, sparkling, majestic – but when you get inside you realize the beauty is only as deep as the last coat of plaster. The wood is rotting, the plumbing leaks, the windows don’t close completely, the foundation is cracking, and there’s kind of a mildewy stench. You know these buildings will have to come down and replaced, or be completely rebuilt (a much more expensive process, BTW).

That’s the way European question sets up to me. Is the West still there, hidden under the layers upon layers of plaster? Or is it rotten to the core and ready to collapse?

The question is unanswerable, I suppose, until one day the answer appears. In the case of the UK, my read of the situation is that the elites have all but given up on the Western project. Too much commitment to the alternative vision, too much denial of the facts, too little faith in God, too much pursuit of pleasure, too much adolescent behavior. Kinda like the AGW folks in the face of 11 years of flat temperatures and steadily rising CO2.

What happens when you go all-in with a 2-7 off-suit and the flop is three aces? You know you’re going to lose, but it’s too late – your chips are already in the pot. You take another drink of your G&T, take another drag on your Cohiba, tug on your Yankees cap, sit back and enjoy the ride, I suppose.

Then you move to another table.

Question is then: did you learn your lesson? Or did you blame it on bad luck and the lousy play of your opponents? (Obviously, they should have folded and gone home when you went all-in, but they don’t understand the subtleties of Texas Hold ‘Em the way you do. Pikers.)

A conservative answers one way, a liberal the other. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which answers which way.

Cheers,
L3