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Of Cruelty and What Horses Do [1]
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Date: 2022-10-12
Who among didn’t wish as a child that we could have done something to stop Hitler before he destroyed Europe and murdered millions? Which of us hasn't wondered how Germany could have been so compliant, so blind, so complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich? And how many of us are now wishing and wondering the same things about Russia and the genocide that Vladimir Putin is conducting against Ukraine.
I'm sick and tired of the reluctance that some on both the right and the left have for calling this what it is: one long crime against humanity - a 9/11 lived by the Ukrainian people every single day - thousands of terrorist attacks against innocent men, women and children since February 24, 2022 – tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands wounded – and for what? So that Vladimir Putin, a dying, lying, hopelessly inconsequential narcissist with an ego that makes Drumpf jealous, feel like Peter the Great. Good grief.
Yesterday I came upon an interview with Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad conducted by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now! Normally I respect Goodman and Chomsky has been a thought leader on the left for decades - but I have to admit that I was sickened by what I read. The gist of Chomsky's remarks was that the U.S. was undermining Ukraine and Russia's chance for peace in order to further its own imperialistic aims.
Horse shit!
Does that adequately convey my disgust? I can think of no other words to express my utter dismay. Have these numbskulls been watching a different war, a different genocidal maniac than I have? “Ukraine and Russia's chances for peace"? Give me a break.
When a bully is punching a smaller kid and taking his lunch money and another, even bigger kid steps in to help the little kid by teaching him how to defend himself and giving him the tools to do it, we don't say, "Oh no! An even bigger kid is helping the little kid! He should stop that because the bully was going to stop punching the little kid as soon as he took all the little kid's money! What an evil bigger kid! He must want the little kid’s money for himself!"
No, we say, "Thank goodness someone stepped in to help the little kid defend himself so the bully will leave him alone!" Because we all know what happens when we let a bully take advantage of us - he not only takes our money, but also our friends' money, and ultimately all the other kids' money, too. Bullies don't behave like normal people. They don't negotiate peace with their victims. They beat them up because they ENJOY it and because they CAN. They only stop when they're forced to.
Putin wants us to believe that he's engaged in some kind of "de-Nazification" or "de-militarization" campaign to ensure his own country's security.
Horse shit!
Putin knows he's dying and his legacy is squat so he's trying to retake what, in his poisoned little mind, is Russia's by right. But, the idea that Ukraine 'belongs' to Russia is laughable. There was a thriving medieval metropolis at Kyiv when Moscow was still a wide spot in a cow path. In any case, his army is currently getting its ass handed to it by a bunch of brave and highly motivated soldiers in the country where he thought he was going to be hailed as a conquering hero. Oops.
Every day, as his army continues to get shown up, blown up and rubbed out, he responds by firing cruise missiles into hospitals, elementary schools, apartment buildings and nursing homes. But the horrible people now excusing his genocide are just as bad as he is. I'm looking at you Tucker Carlson, at you Donald Drumpf, at you Noam Chomsky - you all belong to the category that includes Joseph Kennedy, Neville Chamberlain, Ezra Pound and Father Coughlin. History will not be kind to the people who seek to paper over the atrocities that Putin daily commits in Ukraine or who argue for appeasement instead of resistance.
You either stand up to genocidal maniacs or you don't, is what I'm saying - and they're not.
And no amount of pissing and moaning about how we egged Russia on by cozying up to Ukraine and dangling NATO or EU membership in front of them excuses bombing one single apartment house - let alone the complete destruction of hundreds of towns, villages and whole cities. The New Yorker recently featured a story about a young woman who was sheltering with her family at the theater in Mariupol with hundreds of other refugees, mostly women and children. They were freezing, they were starving, but they thought they were safe. Their homes had already been destroyed by Russian artillery and the Russian soldiers weren’t allowing anyone to leave the city so they had nowhere else to go. Day after day they were forced to scramble for food and water amid the most horrific scenes of utter destruction. Nevertheless, they were making the best of it and a small community of people helping each other through an unimaginable nightmare slowly emerged. They formed groups according to abilities – some could cook, some looked after the children while others scrounged for food, some set up areas where snow was melted for water, some provided security – and so they survived right up until the day that the Russians bombed the theater, wiping hundreds of them out with a single, cruel stroke. You may have heard about this theater. It was the one where they painted the word “children” outside in letters dozens of feet tall.
It’s hard for us to imagine the kind of cruelty it takes for one group of people to destroy another – to rape them, beat them, murder them – steal their land, their homes, their belongings – kidnap their children, torture their parents, laugh at their misery – but we’re seeing it every day in Ukraine. It happened before in Germany, in Poland, in France and Belgium and the Netherlands and Norway and – yes, in Russia – at the hands of the Nazis. We said “never again” and I thought that we meant it. But it is happening again and too many of us are excusing it and looking the other way.
Thankfully, the Biden administration and the current congress are doing what they can to stop it. But, the biggest fear that Ukraine has is that just at the moment their soldiers are forcing Putin’s gang of thugs out of the smoldering wreck that used to be their country, the Republicans will win the midterms and end U.S. support for them. We can’t let that happen. Who among us hasn’t wished that we could have stopped Hitler? Who among us will let the chance to stop his successor slip through our fingers?
When we step up to the voting machine this fall, we have to think about the child that has been ripped from its mother’s arms to be sent to Russia to be raised by strangers, the people who have been raped by Russian soldiers, the lives lost, the bodies maimed, the wholesale destruction that has gone on day after day, week after week – and then do the right thing, the thing that will finally stop this cruelty. To turn a blind eye toward the horrific suffering of this noble people because gas prices are too high would be unforgiveable
horse shit.
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