Sympathy for the Devil, and None for You

Nearly two weeks ago, I wrote a post with a headline ripped from a Yeats poem called The Second Coming. 

I am by no means a literate man by 19th- and early 20th-century standards, when people were still taught literature and history as a matter of course. I like to read, of course, and have taken up the casual study of history in middle age, but my focus in my youth was philosophy, not literature or history. 

Still, even I know of Yeats’ poem, because it captured the spirit of Europe after the horrors of World War I, which wiped away the optimism of the 19th century and presaged the horrors of the 20th. 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

World War I wiped away the old order, with all its flaws and virtues. It’s hard to believe now, but war in 1914 was more similar to war in 1870 or even 1815 than in 1918. The French cavalry in 1914 wore essentially the same uniform as they did when they rode with Napoleon, and had much the same mission and values. 

 Prior to World War I, science, technology, and the mastery of Nature were seen as ensuring a brighter and wealthier future for mankind; during the war, they unleashed horrors never before seen in human history. Death on an industrial scale.

And 20 years later, Europeans doubled down on the horror, creating literal factories of death, complete with smokestacks. 

It’s easy to see why Yeats and many of his contemporaries despaired, and it is just as easy to understand why many people born in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s regained an optimism that seemed lost in the prior decades. It seemed like, at least for those of us in the West, history was taking a break, and that perhaps the optimism of the fin de siècle was merely premature. 

I don’t believe that, at least not fully, anymore. I, too, shared the optimism that came with America’s rebirth in the 80s and the fall of communism in the early 90s, and marveled at the growth of the internet, the telecommunications revolution, and the technological achievements of our tech geniuses who are opening up the heavens. 

But I also believe that the spiritual sickness that Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Yeats identified still poisons the soul of the West, and I fear we will never fully recover. There will be an America that thrives, perhaps, but only in pockets. Western Europe has already fallen, although the new Dark Age has yet to fall over that land.

I was thinking about these dark topics once again, being triggered by a few news stories. Beege wrote about one of them on Monday—the story of the Scottish girls who were vilified for defending themselves against predator migrants. The media and the establishment slandered them, they were charged with carrying illegal weapons, and their story was used as an example of white supremacist racism against poor, innocent migrants. 

Start by condemning the grovelers and collaborators in positions of authority in Britain who aided the rape epidemic of their own people or turned a blind eye to their responsibilities.

Both civil and criminal prosecutions. https://t.co/H4zEpk18hE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2025

Four months later, the police had to admit that the girls were right and the migrants were, indeed, sexual predators. 

A man and woman have appeared in court accused of assaulting two girls in Dundee.

Prosecutors allege Ilia Belov, 22, approached and followed four girls, who were aged between 12 and 14, and made sexual remarks to them before seizing one of the girls and pushing her to the ground.

His co-accused Nadjedzha Belova, 20, is accused of repeatedly seizing and pulling another of the girls by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and punching her on the head to her injury.

The case was continued without plea to a case management hearing on 6 March at Dundee Sheriff Court.

Four months. The predators roamed the streets for four months as the British establishment slandered the girls who were just trying to defend themselves. 

UPDATE: The man who was arrested by ICE in these videos is facing first-degree drug charges for possessing over 50 pounds of meth https://t.co/jazlVXBMvr pic.twitter.com/NicTOjdY3g

— Anthony Gockowski (@AntGockowski) February 10, 2026

It’s the same story you see all over the place. British police and government officials covered up actual rape gangs, arrested victims, and shamed them as prostitutes for the crime of being raped by Pakistani migrants, and threw women in jail for pointing out that these “Asian” migrants are predators. You can be thrown in jail for calling a rapist a rapist, and get a longer sentence than he does. 

The transcript is insane, where he explicitly says he feels no remorse. https://t.co/mBWBG2UghI

— memetic_sisyphus (@memeticsisyphus) February 10, 2026

Things are hardly better here in America. Predators stalk the land, and the “justice” system shills for them, bleeds for their pain, and cares little for the suffering that the predators impose on their victims. 

INFURIATING: A savage thug who brutally beat a random stranger nearly to DEATH on a Chicago CTA Pink Line train—leaving the victim in a coma, with traumatic brain injury, broken ribs, fractured skull, and months in the hospital—WALKS FREE with ZERO prison time.

45-year-old Jesus… pic.twitter.com/DlhWiwd2WJ

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) January 30, 2026

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to ensure that drug traffickers, gang members, rapists, and pedophiles can roam the streets of America. An entire political party is dedicated to the proposition that rapists who came to America illegally have more rights than their victims. 

We focus mostly on the political divide in this country, but that divide is merely an epiphenomenon of something much deeper: a spiritual darkness that has invaded the West, has been growing since the early 19th century, and came to dominate the 20th. We have seen the collapse of Christianity—it barely exists in many European countries—and a complete loss of cultural confidence. A substantial fraction of the West’s population is actively hostile to Western values and is quite open about wanting to destroy it, and that includes much of the cultural and political elite. 

Giancarlo Esposito of “Breaking Bad” is openly talking about a violent revolution where potentially millions of people die to bring about a “new world”… while speaking to the press at a glitzy film festival.

Champagne socialism in a nutshell. pic.twitter.com/LZqk2efRTr

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 29, 2026

“Decolonization,” they call it. In Europe, it is Islamization, or a mix of Marxism and Islam. In America, it is more explicitly Marxist, although the sympathy with Islam is still substantial. 

We live in a society where children are used as experimental rats in bizarre gender experiments, and Catholics cannot foster or adopt children unless they promise to take them to Pride parades and promote alphabet ideology. Some states will take away your children if you do not consent to medical mutilation for them. 

We are not really in an ideological battle so much as a spiritual one. America has, for some time, stood alone as a bulwark against the spiritual poison that took hold in Europe in the late 18th century. Nietzsche saw the spiritual rot, but his hope for a post-Christian Übermensch that transcended Christian values instead transmogrified into something truly demonic, demonstrating that post-Christian pretty much means apocalyptic. 

That’s why Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist in the world, now calls himself a “cultural Christian.” 

Richard Dawkins now defines himself as a ‘cultural Christian’

Yes, that Richard Dawkinspic.twitter.com/0E5InTYGqa

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 1, 2024

Unfortunately, Christianity is not a “philosophy,” but a faith, and while there may be individuals who can live as Christians without being Christians, societies as a whole cannot. Without a binding faith in anything other than vaporous “values” that can be manipulated at will, cultures become empty shells. Appetites are too strong, as any practicing Christian knows, even when you believe. When people don’t, appetites enter the spiritual hole. 

The elevating nature of belief is evident in art above all. The great works of Beethoven and Mozart have been replaced by Cardi B’s WAP:

Whores in this house
There’s some whores in this house
There’s some whores in this house
There’s some whores in this house (Hol’ up)
I said certified freak, seven days a week
Wet-ass pussy, make that pullout game weak, woo (Ah)

[Chorus: Cardi B]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, you fuckin’ with some wet-ass pussy
Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet-ass pussy
Give me everything you got for this wet-ass pussy

[Verse 1: Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion]
Beat it up, nigga, catch a charge
Extra large and extra hard
Put this pussy right in your face
Swipe your nose like a credit card
Hop on top, I wanna ride
I do a kegel while it’s inside
Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes
This pussy is wet, come take a dive
Tie me up like I’m a surprise

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton interviewed Megan Thee Stallion and praised her performance in “WAP”. 

 

Yuck. 

How did we get here from there? People have written tomes on the topic, but we don’t need an explanation. 

We need an exorcist. 

Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!