The Ukraine has fallen out of most people’s news cycle. It was hot and heavy in April, May, and then slowly disappeared. We know it now mostly through secondary news. Europe has had its fuel supply drastically cut, and therefore it’s going to affect us. Food shipments out of Ukrainian ports are cut, therefore, a lot of countries are facing severe food shortages, and therefore it’s going to affect us. Agricultural supplies like fertilizer are disrupted, and therefore it’s going to affect us. An anti-American woman basketball player got arrested for dope and we’re trying to bargain away a high-profile arms dealer prisoner in exchange for the ungrateful woke baller and therefore it’s going to affect us. Putin may be weathering the sanctions better than we’re dealing with the counter sanctions and therefore it’s going to affect us. You see a pattern here? Outside the Washington beltway, we process the misfortunes of the Ukrainian nation almost exclusively by our own lesser discomforts. Inside the beltway and among idealogues, the real issues are weapons sales, secret mega million deals made by the likes of Hunter and Joe Biden, our perennial covert meddling by the CIA, and the economic and business aspects of war. Ideologically, there’s a big divide between those that want to defeat Russia through Ukraine, and those that got the notion that Ukraine is somehow an extension of Western woke in eastern Europe, an agent of the Great Reset, maybe even some sort of ‘Pride’ regime, leading that faction to actually root for Russia and to urge Ukraine to surrender to the Russians – whoops, now it might be the Soviet Union again. Somewhere through this, most people stopped worrying about the people of Ukraine.
Most of this equation is sick. I was struck this week by the brief appearance of a news story of a Ukrainian soldier being caught, beat, castrated, killed, and dragged through the town street. There was video. Tsk tsk, the cost of war, the Ukrainians do the same or worse; it all zipped straight out of the news cycle, forever to be forgotten. Fortunately, there are some governments and orgs keeping war crime tabs on Russia and the tally is mounting, but you wouldn’t know it here on main street.
For me there are a few unmovable baselines regarding Ukraine. One, half of this country would fight for our own land as well as the Ukrainians have fought for their’s and the other half, I suspect, would betray it. That should inform those that would support Ukraine. Two, consequent to the first, if the United States were subjected to the same invasion as Ukraine, who would you support? If Putin’s ‘Christian’ revival Russia somehow miraculously blackmailed the woke US into surrender, would the faction presently backing Putin tolerate the same treatment here as Ukraine? (That faction needs to get a grip). Three, Russia would ultimately aim for and take back the entire Soviet Union and eastern European client states if it could. That ambition is now clearly documented. With every success, the next one would become a little bit easier. While the US must get out of the world police role as well as the democracy puppeteer role, that doesn’t preclude support in stopping Putin whose ambitions are scaled larger than what should be our judicious involvement. Four, humanitarian concern and involvement are like karma; on a big scale, it could come back as benefit, or the lack thereof will be back to bite you someday. The karma of betrayal bites back hard.
Perhaps our own Biden regime and Congress have done what they so often tend to do and padded out Ukrainian aid packages with billions in secret international spam, as rumored. I can’t verify that one way or another. I do believe that real military aid to crush Putin’s army and sink its Black Sea navy is, fortunately or unfortunately, the only reasonable option. Or Putin (or his successor) could just leave Ukraine; that too is an option.