One idea that I find interesting in Bykov’s novel is how, in a reign of extreme wokeness, people are waiting and wanting a war because that is the only thing that can end the ideological stranglehold.
Bykov is writing about the Stalinist USSR in 1941. And he’s right in that the Great War put an end to any sincere belief in the Soviet dogma. The regime didn’t end in 1945 but its capacity to control minds and not only bodies did. Of course, it then took several decades to make it go away completely.
As I keep saying, the current insanity we are experiencing in North America will end when not a single person will be able to hear the words “structural racism” or “decolonizing the curriculum” with anything but a cynical chuckle. I hate cynicism but at this point it’s our only hope for a way out of all this.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m writing this from France:
“in a reign of extreme wokeness, people are waiting and wanting a war because that is the only thing that can end the ideological stranglehold,” you wrote. Sure, but only if the country is defeated… That’ what makes it so sad, actually. Unless a better solution is found, for example home-rule for the States, each State managing its own affairs, like the German statelets did under the Holy German Roman Empire. But don’t count on it in the USA, too many people are fed from the federal trough.
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A breakup of the US into regional polities is completely inevitable at this point. The only remaining questions are whether it happens relatively peacefully or not, and when. The situation on the West Coast is pointing toward a more violent scenario, unfortunately. The West Coast ports are too important to the rest of the country, and between medical mandates, electric-truck mandates, and laws eliminating owner-operator trucking rigs, CA now has a stranglehold on goods trying to reach the rest of the country through their ports. Since they depend on other states and fragile systems for really basic things like water… it seems like a setup for a lot of ugliness.
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