The United States of Russia

-
The last day of February in 2025 was a milestone in the destruction of the United States of America. Trump and Vance invited Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House for a discussion on ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting devolved into a yell-fest from the two Americans. It was extraordinary to witness this exchange and to realize that American has fully sided with Vladimir Putin and authoritarianism. 

Vance – a Midwesterner who came to fame claiming "hillbilly values" ruined his western Ohio steel town, located on the banks of a river, elevation 700 ft., not in the mountains of Appalachia – said in this meeting, "... the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping his chest and pretending that the president of the United States' words mattered more than the president of the United States' action."

There was no diplomacy coming from the American president and his trusty "attack dog" (as the NY Times called Vance after his display of peevish rage.) America's leaders invited the beleaguered president of an invaded country and lambasted him for opposing Putin. Vance barely let Zelensky get a word in, and attacked him for not being grateful enough to America, claiming Zelensky has never thanked America for our generosity. There have been multiple times that Zelensky has thanked America in the last three years for its support. 

What we say yesterday in the Oval Office were the words and actions of a president of the United States who has fully aligned with Putin. What we saw yesterday was the vice president of the United States, a Yale Law alumnus attacking and lying about the Ukraine president in front of a media circus. 

It was a terrible moment in world history, the day that the United States openly pivoted to support the corrupt authoritarian goals of Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, an enemy until now of the United States. Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, analyzes five failures of the American leaders in this meeting:

1) Failure of hospitality – America invited a democratically elected leader into the Oval Office and "by yelling and interrupting, we were inhospitable today." 

2) Failure of decency – Zelensky represents a country invaded by Putin. "One can have different opinions about how to bring this war to an end, and that's normal. What's not normal, what's indecent, is to yell at a Ukrainian, including the president, about your opinion. To yell at them that they are wrong, when they've experienced that you have not... that's a failure of decency."

3) Failure of democracy – Zelensky is a democratically elected president, supported by his voters. In the Oval Office, Zelensky is not standing alone, "...he's also representing people. People who have to stand up stand for things, people who've had stood up for things. As a democratically elected president, he has to show a certain dignity..." 

4) Failure of strategy – "What we witnessed today, all too clearly, was the beginnings of an American alliance with Russia. And this is something which is very hard to understand in any kind of strategic calculation." Russia is our enemy. They are not our friend. And it is inexplicable to see America toss aside our European allies for an alliance with a nation that will provide no gain for us in any way. 

5) Failure of independence – What Trump and Vance said in that meeting has been expressed before - by Russian leaders. We are reduced to parroting Putin's talking points in a pretense of diplomacy. "There was nothing said in that encounter which hadn't been said by Russians before." 

We, all of us who watched Trump and Vance indecently attack a democratically elected leader of a nation invaded by Russia, saw the end of an era, the end of America's independence from Russia, the end of America as a supporter of democratic values. 

We are in a terrible place as a nation. I don't know where we will go from here, but I know that millions of Americans will support Trump no matter what he says or does, and that is terrifying. We are 1933 Germany, and the Nazis are gaining power and control with the complicit support of oligarchs, business leaders and too many regular Americans. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The October Rose

-
Image
‘Tis the season to bring love and joy into the world – and here’s one of the loveliest stories of the year… It’s a story that begins in October 2008, when the economy is in a state of collapse; the culture is in crisis, and faith in humanity – at least, my faith in humanity – is at an all-time low. It is precisely at this time that my next-door neighbor, Annie Jennings, comes home from high school bearing an orange rose. She presents this flower to her mother, Ellen, with the announcement that she is one of the “Sweet 16,” a member of Libertyville High School’s Homecoming Court. Annie is not quite 18 years old, a high school senior with stick-straight, sandy blond hair, glasses and a big smile. We hire her to feed our cat whenever we head out of town and we leave knowing our cat is in very good hands. So when I learn of her selection as a member of the homecoming court, I am intrigued. This is the girl who watches my cat, after all. Ellen is curious about what it means to...
Read more

"Good-bye to all that..."

-
Harry Patch died last week in England. It was the expected outcome for a man of 111. But it is a notable death because with Harry Patch goes the last living memory of trench warfare experienced nearly a century ago during The Great War - known now as World War 1. This story on CNN.com is a wonderful summary of Patch's life. He was a plumber before and after his stint in the trenches. He saw some of the worst warfare man has ever experienced: "He fought and was seriously wounded in Ypres, Belgium, in 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele, in which 70,000 of his fellow soldiers died -- including three of his close friends." That's a placid little sentence to describe the slaughter of 70,000 men. A horror Patch refused to talk about until he turned 100 years old. Here's a YouTube video that shows some photos and film footage from the Battle of Passchendaele: You can hear the survivor's voice in this video shot at Passchendaele about two years ag...
Read more

On the failure of "the invisible hand" to influence our financial sector

-
In Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence , one of the issues he explores is the failure of economic populism in Latin America. Here are his thoughts: " The dictionary defines 'populism' as a political philosophy that supports the rights and power of the people, usually in opposition to a privileged elite. I see economic populism as a response by an impoverished populace to a failing society, one characterized by an economic elite who are perceived as oppressors. Under economic populism, the government accedes to the demands of the people, with little regard for either individual rights or the economic realities of how the wealth of a nation is increased or even sustained." So in Greenspan's view as a self-described Libertarian Republican, economic populism comes to life in "failing societies" that have significant income inequality and are dominated by an economic elite. And in Greenspan's mind, it is not the government that can make t...
Read more