The capacity for stupid, pointless, gestures by liberals demonstrating that they “stand up for Ukraine” or “speak truth to Putin” has gotten to the point where even my Pepto-Bismal can’t keep me from retching up my lunch.
Indeed, the “protests” are more a statement of solidarity than anything meaningful. But what makes me sick to my stomach is that the Western protesters can’t imagine they’re taking this protest against Putin beyond reason so that the ludicrous lengths to which they are going to signal their virtue might appear very odd and disturbing to ordinary people.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music may be timeless, inspiring, and a joy to listen to, but he’s Russian so he’s got to go. Really? Tchaikovsky lived in Czarist Russia in the mid-19th century. Russia then was as different from Putin’s Russia as the antebellum South is from Joe Biden’s America today.
But when it comes to virtue signaling, common sense and proportion don’t matter as much as the gesture itself. The more useless it is, the more importance can be attached to it.
The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK announced on Wednesday that it had scrubbed the great composer’s work from an upcoming concert, calling his music “inappropriate at this time.”
It doesn’t matter that Tchaikovsky was one of the least nationalist of Russia’s composers. Tchaikovsky’s name sounds Russian, the guy looks Russian, and other Russians adore him.
Off with his head!
Those who agree with the Cardiff Philharmonic’s decision to deprogram Tchaikovsky may note that one of the selections on the program was his 1812 Overture, a 15-minute piece celebrating the defeat of Napolean Bonaparte’s attempted Russian invasion. The piece is inappropriate given the circumstances, the thinking goes. Such comparisons fall a bit flat when looking at the historical context: The piece does not commemorate Russia as the aggressor but rather as a country successfully fending off a foreign invader; as such, it has been embraced by the West and is familiar to many American audiences during 4th of July celebrations. There are lessons to be learned there.
Even still, the objection hardly necessitates scrubbing Tchaikovsky in his entirety solely because of where he was born. That’s especially true in light of what was supposed to be the program’s main course: his Symphony No. 2, which, in a sort of cosmic irony, is built around…three Ukrainian folk songs.
Actually, Tchaikovsky’s maternal grandfather was born in Ukraine and he had always expressed love and admiration for the region. But we can’t let those facts get in the way of waving the bloody shirt to show where we stand in the war against Ukrainian sovereignty.
But perhaps there’s a limit to propriety and good taste in virtue signaling? Don’t believe it for one second.
Among the deluge of sanctions and boycotts imposed on Russia over the past two weeks, one in particular stood out to me: an announcement by EA Sports that it would remove the Russian national team and Russian clubs from its popular FIFA video game series. “EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and like so many voices across the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine,” the company said in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday.
It’s one thing to ban Russia from international soccer competition as the international governing body of the sport, FIFA, has done. But banning a video game team? A pixelated protest takes the idea of virtue signaling beyond reason.
Meanwhile, like most left-wing protests, they will march, they will chant, they may even burn Tchaikovsky in effigy.
But then, in the privacy of their homes, they’ll slip on their headphones, sit back in their recliners, and listen to the composer’s extraordinary works. Because, after all, actual boycotts are only for the little people.
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