This is not going to be a scholarly treatise based on the historical geopolitics of Russian and Ukraine. This piece will be more of a rebuke for the unbearably oppressive number of people who don’t seem to understand that . . .
A - one can be anti-Putin, anti-Biden, or anti-Zelensky and still in no way be pro either of the other two, at the same time. (Anti-All the Above is also an acceptable answer.)
B - one can be anti-Russian expansionism, anti-Ukrainian corruption, and also anti-Biden spending our nation into oblivion while pounding the drumbeat for WWIII without Constitutional, Congressional authorization.
C - one can also be totally clueless as to what’s going on, because, frankly . . . we all are. (But if you’ve spoken to Putin, Biden, and Zelensky, please, do tell.)
I’ve written since the beginning of this war that I don’t believe a word from either of that triumvirate, precisely because I know what I don’t know. (You can figure out what that means, for yourself.) But what I do know, is that YOU don’t know either.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, okay? We know what we feel, or we know what we think we know based solely on our individual life experiences, educational paths, and uniquely evolved worldviews. We, therefore, know which of these aforementioned actors we lean toward trusting the least. Maybe we’ve even got family, nationality, or other historical ties affecting our personal inclinations.
Can we at least agree on that?
So let’s begin with an inconvenient truth. Do you know why all those European “democratic socialist” nations can afford those cushy welfare systems, which provide “free” health care to their citizens? It’s because they don’t have to pay for their own national defense. Yours and yours truly’s tax dollars actually pay for their cradle-to-grave services and their ability to sleep at night without worrying about the likes of Stalin-through-Putin rolling tanks on their quaint little hovels. This, while we in the good ole US of A get the shit sandwich version of health insurance plans known as Obamacare. Which he, aka "Barry Soetoro,” lied to us about, promising we’d each save an average of $2500 per year under his magical mystery medical plan. (Remember that?) Instead, most of us watched our insurance premiums skyrocket, and even if we liked our doctor, we couldn’t keep our doctor.
Not including Russia, the rest of Europe has over 600 million people. (Russia, less than 150 million.) With a taxpayer base almost twice the size of America, why can’t those European countries reallocate the necessary resources — maybe roll back some of those social welfare programs — and fund their own defense while also providing weapons to Ukraine? At a time when many of these nations are legitimately trembling in fear, Finland and Sweden giving up their cherished neutrality to join NATO, and other countries rushing to refurb their old nuclear fallout shelters, why are we again being forced to accept greater inflationary spending and fiat money creation so they can keep their social safety nets intact?
The hard cold truth is that Europe can afford its own defense and supply Ukraine’s current weapons requirements, but they are spoiled by the addictive soma flowing from America’s economic teat. If we and they got our respective national priorities and responsibilities in proper order, Europe wouldn’t even have to ramp up its own military-industrial complex. They could simply purchase weapons systems from us. (Boeing and Raytheon have really cool blow-things-to-smithereens toys for sale.)
Bottom line. Ukraine is simply not our war.
Many American conservatives are now drooling over Putin’s latest speeches against American immorality and our abandonment of Christian values and virtue. They forget that Hitler also chastised America for our historical treatment of blacks. Both are absolutely correct in what they said. But Hitler would have treated Blacks far worse. (There just aren’t that many blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan black folk, ya know?) And I’ve not witnessed very many Christian values and virtues in Putin’s own life story: from his time in the KGB; the assassinations of his political opponents; the arrest and imprisonment of dissident protestors; to the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian civilians. (But y’all feel free to provide for me chapter and verse on all of those.)
I tweeted this yesterday, to much scorn and ridicule from Putin’s defenders:
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul-producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek. A goodly apple rotten at the heart.” -Shakespeare
I generally take world leaders at their word when they say they intend to do bad things. You know . . . like when they state their divinely-directed calling to invade sovereign nations and reconquer ancient territories they formerly possessed. When they try to sweeten their domestic and international appeal through the rhetoric of rectitude and righteousness . . . I regard that as propaganda.
In addition to calling the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin also lamented thusly in his 2005 state of the nation address:
"We turned into a completely different country. And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost," adding that 25 million Russians suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia in all those newly independent, former Soviet satellite republics. Something he called "a major humanitarian tragedy.”
Putin forgot to mention that his former KGB bosses forcibly relocated those Russian people against their will, and against the desires of those recipient nations’ peoples. To me, it seems the Christlike thing would have been to simply invite back that diaspora. Those who wanted to come back home could have had their way paid by a portion of the billions in riches accrued by Mother Russia’s new and growing oligarchy. I’ll bet those previously-invaded countries would have even chipped in a Ruble or two to divest themselves of their Russian-speaking population, taking away one of Putin’s primary rationales for the military reacquisition of those lands.
I’ve been to Soviet Russia. I’ve been interrogated and strip-searched by the KGB. I was trained at a Slavic missions base in Sweden, where I was first taught that people do not easily change their stripes after a thousand years of oppression and a historical propensity to be ruled by one totalitarian regime after another. It becomes genetically encoded. (An actual science with which I am fascinated.) Those who yet desire freedom do whatever is necessary to leave the land of their oppressors. Those who have more than a single liberty strand in their DNA risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to throw off tyranny and start their own countries. Those who choose to remain in bondage are weak, and that weakness is passed through the gene pool for generation after generation, forever either surrendering to or democratically electing the next despot into power over themselves.
I’ve also been to Ukraine. Touring with a band in 1981, we performed an illegal concert in Kiev, where in the pre-dawn darkness we transferred our sound system and instruments from our tour bus onto a Kiev city bus. In Ukraine, as well as Russia, there are pockets of people who are willing to risk all for freedom, despite their generational, genetic curse. I long for all those peoples to live free, but it’s not our responsibility to nation build in our founding’s image.
That's me in the yellow t-shirt lifting a road case into the front door of bus.
Photo by Dean Wynkoop.
Ukraine is not our war. Our sovereign territory was not attacked by Russia. Citing George Washington’s farewell address and his Doctrine of Unstable Alliances, Thomas Jefferson implored us to, “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none” . . . yada, yada . . . blah, blah, blah . . . you know, the thing. As I said, European nations can cut back on their social welfare nets long enough to make huge purchases from American, British, and Israeli defense contractors and support Ukraine to their fearful hearts’ desires. It’s time for them to step up to their own plate. We’ve done our part, for them, for over 100 years and we’re broke and our dollar is in decline partly because of that effort.
So, Europe. Say “thank you,” and learn to take care of yourselves. I’d like to know that neither my son nor his children will have to die on your battlefields, or be broke and in debtors servitude to our own nation’s fiscal malfeasance for having propped up your phony democratic socialism experiments . . . at our expense.
Can’t I ache for the Ukrainian people, yet still not trust a word that comes out of Zelensky’s mouth? Can’t I utterly distrust Putin while grieving for the Russian families whose sons, husbands, and fathers are being slaughtered by the thousands in a war they themselves want no part of? Can’t I also fear the very real possibility that Biden’s puppetmasters — and those in the WEF, with whom they are aligned — are dragging us into a war designed to accelerate the “need for a Great Reset?”
Can I not legitimately hold all those things in my mind at the same time?
I don’t care what you think about Nazis in eastern Ukraine, that country’s germ warfare labs, the Biden family’s ties to Ukrainian money-laundering schemes, or which territory behind some ever-metamorphosing border used to belong to whichever other nation . . . 30, 80, or 1,000 years ago. This is not our war, and my son doesn’t deserve to die on a Ukrainian battlefield for any of those reasons. To fight against that possibility, I do still have in this country both my vote and a 1st Amendment right that allows me to speak out against our own leaders’ actions and words which risk plunging the entire world into war, yet again.
I have a friend who worked as a foreign correspondent for Russian Television. Some time ago, I had lunch with him at a Georgetown pub, where he expressed his desire to be relocated back to Moscow. He told me that he couldn’t fathom the idea of his children being subjected to the immorality of America’s current woke culture. His wish was unexpectedly granted when Russia invaded Ukraine, as his entire bureau staff was called home to Moscow. Once home, he became horrified by what Putin was doing. Now, he desperately wants to bring his family back to America, to escape Putin’s Russia — even fearing he may be conscripted and sent to the Ukrainian battlefield. (I’m working with a group to help him and his family leave Russia.)
Disgraceful and embarrassing as is America at present, there are still millions from across the globe seeking refuge here.
Again . . . you don’t know what you think you know. Neither do I. If we did know what was going on in the Oval Office, behind the walls of the Kremlin, and through the Great Gates of Kiev, (sorry . . . Kyiv, now), citizens of all three nations would likely overthrow our respective governments before the next sunrise.
We’re lied to every day by all parties involved. We each have our own biases and presuppositions about how the world works and how we each think it should work. All three governments are corrupt to their core and each of our leaders and their administrations are propaganda machines. Ukraine is led by an actor who used to pretend to play piano with his penis. The Russian tyrant writes his own scripts about his special calling in history, to recover his nation’s historical boundaries. Our American figurehead simply mumbles, bumbles, and mangles someone else’s words — fed to him on a teleprompter — so he can earn his bedtime ice cream cone.
with his penis, on Ukrainian Television
The only close-to-legitimate rationale I’ve heard for us sending over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine is the fact America pressured them to give up the Soviet nuclear weapons based inside their borders after the fall of the Evil Empire. Making the case that we are therefore obligated to compensate for that alleged “error” by means of our own perpetual sacrifice. Except, those missiles were aimed at us, and Russia was democratizing in the 90s, supposedly entering a new era of cooperation with the rest of the free world. And Ukraine, being the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, had no manner of earned trustworthiness with which to inherit and maintain an aging nuclear arsenal.
Oops. Sorry. Still not our problem. (See: Get Off Your Ass Europe, above.) It’s simply not our war to be waged, either directly or pissing off Putin by proxy.
In America, it’s called the Department of “Defense” for a reason. That’s either Orwellian doublespeak or its originally intended, literal title. Either way, it most certainly is not supposed to be the Department of Sacrifice our Blood and Treasure in Every Border Conflict on the Planet Without Congressional Authority. But I’ll be damned if that’s not what it has become since the name was changed from the Department of War in 1949.
I’m not an isolationist, but I am a card-carrying non-interventionist. If some nation wants a war with us, fine . . . attack us. Assuming we haven’t forgotten how to respond to such a legitimate reason for war. But, hell . . . back in 1941, even the wheelchair-bound, socialist rat-bastard FDR knew when it was time to fight back. Our contentious political factions united in that effort and Congress gave us a Constitutional declaration of war. Because we believed the cause was just. As such, sons of politicians and our nation’s most wealthy families answered the call and gave their lives for the freedom of those back home. Mere boys and the infirm even lined up at our armed services’ recruiting stations, lying about their age and physical abilities, in the hope they too could defend our country and liberties.
But I’m not sending my son to Ukraine on behalf of any of these corrupt leaders, or for any of the stated reasons in their agitprop-laden speeches. Not without first engaging my 1st Amendment rights in both criticizing my government and chastising so many of my countrymen who are now rationalizing the legitimacy of our involvement in this war . . . for whatever their/your reason. And if I lose this battle using my vote and my Macbook keyboard . . . well . . . we’ll just have to see what’s next.
