Ukraine: Why it Matters (Simplified)

Today, February 24, 2022, marks the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It is the largest military action in Europe since WWII. Most Americas are likely to ignore this headline or simply think it doesn’t impact them. For right-wing Americans, this news does matter insofar as they are fans of Vladmir Putin. And this is a part of why this invasion matters both globally and for the U.S.

 

Vladmir Putin, a dictator by any measure, is a former Soviet Union-era Kremlin operative who has been seething over the collapse of the Soviet Union since 1991. He blames the collapse on NATO nations; his distain for NATO is no secret. Putin’s goal with Ukraine – as with Crimea and similar former Soviet territories previously – is to ‘put the band back together’ and put NATO on notice what with Poland, a NATO nation, being right next door to Ukraine.  

 

Putin’s pretext for the invasion, which he said he had no intention of in recent weeks, is to destroy Ukraine’s military capability as they supposedly pose a threat to Russia. This is a fanciful justification. But this justification is important as if the invasion is successful despite otherwise ‘severe’ sanctions (Putin has never cared about sanctions) this will provide other authoritarian leaders a reason to invade whomever they want under the pretext of preemptively defending themselves. On a more basic level, this invasion expands the power of an authoritarian leader the world could do without, especially when you consider the currently warm relationship between Russia and China. The world is trending towards more and more authoritarian regimes. Even in the U.S. both the far-left and far-right fringes would love nothing more than absolute power.

 

[Certainly, the far-left will condemn this particular military action because they can’t verbalize their true intentions, but seeing Putin in action is likely to embolden the worst factions of the American far-right. Just a few days ago, Donald Trump praised Putin.]

 

Not only does this military action disrupt stability in Europe, but it further destabilizes politics in the U.S. Already this morning I’ve heard the question, “Why now?” Consider that the mid-term elections are a few months away and if President Biden reacts poorly, a GOP wave of elections is assured. If Biden handles the situation well, there is still time for Russia to aid GOP candidates in some other manner, likely more social media disinformation campaigns.

 

There is an impact to the U.S. economy as well as the only reason any country cares about Russia is – bottom line – Russia’s oil and natural gas exports. U.S. markets opened on news of the invasion to oil jumping over $100 a barrel. Given the intimate relationship between oil and the world’s economies, this is bad news. Putin is aware of this and knows he can hold the world an economic hostage with Russia’s oil and gas.

 

What should be done in response? The international community will slap (more) ineffective sanctions on Russia, which is why I personally favor a full-on military and cyber-attack response since 1) this is the only language Putin understands and 2) to cripple Russia’s military and banking institutions before Russia can strategically withdraw its oil and gas. This would have the added benefit of rattling China. I’m not going to say this wouldn’t be a very dangerous route to pursue, but it is the only option in stopping Putin from terrorizing the world in the future.

 

Of course, that is my opinion. I’m not a foreign policy expert. But then, neither were the last two previous presidents.

Theory Parker: Citizen of the World

I’ve long maintained that one of the worst ideas to ever plague mankind is nationalism. Nationalism, the identification with one’s nation and its interests typically to the detriment of other nations, is a natural outcropping of tribalism which, long ago, used to be on a small enough scale as to not be harmful on a global scale. But, thanks to population growth, the internet, and all the other streams of media that know the value of sowing division, tribalism and nationalism have become so strongly embedded in people’s psyche that they would become virtually rudderless without these identity markers. When the alternative to being rudderless is being a detriment to other members of the human race, I, as a thinking and rational person, would choose to be rudderless. Only I am not; my county is the world. More on that momentarily.

The thing about concepts like tribalism and nationalism is that it divides people along often arbitrary lines. As a citizen of the United States I’m supposed to hate the Chinese for letting COVID-19 out of their country and wreaking havoc across the globe? Last time I checked, viruses didn’t have nationalities, doesn’t care what tribe you belong to, and will potentially kill you regardless. (Funny story – as of this writing the U.S. has more cases than any other. Americans are the ones spreading it more than any other nationality, so, I guess we’re supposed to hate Americans given the preceding logic.) Even within the United States, citizens are often raised to have contempt for their neighboring state because, well, because someone drew a line somewhere.

Tribalism and nationalism strictly ignore what binds people everywhere together – the fact that we’re all people where by ‘people’ we mean human beings. Undoubtedly it is difficult for nations to fight a wars if their troops think of the animals they’re fighting as anything more than that. Here, I’m reminded of a line from the movie Saving Private Ryan (I think) where one or the troops asks another, “Why are we fighting the Germans if we’re probably going to be friends 30 years from now?” (I’m paraphrasing). People everywhere have more in common than they think such as the need for food, clean air and water, shelter, friendship, intimacy, and a sense of belonging (e.g. tribalism). Of course there are nuances to these concepts but the point is people often have to conceptually go out of their way to dehumanize others in order to get a sense of any self-worth. Why should this be the case?

This shouldn’t be the case because it is clear that throughout history cooperation between people has been more productive than going to war or worse, committing to genocide. Squabbling over irrelevant things like which side of an egg to crack open accomplishes nothing and wastes time, though to be sure, people have killed each other for less, such as being a woman. What’s really at stake when people commit wholeheartedly to tribalism or nationalism is power, that goddamn exertion of power human beings are so bad at getting over. Certainly, Nietzsche’s Will to Power is more or less in the nature of all human beings, but it can be nurtured out of a person as easily as its flames are fanned by manipulative forces. Or, the Will to Power can be overcome by introspection. I overcame it through self-analysis when I realized (fortunately early enough) that I didn’t like people telling me what to do, especially when they didn’t have good reasons for wanting me to do what they wanted. This allowed me to examine the world through consecutively larger lenses.

And so I came to a point where I realized it’s irrelevant that I happen to be American by an accident of birth. (I find it repugnant when people do this, are proud of something they had no choice in being.) I could go so far as to say that I have so little in common – value wise –  with my countrymen and women that I’m actually not American. I’m a simple human being, much the same as any other, and if I owe allegiance to any group – which I don’t – it would be the human race whether that person is red, white, blue, or black. It doesn’t matter which country’s ideology one subscribes to, one is still part of the whole. We should then act accordingly because the differences one makes along ideological lines are less than the lines drawn between species (though, even at that point, we’re all still living things). The more one sees the bigger picture, the closer we can become. Divisions we’re supposed to prescribe to are typically driven by the rich and powerful. Recognize this and the less likely we are to be coerced to kill for them in wars. The only way I could possibly find myself fighting for my country of birth is if the entire world was at risk, such as in World War II. The ‘War on Terrorism,’ a situation the U.S. helped create, not so much. I’m sure I would fight for my own preservation, but until that’s required of me I have better things to do.

There are still many countries to visit and many cultures to experience. I find it fascinating to do so because one never knows when they’re going to come across a situation where they find people doing things better than they were doing within their own culture. And this is the value of experiencing other cultures; it allows you to see problems in a new light and therefore possibly solve them with different thinking. In the supposed words of Albert Einstein, “We cannot solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them,” which he apparently said upon musing about a post-nationalist, post-militaristic world. It is clear no one culture is superior to another in successfully propagating the human race or in securing its future, so why is the idea so widely subscribed to? We already know and we already know that it’s false.

I owe allegiance to no country because no country has demonstrated it is superior to any other. (Proponents of American exceptionalism are easily defeated and will not be entertained here.) My allegiances are made on a case by case basis. My judgements are cast on a case by case basis. The world is too rich, too ripe for exploration to remain within one’s shell for too long. For it’s a myth that the shell offers protection. It does provide insulation, where being too cozy with one’s own ideas for too long leads to mental weakness, inflexibility, and worst of all, controllability. These are not a good things. If humanity as a whole would only recognize themselves as such, as human, the fewer robots there would be hell-bent on destroying it all.

What Robin Williams Death Say About Us

Like everyone else with a conscious, I do not care about the details surrounding the death of comedian and actor Robin Williams. I do not care at all how he died. The facts of how he died do not change the fact that this influential comedian is dead. But the sad thing is, those of us with a conscious are in the minority. For every one person who claims to be upset at the details released by the media, there are ten people whose appetite to know is exactly the reason why the media releases such information. I agree when people say, “Let’s honor this man by remembering and focusing on his history in the performing arts.” If only most people would take it just that far.

 

Instead of being content to simply remember Robin Williams, many people are taking the man’s death to focus on the ‘illness’ of depression. Depression is not an illness, though; depression is a deviation from our normal chemical balance (or homeostasis, or baseline, or whatever you want to call it). Depression is no more an illness than happiness. Sure, extreme depression is a serious condition because it may lead to suicide, but extreme happiness is a serious condition as well – just observe any member of a cult. If Robin Williams was in a state of suffering so great that he decided suicide was his only way out, well, it was his decision to make; no one else’s. I may not agree that suicide is a reasonable solution to one’s problems, but because I personally don’t like it doesn’t give me a logical reason to categorize simple depression as an illness. Those of us who have never taken our own lives due to severe depression (which would be everyone reading this) doesn’t know what it’s like to be in such a state that the conviction it takes to take one’s own life is actually there. We are not Robin Williams. We do not know what he was going through. Should he have sought help? Maybe he did. We do not know. It shouldn’t matter.

Then there’s the goddamn conspiracy theorists who are taking this opportunity to suspect that 1) It wasn’t a suicide because 2) they can’t fathom why someone would kill themselves or can’t fathom the conviction it takes or because 3) the media is trying to cover up other major world news events. As a mentioned just a few sentences ago, none of us know what it was like to be in the actor’s shoes, so just because we can’t fathom the why’s or how’s of suicide does not mean foul play is afoot. In thinking the media is trying cover some other important bit of news is preposterous; imagine all the major news network owners getting together and saying, “Wow, first this shit with Russia and now ISIS is really fucking up things in the Middle East. People are getting scared. We’d better kill off a celebrity and distract the public. Who can we get to?” You really have to be a moron to concoct a narrative like that. What I love/hate about conspiracy theorists is that they insist there’s a conspiracy to use fear to control the masses, while they themselves use fear to try and sell you on the idea that there’s a conspiracy.

In the end, it is the end of Robin Williams. I will fondly remember his stand-up comedy, him as Mork from Ork and the creep from One Hour Photo. I don’t care how he died. I care about the art he made.

Remembering The Great Desk Caper

In order not to offend the vewy delicate sensibilities of my fellow Americans, I waited until after Memorial Day to post this. 

It was a year or two ago one of my uncles sent me a chain email about honoring veterans. The story and its moral goes something like this [lifted from Snopes.com which designates the story as true]…

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.

The kids came into first period, they walked in, there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Ms. Cothren, where's our desk?" And she said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."

They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

"No," she said. "Maybe it's our behavior."

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren's class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.

The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. And she says, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily." She said, "Now I'm going to tell you."
Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans , wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. And by the time they had finished placing those desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

Martha said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."

Even though I am a veteran – I’m a fucking Renaissance man like that – when I first read this story I laughed pretty hard. I could just imagine myself as a student in that class chiming in – because I’m a dick like that – “Sooooo, because these guys killed people in other countries, some of whom the U.S. are friends with now, I’m expected to be a good student? Isn’t the point of fighting for freedom to give people the option of not giving a shit if someone fought for their freedom?” As a veteran, I have on occasion been slightly offended by people not seeming to care that I fought for their liberties, but then again, that’s exactly one of the liberties they should have precisely because of my service in the military. Moreover, imagine this story taking place in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia or some such. You’d better be a good little Nazi youth officer! These men are out there killing Jews so that you don’t have to earn your desks! Just because so one fights for ideas that you share or benefit from doesn’t mean you should thank them.

Don’t get me wrong (too late) I support standing up for and defending some (very few) ideas but I’m not sure killing is the best way to show that support. (Meanwhile, I am all for defending one’s self with deadly force when one is aggressed.) It’s quite arguable that dropping nukes on Hiroshima AND Nagasaki was necessary and if a strong case can be made for not dropping at least one of those bombs, American veterans of that war are on the hook for the murder of civilians. Oh, that’s right, most soldiers just take orders. Hmm, that didn’t work for the Nazi’s after they lost WWII, did it? But I guess since America always wins we’re just supposed to say, “Team America! Fuck yeah!”

I regard what the teacher did as a waste of the student’s time. If what she wanted to do was instill a sense of respect for veterans in the children, she should have had them campaign the government to show some respect for their veterans’ lives by asking the government not to slash veteran benefits. You think the Average Joe doesn’t show enough respect for veterans? The Average Joe has nothing on the U.S. government that sends mostly-the-poor off to war. Without body armor.

Fortunately, I am a veteran and I can say these things without repercussion since I’ve earned free speech for myself. And just for the record, I sat on the floor and wrote this.