On it goes. As the West goes woke-mad, Putin doesn’t even recognize the most basic rights of gay people. And as our political and cultural elites turn our own history into one of shame, Putin presents a version of Russian history filled only with pride.

At the furthest extreme is America’s tiny white-nationalist fringe, such as those at the America First Political Action Conference at which Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at the end of February, days after Russia invaded Ukraine. That conference was made up of wannabe fascists who follow an especially repugnant little antisemite called Nick Fuentes. The crowd actually chanted “Putin, Putin, Putin” before the ignoramus congresswoman took to the stage. She pretends to have heard none of this.

More significant figures also tread close to this. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Donald Trump made comments which sounded ludicrously admiring of the “genius” Putin. Of the “peacekeeping” force Putin was threatening to send, Trump said that it was “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen.”…

At a conservative conference in Florida last November a fellow panelist compared the US military’s ridiculous “intersectional” recruitment ads with the crazy-tough-robots recruitment ads for the Russian army. As I pointed out then, such conservatives unwittingly fall for part of the Kremlin’s propaganda. Yes, our societies have problems. Yes, at times we can seem almost unsurvivably stupid. But it does not follow that we have to drool over the Kremlin’s version of itself.