A Gut Punch in the Culture Fight | The American Spectator

The saddest news clip I saw last week was not Fox News calling the Virginia Attorney General race for a man who wants me dead, and will make that outcome likelier when I move to the state next year. Nor New York City’s Mayor-Elect screaming communist blather in his victory speech. Both were painful, but neither as painful as a Good Morning, Britain interview with a 100-year-old English D-Day veteran. The magnificent hero, Alec Penstone, turned an intended fluff segment into one of the most melancholic reflections ever on the wretched state of the nation he fought for, and his brothers bled and died for. And his words rang like warning bells to this side of the Pond, if too late for Virginia and New York.

To the co-hostess’s standard question on what his message is for Remembrance Sunday (the UK’s day to honor the casualties of the two world wars on the second Sunday in November), Penstone gave a heartwrenching reply. “My message is I can see in my mind’s eye rows and rows of white stones, all the hundreds of our friends that gave their lives, for what? I can say it tonight. No, I’m sorry. Their sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that there is now.”

At which point, the female co-host tried to shut him down, but the male co-host amazingly let Penstone finish, sensing, I think, a brutal hard-learned truth rarely broadcast. “What we fought for was their freedom, that even now is downsight worse than when we fought for it.” This was too much for the female co-host, who essentially concluded the interview. But she couldn’t conclude the pain in Penstone’s face and eyes.

Exuding the near forgotten grace and class typical of the Greatest Generation, Penstone never criticized or insulted. He mourned. He physically, sincerely lamented the dissolution of his once proud England, a land we non-British came to admire through the art of its titans, none anywhere greater than Shakespeare:

This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This was the once Great Britain that Penstone and his mates waded into hell for, only to see it dissolve around them under the rule of spineless fools unfit to lace their boots. And there’s plenty of them here in America, several of whom won elections last Tuesday. But unlike the UK — and much of the Anglosphere, such as Canada — America is in the fourth stage of the anacyclosis, the Cycle of Regimes: Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make bad times. Bad times make strong men. And here, now, the strong men are in charge, though not in Virginia and New York.

Zohran Mamdani may be New York’s mayoral counterpart to fellow Marxist Muslim London-wrecker Sadiq Khan, but unfortunately for Mamdani, and thankfully for the country, Donald Trump is no Keir Starmer — or Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major, or any PM of both parties post the great Margaret Thatcher, who betrayed Penstone and his heroes by inviting a foreign invasion such as they repelled.

Just six years ago next month, the Conservatives won the largest electoral victory since Thatcher’s in 1987, greatly on their promise to reduce Muslim immigration. “I can bring the numbers down,” promised Boris Johnson. Instead, they did worse than nothing. They let it triple, from 226,000 then to 745,000 now. And the British people had no choice but to punish the Tories, knowing full well the Labour Party would be horrifyingly worse.

Britain is now essentially an occupied country. All the signs are there, including a police force that arrests public critics of mass immigration while allowing immigrants to commit a staggeringly large percentage of crime, including the rape of young girls. The same thing could have happened here in America.

It started to before Trump won a second time. It would have exploded if he had lost. And it will if Democrats ever again win national office — or for that matter, Republicans like the two Presidents Bush. Yet this is a real danger not only because of a political failure but a cultural one.

Politically, 54 percent of black women voted for Mamdani in New York. Not much can be done about that for now, since that group was long ago captured by progressive government programs, race hustlers, and media propaganda. Even a black woman gubernatorial candidate (Winsome Earle-Sears) in Virginia couldn’t break their liberal chains. Yet 47 percent of white women voted for Mamdani, and against their own safety. So that when the heroes of 9/11 and the War on Terror look at New York City in the near future, they’ll feel much as Penstone does about England. That “their sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that there is now.” A cultural change can save American women and by extension the United States.

Rip away the mendacious feminist chokehold on the arts and media.

Restore traditional values and romance to the screen and page.

Elevate female role models like Erika Kirk and, yes, Sidney Sweeney, who last week embarrassed a GQ interviewer by dismissing her call to apologize for her American Eagle ads. “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” Sweeney said.

Pity feminist role models like Jimmy Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNearney (of course not Kimmel), a producer on his barely-watched show, who last week told a podcaster that she’s severed relations with family members who voted for Trump. “To me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family.” And she lied to her son about Trump, poisoning their minds against conservatives. “We told Billy that Donald Trump got Daddy’s show taken away for a little while. And Billy goes, ‘I hate Donald Trump.’ And I was like, ‘Me too, buddy.’” No wonder the YouTube video link appears to have been removed — for abject, and deserved, embarrassment.

Persuade women that real men like Alec Penstone can protect them better than the government. And we’ll never have to watch an American version of his tragic interview.

READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:

Goodbye, Doctor Woke

Seven Chillers Without Drillers for Halloween

The Fall and Rise of American Culture

Have yourselves a romantic little Christmas. Get your love interest my Yuletide romance fantasy novel, The Christmas Spirit. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever fine books are still sold.