Ah well, it’s business as usual. Europe may be about to tear itself apart and the apocalypse is back on the agenda, but we can be reassured by the fact that Sky News leads on a story about a celebrity differently-abled man on trial in Saarf Effrika for shooting his wife dead, while the Daily Mail’s top story is the Oscars – with special reference to a hideously sentimental, politically-correct piece of self-flagellation in the form of yet another film about slavery.

It’s at moments such as this that I recall the way John McEnroe used to address tennis umpires: “You cain’t be serious!”

Is the West utterly incapable of seriousness? That old Greek hymn keeps bobbing around in my head; apo doxeis ths doxhs porhumenoi. Except it’s not from glory to glory advancing but from trivia to trivia. Kierkegaard commented on the Danish people’s similar inability to be sombre and reflective in the face of catastrophe: “I sometimes think this is the way the world will end, celebrated by all the wits as a joke.” And what will we in England do then? Turn it into a new series on The Comedy Channel.

Western politicians and their accomplices in a debauched mass media cannot get into their heads the everlasting truth that nations do not act in accordance with abstract principles – international treaties, UN resolutions and the like – but in their perceived interests. Consequently, their politics and policies are about as worthless as Mr Chamberlain’s scrap of paper. Specifically, an assorted gang of radicals and anarchists in Kiev have deposed their elected president and set up their own government. In the face of this provocation, was there any other rational course of action for Russia than to take steps to secure her strategic presence in the east of Ukraine and particularly in the Crimea? The West’s response? President Obama, David Cameron, the vapid and vague William Hague and the paper-shufflers in the EU have sent Mr Putin to the naughty corner and told him he can’t have any more sweeties until he says he’s sorry to all the little girls he’s been bullying.

The West has already lost its soul – when it gave up the Christianity which created and formed the us. Now it has lost what remained of its mind as well.