Thank you Mick. What resonated most for me is that Zelensky and his fellow citizens are not only a rebuke to dictators but also to many western political leaders. Perhaps Ukraine is such a shining example of will (not Nietzsche’s but the will for everything good about freedom and democracy) it presents an inconvenient truth for too many people to continue existing. I don’t mean to be cynical but am trying to explain the inaction to help them.
Mick, collectively in the “West” we should be ashamed of our failures to support fully Ukraine and defeat Russia. From the cowardly fear of “escalation” which increasingly looks like appeasement, to the even more cowardly siding with Russia as the GOP (Group of Putin) in the US has done just to grab power and destroy US democracy we have failed.
Even worse, so many in the West have lost interest. In the summer of 2022 the signs of support in Spain (where my wife is from) for Ukraine were everywhere. Now? Not so much. In the US, the support is there but is drowned out by the small minority in Congress with the help of a complicit media. We have all grown too comfortable and take what we have for granted.
It feels eerily like the 1930s…the west left the Spanish Republic to be overrun by Franco and the facists which became a proxy war between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The west literally threw Czechoslovakia under the bus, which had one of the best militaries in Europe and had the high ground in the so-called Sudetenland and could have repelled the Nazis. Why? Fear of escalation! 90 years later have we forgotten those lessons? It seems so.
Collectively in the West, we have forgotten…the generation that made the ultimate sacrifice to remind us of the dangers is now in the past. We have become arrogant and lazy refusing to study and understand the history, and as Santayana quipped, we are now doomed to repeat it. We have even forgotten the simple schoolyard lessons that bullies need to be confronted and smacked twice as hard as they give.
Thank you Mick. What resonated most for me is that Zelensky and his fellow citizens are not only a rebuke to dictators but also to many western political leaders. Perhaps Ukraine is such a shining example of will (not Nietzsche’s but the will for everything good about freedom and democracy) it presents an inconvenient truth for too many people to continue existing. I don’t mean to be cynical but am trying to explain the inaction to help them.
I am in awe of what Ukraine has accomplished over the last two years. It's a shame that light shines this brightly only in horrific darkness.
Mick, collectively in the “West” we should be ashamed of our failures to support fully Ukraine and defeat Russia. From the cowardly fear of “escalation” which increasingly looks like appeasement, to the even more cowardly siding with Russia as the GOP (Group of Putin) in the US has done just to grab power and destroy US democracy we have failed.
Even worse, so many in the West have lost interest. In the summer of 2022 the signs of support in Spain (where my wife is from) for Ukraine were everywhere. Now? Not so much. In the US, the support is there but is drowned out by the small minority in Congress with the help of a complicit media. We have all grown too comfortable and take what we have for granted.
It feels eerily like the 1930s…the west left the Spanish Republic to be overrun by Franco and the facists which became a proxy war between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The west literally threw Czechoslovakia under the bus, which had one of the best militaries in Europe and had the high ground in the so-called Sudetenland and could have repelled the Nazis. Why? Fear of escalation! 90 years later have we forgotten those lessons? It seems so.
Collectively in the West, we have forgotten…the generation that made the ultimate sacrifice to remind us of the dangers is now in the past. We have become arrogant and lazy refusing to study and understand the history, and as Santayana quipped, we are now doomed to repeat it. We have even forgotten the simple schoolyard lessons that bullies need to be confronted and smacked twice as hard as they give.