There is an absence of any kind of idealism that is a necessary precondition of probity, so that bad faith prevails almost everywhere.
Excellent point. Without idealism, without the idea that there is something greater than our individual selves, without ideals to aspire to we sink to the cynicism and hopelessness that is symptomatic of leftism.
Chirac boasts of hedonism. In Britain and Ukraine that means drunkeness, as far as I can tell.