I confess that I take the Ukraine invasion personally.
I am ashamed that I am rooting for them to kill their invaders. I hope there is a way to stop short of that.
Ironically, my grandparents were born in Kyiv and fled the country to escape the Russians. The other family members didn’t run away from the Nazis in time and were killed in the most awful of ways.
There are none left.
It wasn’t a great country for my people, but somehow, it made me feel more acutely. My grandparents always spoke of loving Kyiv, then Kiev.
A part of it is in my blood.
Thomas Paine wrote that there was no more glorious way to perish than fighting for freedom against tyrants.
That could have been my grandmother and grandfather; it could have been me. Today, millions of Ukrainians are willing to die rather than be subjugated by monsters.
How awful that this is not a new story, as evil and dishonest as it is.
Arrogant, broken, and sociopathic men of all colors have been invading, slaughtering, imprisoning, and terrorizing innocent women, children, and men for all of human history.
No one can calculate the bloodshed and destruction the male gender of humanity has unleashed upon the world – try to add up the innocent casualties of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Assad, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, and now, Putin.
Like Putin and his eager footstool Donald Trump, most of these men are twisted and ruthless monomaniacs whose grossly inflated egos make them creatures out of Greek Tragedy, doomed to fail because their hubris overwhelms compassion and judgment or common decency.
Don’t be fooled by all the media hype; Alexandr Putin will choke on the blood he has shed. If you read your history, his story is written again and again. He might or might not win in the short run, but he can’t win in the long run.
He bragged that his invasion would be swift and bloodless. He has already failed in that.
Ukraine is a big country with more than 30-40 million people. Modern warfare has taught us that Thomas Paine was right – conquering proud and patriotic people is never as easy as it seems. In modern times, it has been almost impossible.
By blustering and lying for so long, Putin has turned Ukraine into a vast guerrilla nation, just waiting for the chance to fight with their assault rifles and Molotov cocktails.
Charred Russian tanks and convoys are already lining Ukrainian roads.
Bodies of Russian soldiers are already heading home in plywood coffins. Doesn’t this sound familiar to us, whose very powerful, lavishly-funded, well-equipped, and well-trained Army was defeated year after year by a group of religious fanatics in sandals and scarves?
For years, didn’t we hear that we could never lose such a conflict? We were so powerful, and they were so weak.
Every time I read the Russian Army can’t be defeated in this vast and now united country, I thought of the scenes at the Kabul Airport last summer. And then I think of Vietnam and Iraq.
War is a horrible thing; always, the men who make and fight wars never seem to give up causing them and never seem to remember what happened in the previous ones. They care nothing for any lives but their own.
It is still so easy to send other people off to die.
And haven’t we learned that it never turns out the way everybody thinks and promises us it will?
How horrific that all of these people die because one man wants to be the next Peter The Great. Trump might think it’s brilliant – he’s probably wetting himself fantasizing about it – but the best military historians don’t believe it has a chance to work in the way Putin thinks it will.
Of course, Trump thinks his friend Putin is “brilliant.” It’s so Trumpian. Putin is what Trump would love to be if he had balls instead of tweets.
Trump’s fatal flaw is that he keeps inadvertently revealing the truth about himself, even though he is a compulsive liar. He can’t see past his footstools.
Putin is a true psychopath; Trump is just a pathetic old wannabe with ridiculous hair. But unlike his friend Putin, I believe that he still has a soul. Lying is instinctive for him, like a scared little boy on the edge of being punished; killing is not.
Putin claims he is invading to “de-Nazify” the country. How curious that he doesn’t mention the Ukrainian President is Jewish? Shameless lying is the tool of the modern monster all over the world.
I can’t help thinking that truth still matters; why else would people like Putin and Trump lie so often? The cruel monarchs of old didn’t need to lie; they just took what they wanted.
Truth matters, and it will prevail, always, in its own time and way.
Putin’s war is a heartbreaker, as are all wars.
The male ego isn’t just disturbing; it’s the greatest danger to the planet’s future. Wars are nearly the exclusive province of men; they are the greatest danger to the earth.
Ukraine taught my grandparents that it was essential to get to a democracy where they could be free to live their lives.
They were right in choosing America in the years before we became lazy and took being free for granted.
Putin is ending that lethargy, just as Trump did in 2020. The extremists in Washington are right about the “woke,” They can’t grasp its real meaning.
The difference between Donald Trump and Alexandr Putin is that Trump is terrified of his weaknesses, and Putin doesn’t believe he has any.
Much of our country has forgotten the price of our freedom, how much blood fathers and brothers and cousins and sisters have shed to keep our democracy safe, even with its faults and shortcomings.
Putin reminds us of what it means to take democracy for granted or undermine it.
Putin and Trump’s gift to the world is making countless people worldwide “woke” to democracy and the sacred advantage of being free.
I am one of those people.
In 2016 Donald Trump awakened me to how much this country meant to my parents, grandparents, and countless millions of others who have come here for hundreds of years to be free.
My response was to fight in my way – by doing good when I could rather than argue or hate. I found that many good people want the same thing.
We call ourselves the Army Of Good, and we make a lot of sounds rather than argue with people and lie on Facebook.
I see that so many in our country have been lazy about democracy, taken it for granted, and were turned to hate and anger by inept and dishonest politicians and demagogues like Trump.
We are turning into selfish and mean-spirited people. Trump and Putin may just be saving us from that fate. We see the consequences of bowing to them.
It seemed for some years that democracy was losing ground to hateful and corrupt monomaniacs and wannabe Kings and Czars.
But I am seeing – we all are seeing – what happens when citizens in a democracy get lazy and apathetic and get their ideas off of Facebook. People like Putin become brilliant, good turns to evil, the truth turns to lies, and hatred smothers compassion.
Putin’s war is a delusion, it can’t work, but it can exact an awful price. The world is changing, but not that much, and not yet.
Alexandr Putin and the people who praise him don’t care how many innocent people will be sacrificed to the male ego, which can never be satisfied or quashed. But much of the world does care, and they are horrified and frightened.
Can the world survive, men? Yes. Women and good men are rising all over the planet to fight back.
We will survive them. In this country, we know – many of us – what it is like to be free and control our own lives. I don’t believe we will give it up.
From the first, I saw Trump as a gift to me. He turned me away from anger and towards doing good. He made me appreciate what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.
Putin is bringing this message to much of the world.
Like Trump before him, Putin helped me understand the awful sacrifices my grandmother and grandfather made to get to this country so that I could live the life I wanted to live without being slaughtered, forced into an Army for much of my life, or gassed in a concentration camp.
Putin has made it clear what happens to freedom when people like this are tolerated or trivialized or allowed to invade and kill innocent citizens of another country.
Ukrainian citizens by the millions are lining up to get rifles and learn how to make Molotov cocktails. I feel for the many young Russians who will die alongside them for no reason at all other than one man’s delusions and monomania.
The very mention of war turns me to my stomach, but a part of me is stirred by the reports of thousands of Ukrainian citizens – including grandmothers and the elderly – lining up for rifles and guns.
It could be anyone, anywhere. Trumpism reminds us that we are not free from danger; there are all those “good people” eager to march with their Swastika flags.
I feel this latest and especially brutal and pointless waste of human life. I have faith that compassion and freedom will ultimately be more important than men’s egos.
I believe that people of faith and good hearts rise to stop them from ruining our world.
I wish the Ukrainian people courage and compassion. They have entered the hallowed halls of free people.
I can’t say to them that we are comrades, but a piece of my heart is fighting alongside you, in part in memory of my own family, who to their death called themselves Ukrainians.
I read this while planning to cook our big meal of the day Now this meal will be later than usual because I am going to read this right through again.
. Are you in touch with Slate or other sensible magazines.? You deserve a really big audience.
I m thinking of our Ukrainian friends, who live in Kiev and are now in their 60s they were exchange students living with us in Oregon when the USSR,began to disintegrate with the fall of the Berlin Wall. One if them had been a soldier in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He had become a convinced pacifist, married an American and is now in the US.
The world is in an appalling mess and I hope that Putin’s craziness will show many of our leaders that it is time to think and act clearly.
I have all the audience I want or need Erika my blog readers are big enough for me..
At times like this, Jon, I wish I had a God to pray to but there can be no God that would create the sorry species that we are. I feel deeply for any people who find themselves under attack and I feel for the soldiers who are sent to war by evil bastards like Putin. It will never end. It’s our legacy. Perhaps out there somewhere in the vast Universe there is a species that has wisdom and compassion. I hope so.
I have faith this will not end well for Putin…
I’m sure the Russian people don’t want this, if they knew the truth. But being an honest journalist is a death sentence in Russia. Putin is a monster just like Trump. Trump doesn’t like our press because (most of the journalists tell it like it is) in other words they call Trump out on his lies. How can he call Putin a genius when people are huddled underground in subways and Putin is bombing their homes. Putin is trying to reunite old Russia. I agree we have become lazy about our democracy. My grandparents fled Europe during World War I. Their house was bombed, starved and rape was all too common. I think my generation realize what we have here and our parents and grandparents fought for this freedom. My Dad and every man and woman I knew fought or served in some way during World War II. Many took bullets and either died or lived with injuries.
this post hit me to the core, Jon. TO the core. I do not have the deep connection you do……but i do have friends who live here now, who are Ukrainian, and have their entire families still there. Many have fled to Hungary, Poland and Spain in the past 4 days ……some refuse to leave and are resolute in that. I weep for them all…….. I also wish them courage and compassion……..and safety.
Susan M
Simply put, we need more women leaders. Men have screwed this up enough
President Volodymyr Zelensky os a “steely-eyed missile man”.
The guy in the Kremlin is clearly not.
Jon, thank you for posting these comments and that the ancestral genes run through the Ukraine, in you. There is a connection. I can barely read the news or watch it on television this week, it was so obvious Putin was lying about not invading Ukraine. He had his military lining the borders, did he think the world would be stupid enough to believe him. I wondered about ego-dementia maybe starting but not he’s just an out and out liar. Have you read Hilary Clinton & Louise Penny’s book, A State of Terror yet? It’s well worth reading. That’s all I will say. Other than if you read Timothy, Ch. 3 in the New Testament, it might seem prophetic in regard to today’s world.
Sandy Proudfoot
Sandy – I agree with the reading of State of Terror. It’s a real page-turner, and just riveting…should be a must-read for everyone.
Thank you so much Jon for your thoughts about what’s going on in Ukraine during this Putin invasion and how this ties into wars incited by evil men who want power throughout our history! What you have written is so moving and so inspirational. We are all praying for the Ukrainians and hope that they will win in the end. It is just unthinkable that one demented, power hungry egomaniac with nuclear weapons, could personally authorize the murder of so many Ukrainians as well as their own citizens that they are sending to be maimed or killed.
It look as tho the loans Trump got from Russia we now have reason to believe would never have happened and/or can get yanked in a heartbeat by Putin if Trump doesn’t do his bidding.
I saw a clip of Trump talking to a bunch of suck-ups at Mara Lago and he was going on and on about how smart and shrewd Putin was to attack because there was all this “land” he could get for basically pennies on the dollar. As if it’s just about real estate and not human suffering.
Moral bankruptcy too.
Re the balls, political scientist studies reveal broad sexual self-doubt in tyrants. The are surprisingly similar in their ways
Jon…
College attendance is thought of as an education. But nobody is broadly educated until they study history. Mark Twain reputedly said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
The most indelible education is that which we experience for ourselves; it’s the type that shapes our values. I was born in the USA before WWII, and feel for those who live through anything like that. Patriots are not limited to the USA.
My family has an Eastern European/Russian background, So, Putin’s comment about Ukraine being created by the USSR seemed so audacious that I needed to research it. Turns out that, while the Soviet Union might have created the Ukrainian SSR political entity, a Ukrainian culture existed in the Kievan Rus’ area (encompassing parts of modern Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus), beginning in the 9th century. Current historians disagree on its influence.
Your thoughts are always put together so well. You move all of us with your words. Good writers have just as much power as guns and machines … thanks for fighting the good fight and inspiring us to do the same.