Hello from Cambridge. I have been unable to connect to the Internet for over 24 hours, which is why I haven’t been able to approve comments or post new things. But what a glorious time off! I was at Oxford for an all-day symposium and lecture with the great Iain McGilchrist. Look who came to the event, and to dinner: Sir Tom Stoppard, Britain’s greatest living playwright.

Here’s the view from my window at Brasenose College:

Heaven on earth, if you ask me.

At dinner last night, Jonathan Price, an Oxford fellow (forgotten the college), gave me a tin of snuff as a gift. I was persuaded to try it. It was fine powder, for sniffing. Well, when in Oxford … . I tried it, and it was highly unpleasant at first, but it gave one a lovely feeling. This snuff is flavored with bergamot and rose. Smelled lovely, but goes off like gunpowder in one’s sinuses.

I don’t have much time now to write, because I have two talks to give in Cambridge today, but I did want to report something I heard at Oxbridge since arriving in England. I’m not going to specify where. I spoke to an American military officer who is over here now, and who was present at a social event where I was. One of my British friends asked me to tell the American about all the people who write to me from the US military, saying they want out, and will never let their children join, because of wokeness.

“Is that your experience too?” I asked.

He could only have been more emphatic if he had stood up and shouted, “YES!”

He said, “I would give my left arm to keep any of my children from going into the services.”

Why? Well, you know: wokeness. He gave some specific examples, which I don’t want to cite out of an abundance of caution, protecting him. He said that it’s hard to overstate how much ruin all this politicization has brought to the US military. There are plenty of people within the armed forces who hate this, but they also know that if you want to get ahead, you have to be politically “reliable” — meaning either woke, or no opponent of wokeness.

He said this is eviscerating esprit de corps, and is going to wreck military readiness. He told me, “Everybody” — meaning the American people — “needs to know this. They need to know what’s happening in our military.” The man was emphatic. This stuff is not being talked about nearly as much as it should be — no doubt (in my view) because the media think this is a great thing, and that normies shouldn’t know about it.

He said that a change of administration in Washington could help, but this kind of thing is buried deeply in the bureaucracy. He gave an example about a diversity trainer who is a military contractor, who is an actual Marxist. This is what the military has invited into its culture, and it’s transforming everything.

I was told later by somebody who knows this man that he is really one of the best. If this is what men like him are thinking, it’s hugely significant.

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