The overuse of the word democracy and the cheapening of the concept by evoking it insistently and needlessly are rhetorical devices aimed at turning it into a meaningless, vacous verbal tick.

Three uses of “democracy” in the above tweet, yet absolutely no information is conveyed.

This is propaganda 101. As I explained recently, democracy is, indeed, dying because the state-form that brought it into existence is dying. But we are being conditioned to not care because “democracy” is a word that frumpy, irrelevant Obama repeats every 3 seconds. So it must be something useless and irrelevant, too. After the millionth solemn pronouncement that “our democracy is in danger because of something extremely trivial”, nobody takes democracy and its travails, whether real or hyped up, seriously anymore.

One huge transformation that took place in Ukraine since 2014 is that Ukrainians lost the desire to become “like the West.” Unsurprisingly, these past 8 years were the time when the West made it abundantly clear that it had lost its way. The West abjured its greatness and started undoing its achievements.

This is why Arestovich says today, “you’d think that nothing is worse than dying in a war but there is. It would be worse to turn into a bunch of digital sheep who sit at home alone glued to their screens and wearing their little masks because they are terrified of life. We are fighting today to not be Russia but also to not be that version of the West.”

The West will be great, confident, proud, and capable of incredible achievements again. But the center of the West will shift. And that’s OK.