However the war in Ukraine plays out in the coming weeks, even a cursory examination of the region’s history illustrates that Moscow’s most recent violent attempt to transform its neighbor into a demilitarized vassal state is doomed. Putin’s violent march backward through time to try to cobble together the old Russian empire is already a strategic failure. He’s not learned that the adage You can never go home again, applies to all empires, including Russia. The future requires something new not an imitation of what failed in the past.

Putin cannot win. Ukraine has already won.

Although Ukraine traces its origins to Kyivan Rus as do the Muscovites, the Mongol invasion of the 13th century led to those linguistic and cultural distinctions that exist between Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians. In a way the Mongols really never left. Three hundred years passed before Moscow’s Machiavellian intrigues and military eliminated the Mongol yoke from its shoulders, but by the mid 1500s, Ukraine had also evolved and created one of the first democratic states in Europe since ancient Greece, the Cossack Hetmanate near Kyiv. 

Long time mercenaries, This military and political conclave gained enough strength to rid itself of Polish control by the mid 1600s. Still, military adventurism being what it is, within a few years they needed assistance to fend off their neighbor to the west, Poland. The Hetmanate looked to Russia, and they responded. Their military assistance was solidified in Treaty of Pereyaslav as was Ukraine’s demise. The treaty granted that the Tsar was head of Russia, but also guaranteed independence for the Cossacks. Moscow ignored the clause about Cossack independence and has used this treaty ever since as a rationale for claiming Ukraine belongs to Moscow. The brief era of Cossack freedom and political/military independence ended soon thereafter. Ukraine substituted one master for another, but Ukrainians continued to aspire to political independence, even linking their future state to their Cossack origins as noted in Ukraine’s national anthem.

Ukraine’s efforts at independence continued soon thereafter. About fifty years after Ukraine’s “Great Ruin,” trusted and elderly court advisor to Peter the Great, the Cossack Ivan Mazeppa, tried to rid Ukraine of Moscow’s control by aligning the Cossack forces with those of Sweden’s King Charles XII with whom Russia was at war. Sadly for Ukraine, Charles lost, Cossack forces were decimated, and before the end of the century, no longer existed as a fighting force. Matters then became worse for Kyiv when by the mid 1800s, Russia even outlawed the use of Ukrainian throughout the empire. Generations of Ukrainians were ripe for intense Russian disinformation and terror. 

What was the cost of Moscow’s draconian efforts? The result was the re-emergence of independent Ukraine following the end of WWI. A modern country facing three armies: that of the newly resurrected Poland; of the Russian communists; and of the Russians still loyal to the Tsar. Not a Soviet invention as Putin professed in his manifesto. The Ukrainian People’s Republic lasted about three years, although Kyiv changed hands militarily several times before finally succumbing to the USSR’s might and transforming into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922. A political entity forced upon a weakened Russia because of the people who inhabited the land, not some Soviet invention.

Somehow, some way, Ukrainians survived as a viable political, military, and cultural group. Indeed, so far, each attempt to absorb Ukraine into Russia (or Poland) resulted in a more distinct political identity. That the Ukrainian SSR was subject to Russian edicts and remained politically sycophantic to Moscow, but Kyiv’s administration was responsible for overseeing the infrastructure of the nation. It was real not some imagined entity people snickered at. Not a hodgepodge of peoples of various ethnicity who congregated in the fertile area north of the Black Sea. It was simply another expression of Ukraine as a political reality. Regardless of what an old KGB officer thinks, Ukraine’s existence is a fait accompli whatever its genesis.

Ukraine next emerged in 1991 as fully fledged, ethnically intact nation. The march of history for Ukraine is that each reincarnation of its political identity has been something of an improvement upon the previous manifestation. Cossack mercenaries succeeded in creating a military, political state. Cossacks followed this by aligning themselves with Europe’s leading military power at the time to divorce themselves from Moscow. After sustaining brutal re-education, ethnic cleansing, and a ban on the use of their language, Ukraine responded by forming a true nation-state from the ashes of WWI, short lived though it was. Next Kyiv found itself as the capital of a republic that delivered the country’s needs for over seventy years.

Today, unlike previous generations when Ukrainians were as interested as anyone in the political movements of the moment, movements like anarchism, communism, socialism, pan slavism, fascism, and nationalism, there is no internal tension today caused by an interest in anything but national survival and continuing the trek toward liberal democracy. No one in Ukraine is interested in pan slavism, Russky Mir, or a USSR redux. Following Putin’s invasion, fifth columnists in Ukraine are in hiding, or having seen the true face of Russia, support Kyiv because Ukraine is large enough to absorb Russians and make them feel like Ukrainians. This was true during the SSR years and is more true today. I base this on limited information, but I should share nonetheless.

At university, I socialized with four exchange students I met from the USSR in the mid 1970s, with two standing out in my memory. The ethnic Ukrainian lived in Moscow and his Russification was complete. The ethnic Russian who lived in Ukraine spoke Ukrainian and understood my stand on Ukrainian independence.After an intense discussion, he declined my invitation to defect, and I sometimes imagine him working with Gorbachev’s efforts at glasnost and perestroika during the 1980s. I gleaned the same from statistics in The Ukrainian Quarterly describing language trends in Kyiv and other large cities in Ukraine during the 1980s. The article’s main point was that those who moved to Ukraine tended to learn Ukrainian and began little by little to lose their Russian identity. 

This helps in part to explain why articles appearing in 2014 showed the ethnic Russians in the Donbas area were disinterested in any separation from Kyiv. One segment stood out to me and explained how a young ethnic Russian claimed he would fight against any Russian incursions there in defiance of his grandfather who did support Moscow. Putin believed the Russian minority in eastern Ukraine would arise and take up arms against Kyiv, but this did not happen. Instead, rabble rousers from the Russian Federation flooded the area and caused the military stalemate that lasted until February 2022. Russians in Ukraine become Ukrainian, and that’s bad news for Putin’s historical revision, and good news for Ukraine’s future.

However this war turns out, the end has been determined. Russia cannot hope to control this largest of nations wholly in Europe. Ukraine’s military and citizens have shown this already in 2022 as they have beaten back the invaders time and again. Ukraine is not relying on others to fight for her, but gratefully accepting help in the form of hardware from her democratic allies. Most importantly, Ukrainians of whatever ethnicity are united in a way they never have been previously. Ironically, Kyiv has Vladimir Putin’s ignorance of history to thank for that unity. In so many ways it appears that Ukraine cannot lose.

Indeed, Ukraine has already won.

Putin’s Legacy

It remains to be seen what will become of Vladimir Putin. That Russia has lost Ukraine forever as a result of his crimes against its people and laying waste to its cities is manifest to any objective observer. Less apparent may be the lasting legacy Putin will have achieved beginning well before the onslaught that began on February 24, 2022. In disparaging the idea of a Ukrainian identity in his manifesto of July 12, 2021, he attacked Ukraine’s storied history. The message of his personal Mein Kampf inspired within Ukraine a national indignation that when coupled with Russia’s invasion seven months later has served to galvanize national unity.

This would not be the first time a Russian despot unwittingly gave Ukraine a gift. Most recently Khrushchev returned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. The reasons for Crimea’s return are multi-faceted, but it is clear that it was not done for Ukraine’s benefit. It added nearly a million ethnic Russians to Ukraine’s population and added clout to Khrushchev’s political aspirations. However, by the time of the dissolution of the USSR, Crimea as part of Ukraine became a fixture in the minds of two generations of Ukrainians. With an isthmus connecting Crimea to Ukraine, and because Moscow never controlled Crimea until the 1780s and has no other historical claim to it, Kyiv has even more right to Crimea than Russia has.

Khrushchev’s monstrous predecessor also gifted Ukraine. At the outset of WWII as Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler, their armies split Poland apart, and Germany and the USSR absorbed this territory. Centuries earlier, the territory had been governed by Poland in its grand heyday of empire, but the land in question was ethnically Ukrainian. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Ukraine truly became whole as the nationalistic western section was joined with the heavily Russified and ethnically cleansed eastern portion. Stalin had no idea of the impact this would have on the nation-building already underway in the nascent state of the Ukrainian SSR.

The pieces of Putin’s future epic failure in Ukraine were falling into place.

Stop to consider the effect on a nationality when whole sections of the country are culturally apart from other sections. When the languages spoken in each region are unconnected. When the education system teaches that you are a Pole or you are a Russian, yet you return daily from school or work and speak Ukrainian in your home and neighborhood. Being united in one political space even a puppet regime like the Ukrainian SSR – helped solidify the concept of Ukrainian identity. So much so that in 1991, Ukraine embarked on the difficult path of independence and began consolidating the multifaceted matrix that was Ukraine. Add to the mix the 17% of ethnic Russians, concentrated in the east, who were part of the ethnic cleansing that Moscow imposed for centuries. Kyiv had a difficult task ahead in trying to stabilize and consolidate the cultural and political reality that was Ukraine. The task was made more difficult with countless spies, apolitical oligarchs, and fifth columnists sabotaging the government and military. The assassination of politicians and key individuals sparked terror into the hearts of many and stilted what should have been the ordinary development of this young nation. Still Ukraine prevailed, continued its march toward liberal democracy, and its status in the world slowly grew.

Enter Vladimir Putin. That the West misjudged his motives is no surprise. He didn’t want to revive the Soviet Union; he wanted to revive Tsarist Russia. While his concept of Rusky Mir literally means Russian Peace, ask the residents of Grozhny or Mariupol abut what Russian peace really involves. Western academics, media experts, and politicians alike all believed to one extent or another the propaganda Moscow spewed about Ukrainians, that they’re all rabid anti semites, or that the Ukrainian language is only a peculiar dialect. Seemingly, any Ukrainian who aspired to live in a country free of any Russian ukase was simply a NAZI. In Putin’s mind, any Ukrainian who thought himself not ethnically Russian was deluded and a NAZI. That someone was deluded is now obvious to all. Hint: his initials are V.P.

The present is uncertain in Ukraine, and the death and misery all too real; yet, through this crucible of violence and horror, a bright future awaits a Ukraine that emerges successfully from the carnage. It is obvious that no outsider has the right to dictate to another country the essence of who they are. Putin’s manifesto and his murderous terror against Ukraine have exposed Ukraine’s soul. Those who live in Ukraine, whatever their ethnicity, are Ukrainians. Perhaps future historians will note that like his predecessors in the Politburo who deluded themselves that their Ukrainian Problem was solved, Putin unwittingly galvanized the spirit of Ukraine to arise and inject all its citizens with the fortitude and wits to defy the Russian military and say with one voice: We know who we are and we will decide our own future.

We are Ukrainians

Hours after Russia launched its war against Ukraine my thoughts turned to what seemed inevitable: that this democratic nation once again would lie prostrate before the thugs and thieves in the Kremlin. I envisioned oligarchs wielding increased power to feed their avarice, more influence from fifth columnists, and a loss of identity among the Ukrainian population when the ethnic cleansing known as Russification resumes after a thirty year hiccup. As the Russian military began its encirclement of Ukraine’s major cities, thirty years of hope and liberalism in an ethnocentric Ukrainian state was again under assault as the rest of the world – hands behind their collective backs – looked on. Again treating the situation as if it were a family squabble entirely within Moscow’s purview.

To be fair, the sanctions imposed by the West are serious in their scope. The weapons that the West finally authorized for Ukraine are streaming into the country, albeit years too late. Soldiers must utilize such assistance for it to have any value, and soldiers were not streaming into Ukraine. President Biden stated more than once that there would be no NATO boots on the ground fearing this would trigger the start of WWIII.

Although I cannot fault the West for stating aloud their desire to avoid any personal bloodletting, in my despair I felt the announcement to be premature. As I considered the reality, a singular truth crept slowly forward breaking the surface of my awareness. I realized that it is absolutely essential for Ukraine’s future that her citizens fight this battle alone against their centuries-old nemesis.

Fight the Russian war machine and win.

Viet Nam fought superpowers for decades and emerged victorious. Afghanistan did so against the same oppressors facing Ukraine. We can look to our own American history for the most glaring example of a David-Goliath narrative. Ukrainians need to own this.

Ukraine has previously faced extinction and survived, but in all of those cases, Kyiv asked for military assistance from other nations. Not just arms and ammunition, but armies. In the mid 17th century, Ukraine’s Cossacks asked for assistance from Moscow against Poland’s hegemony. That Treaty of Pereyaslav is the basis for Moscow’s continued position that Ukraine willingly joined its empire. In 1709 Ukraine asked for Sweden’s militaristic King for assistance in separating itself from Russia. They lost. Following WWI Ukraine asked Germany for assistance against the Polish and Russian armies, both communist and tsarist. During WWII Ukraine, like other captive nations, welcomed Germans as liberators from their Russian overlords, and they sought their help and that of the West as they continued fighting after the war.

As recently as 1994, Ukraine relied on others to “guarantee” their borders. Known as the Budapest Memorandum, Russia, England, and the United States signed this agreement that guaranteed Ukraine’s borders in exchange for dispensing with their inherited nuclear weapons. Moscow willingly signed this knowing full well that a nuclear Ukraine could never be forcibly returned to the fold. Putin cynically reneged on this commitment when he invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. My cynicism convinces me that the conservative elements in Russia never considered independent Ukraine to be a permanent condition. Sadly, even democratic forces in Russia view Ukraine as a province of Moscow. One hopes the lies they were taught in school or at their grandpas’ knees can be unlearned.

It is high time Ukraine learned to rely on itself rather than on the kindness of others. This war is an opportunity for Kyiv though it hardly seems like one to most. In fighting vigorously in defense of its homeland, Ukraine has the opportunity to earn the respect of the family of nations. The cost of freedom remains high just as it has always been. That the Russian forces are in retreat gives me hope just as it has to those nations still suffering in Russia’s sphere. Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, and others. The wretched feeling of history repeating itself that registered in me during the initial stages of the war have been replaced with pride and hope.

The immensity of this unfolding tragedy has not been lost to the world as Moscow hoped. Bullies always prefer to do their dirty work in secret, but it’s impossible to hide over four million Ukrainian refugees. It’s impossible to keep media from reporting the shelling of civilians including those in schools, theater bomb shelters marked ”children,” hospitals, and other soft targets. Russia can shout “Fake News” all they want, but even the reactionaries in the West who admire the little imp in the Kremlin will be forced to reconcile the media images of civilian slaughter, rape, and utter devastation with the lies he spews. Can they put aside their admiration for the little Russian Napoleon enough to acknowledge the reality of what we all are witness to? That Moscow is worried by the evidence of war crimes is undisputed. They fear openness, all dictatorships do. As Sergei Lavrov, their foreign Minister said weeks ago, “The world is tired of hearing about Ukraine.” Too bad that saying so doesn’t make it so.

Still, the war isn’t over and it remains to be seen just how the world will handle this international bully. I do have some suggestions. At the least, NATO and other allies must continue to supply and resupply Ukraine’s armed forces to include planes and tanks. Additionally, the West cannot roll back sanctions when the tanks are silent but Russian occupation of Ukraine’s land begins in earnest. Russia cannot be rewarded for again attacking its neighbors in yet another land-grab. We have enabled the Russian fascists for over twenty years. The sanctions must continue until Moscow cries “uncle” in one form or another or true liberal democrats seize power.

The best possible outcome would be if Ukraine actually wins on the battlefield. Alone. 

Tragic though it is, this war has the potential of seeing Russia brought to its knees economically and humiliated militarily. The Ukrainians are fighting fiercely in defense of their homeland. They are pugnacious and belligerent in their attitude toward Russia. Seemingly fearless. Of the four million Ukrainian refugees, at least a quarter million have returned to fight the invaders. Men and women. Young and old. In some areas, much of the Russian fighting force has been obliterated and a month into the war, they are regrouping and calling up another 135,000 conscripts. More death for Russia and more destruction for Ukraine. I liken the situation to the neighborhood bully who’s always got his way. Who gets to beat and rob neighbors with impunity?. Who can steal and rape without fear of reprisal? So far, we’ve allowed Putin to do so on an international level.

How does one handle a bully? Should the victim cower and do whatever the bully wants, or should the victim fight back? We know how a bully reacts when allowed to run amok, taking and taking and taking some more. Ukraine can’t go to the faculty or principal to complain; that’s what she did before when asking for help from others. Bullies don’t like to be hit. They become indignant that anyone dared return a blow for a blow. It’s time to see what a bully does when – like his victim – he’s already bloody and the fight continues. What does he do when the victim says, “I have everything to lose by backing down, and nothing to lose by fighting back.” Cretins like tiny Putin will surely double down, causing more mayhem abroad and at home. The victims must also rise to the occasion and there are two victims here. The people of Ukraine and the people of Russia are both being victimized by the outlandish dreams of empire offered by one murderous despot. One group faces the onslaught of armies and the other faces an army of lies and avarice. Perhaps when the Russian people will recognize and accept the march of history, they will gather after tens of thousands of funerals and say “Enough!” to their leaders.

The feeling of doom I felt a month ago has dissipated into something more akin to cautious optimism. However matters unfold on the battlefield, the heroism of Ukraine, going it alone against the famed and feared Russian juggernaut, has already earned it a place in the pantheon of freedom-loving nations who have resisted tyranny. 

Creativity has been on my mind. Expressing myself by unearthing any truths I’ve come to understand, and releasing passions that boil within and emerge screaming into the world, or those that sneak up on me on cat’s feet and purr until noticed. Such epiphanies are paradoxically unlike anything else others have expressed while simultaneously capturing the exact same essence others have experienced.

Poetry at its best accomplishes the important task of combining individual articulation, particular phraseology, collective sounds, imagery, and personal wisdom with experiences, emotions, discoveries, and understandings common to all human beings. At times, poetry serves as the first face-to-face rendezvous a person has with a particular truth, one that has been ineffable for him up to that time. The poem becomes the bridge allowing him to float across the chasm to understanding and finally recognizing something he lives every day or may have encountered elsewhere in his past.

Two examples, one that introduces an emotion others have felt, but not captured in words; the other a simple description that captures the essence and power of poetry and the nature of life. Shakespeare’s Shall I Compare Thee is a sonnet that poses the question of whether the speaker can compare his lover to a summer day. The answer is no because summer days are sometimes stormy, too hot, or otherwise unpleasant. And, he continues, unlike the summer season, he believes his lover’s beauty will never fade nor will she ever die

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Others have felt a supreme love for their partners, and others have felt or believed their partners to be incomparable in their inner and outer beauty. Shakespeare immortalizes his wife, resurrecting her each time the poem is read by another human being. 

Just astounding.

The second poem, also quite famous, is William Carlos Williams’s The Red Wheelbarrow. I confess I thought this short poem absurd and completely unimportant – despite its first two lines –  when I read it as a young high school student.

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Imagery that startles with its sharpness, with colors contrasting and textures intermixing. A tableau in motion and exceptionally fleeting. A water-glazed wheelbarrow will very soon dry. Chickens seemingly never at rest will shortly disappear from view. This moment in time, like so many others each day, will be nothing more than a memory, if the moment is ever noticed at all. And that is what makes this brief instant of time – and poetry itself – essential. Poems capture for an eternity those uncelebrated moments, scenes all too abbreviated. In this poem it is the instant when a red wheelbarrow still has rainwater running along its sides and white chickens scamper about. Another poem may capture the fleeting time when one’s children were toddlers, too soon morphing into adolescents, teens, and young adults. It remains a time parents can never, ever revisit. 

Poetry captures the prosaic and points to it as something much more beautiful, special, meaningful. Much does indeed depend upon it.

Living in the moment allows us to recognize, to appreciate all that transpires around us. Poetry allows us to appreciate similar moments in case we’ve overlooked them, or to relive them through another’s eyes. It seems to me that those who desire to be creative need to live in the moment and have the discipline to record and craft their observations into those forms they deem most appropriate and which most appeal to them. The topic is the life we have right here, right now, and of course, “The undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns . . .” The transcendent power in the universe, at once knowable and unknowable, hasn’t anointed in particular only one group on this planet to be its spokesman.

We are all qualified to wonder and question the purpose and extent of our existence in this universe.

I’ve witnessed enough bullying after spending nearly thirty years in education. Too much. Most often among the kids, sometimes among adults, including professionals. Dealing with bullies at any age is a difficult matter because the victim must always – no exceptions – exhibit courageous behavior. After all, bullying implies a threat of some sort, something unpleasant the victim would rather avoid. But the alternative – the prospect of enduring oppression where intimidation reigns – is so much worse. The victim must suffer, call on his inner strength, or appeal to a higher power.

The only solution I know of for stopping a bully is to stand up to him. Such defiance might earn a punch in the mouth, but if someone has decided to confront his tormentor, he’s probably already thought this out and accepted such an eventuality. Chances are that a bully won’t continue his sadistic behavior if his victim successfully tags him with a few jabs of own, even in a losing effort. After all, bullies are cowards or they wouldn’t be picking on those who appear weaker than they. The bully may continue taunting or accosting the victim, but not for long, especially if the victim continues to somehow fight back. Bullies want to win, they don’t want to fight, even if the “fighting back” isn’t of the physical variety. Victims can alert whatever authorities are relevant to the situation: teachers, parents, the police.

As an educator, I was the higher power victims appealed to, but coming up with a solution for student-victims was never easy. Bullying takes place away from the light. In empty bathrooms, on dimly lit stairwells, and off school grounds on the way home. Even if the caustic event occurs in the school’s jurisdiction, administrators acting on a complaint with no witnesses or with witnesses whose stories conflict usually ends poorly for the victim. The bully gets away with one or more warnings. He wins as do those bullies whose behavior is never reported.

As much as I wanted to I could not counsel students to fight back physically, the potential for serious injury being too great. Potential lawsuits also deterred me. I would counsel students to document any malicious behavior and report it to me. I recommended they continue to alert teachers, their parents, and other adults. I suggested they surround themselves with whatever friends they have to create security through numbers. This done, eventually the bully may be caught and punished, but the victim is forced to endure the fear and humiliation far longer than anyone should have to. 

If the victim is a loner, he will suffer other social consequences: ostracism, name-calling, gossip, possibly even suspicion that he – being seen as odd – is the one to blame for the situation. I know kids can be cruel because as I wrote a year ago, I also tried my hand at bullying. I was confronted. I stopped. Matters become more complex when it is not one bully, but a gang of them tormenting multiple victims. Multiple witnesses, lies, half-truths, a greater potential for violence. 

Bullying continues into adulthood even if we don’t recognize it as that. Sexual harassment in the workplace and elsewhere is a particularly egregious form of bullying. Exceptionally personal and loathsome. Often the harassment comes from a superior in the organization. Victims need to find the higher power and report the harassment, the assault. Human Resources can provide relief. But what if the antagonist is head of HR? Ask those women and men who have been victims of sexual harassment how effective it is for their assailant to get a warning or an order of protection in those most dangerous of bullying cases – spousal abuse. What if the police officer, teacher, or priest is the abuser, and one does not feel safe driving a car, staying after school, or worshipping in a church?

Which brings me to the Trump Administration. What if the bully is the most powerful man on the planet?

Where can one go to escape the tyranny? What can a victim do? To whom can the persecuted turn? In a dictatorship, whatever course victims take will be fraught with danger. Thankfully, we live in a democracy, and the answers to these questions are: One shouldn’t escape the tyranny, but be vocal in challenging it; victims can communicate their displeasure to their elected officials, vote in every election, and become more intimately involved with the political process; besides involvement with the politics, victims can turn to the free press and the courts for redress.

What if the courts become co-opted by the party in power? What if the president uses his Bully Pulpit to relentlessly assault the free press for shining a spotlight on the truth? What happens when the Congress, like any student body, backs away from doing the right thing and allows the bully to run amok? What if the Bully-in-Chief’s attempts to confuse the populace succeed, when truth and lies intermingle from a multitude of outlets until confusion reigns? Isn’t it the same as in schools when some witnesses prevaricate, some tell the truth, and still others remain silent to protect their relationship with the bully.

Bullying on a mass scale is a dictatorship, whether in schools or in the country at large. But we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Despite the groupthink created by the White House with Trump’s fellow travelers calling into question anything critical of the President, we have recourse. Trump is a bully. His rabid supporters are also bullies, shouting down those who disagree with him. Many of his Republican colleagues are also bullies, providing cover for their hero as Congressman Devin Nunez did when head of the House Intelligence Committee. Like a corrupt principal siding with the bully, Nunez refused to listen to witnesses against Trump only allowing testimony from his supporters.

At least we still have a free press, even if some choose not to believe in it. In our present democracy children have been forcibly separated from their parents at the border for the “crime” of seeking asylum. This policy tore families asunder for no other reason than to pressure people into turning away from the United States. Yet seeking asylum anywhere on our border is legal.  It is international law. Such wretched people need not buy a ticket for today’s version of Ellis Island, even if they could afford one. The light of the free press made a difference in ending this inhumane treatment of people already facing life-threatening dangers.

Despite living in a democracy with two chambers of Congress providing a check on every administration, an administration run amok sometimes has a loyal group of followers who subscribe to the same ideals, even if those ideals are anti-American. (There just aren’t too many troops being sent to the Canadian border stopping whites from coming down and buying up all our Florida real estate.) When part of Congress supports the bully and another part fears challenging him, the bully wins. 

Therefore, we must appeal to our own higher power. We can and must vote. 

Despite the efforts Republicans and Conservatives to prevent people from voting, despite the efforts to confuse Americans and stifle news outlets, despite the fear-mongering and division this Administration has spread, we have a higher power. Vote to remove those who prop up the bully. Vote to show our silent representatives that showing courage is preferable to enduring oppression. Vote to show the bully that we aren’t afraid of him.

Vote while we still can.

In my previous post I implied that Eastern Europeans, the Slavs, tend to respect autocrats and somehow exhibit autocratic tendencies themselves in their personal lives. An arguable point, I know. But if I am correct in my assumption, even in a general way, perhaps the explanation is that this is a learned trait from having been “autocratized” over several centuries. Perhaps such behavior has its roots in the Stockholm Syndrome: Hostages held captive sympathize with the social concerns or politics of their captors in their effort to survive, thereby rationalizing their humiliating, debasing existence as slaves.

When a government holds their citizens captive to selective prosecutions, sanctioned bullying, racism, and economic subjugation, maybe one survival option is a personal evolution toward one’s own absolutism. Perhaps this idea is worth study in an academic setting. Anyway, I’m pretty sure my father – kidnapped from his home village by Hitler’s Nazis and forced to work as a slave for the war’s duration – suffered from the Stockholm Syndrome given his lifelong admiration for the discipline of the Germans, their focus, their strength. I thought as a child and now that he protested too much on their behalf. But once taken he – and my future mother – lived as slaves, working without pay and restricted in their movements, and with no idea If or when they might ever be free again.

But if Slavs-as-victims has led to such citizens being more accepting of government strongmen, the culture of Eastern Europe has also led to some of the greatest literature, music, scientific achievements, and spirituality the world has known, or at the least, such achievements occurred alongside the autocracy. After all, another coping mechanism for enslaved peoples is to creatively express themselves, immerse themselves in their work, and focus on their families or communities. This has been true with many who’ve been oppressed: the Jewish enclaves in many countries, the American slaves of the south.

The Russians and those they conquered may have accepted one abhorrent government after another for many generations, but every so often, the Slavs have also arisen in rebellion to assure a better future. Sometimes those revolutions ushered in a time of justice and peace (1991), sometimes not (1917). But like tectonic plates moving in opposite directions, the eastern Slavs in particular have sometimes said to their dictators, “Enough is enough!” Sadly, as we are today witnessing in Putin’s Russia, once governments are overthrown, oftentimes the people slogging through the dissolution of empire bemoan the loss of that strongman who “maybe wasn’t so bad” as once thought. And today, many Russian citizens think this of Joseph Stalin, arguably the most murderous dictator in history.

Russia matters because it’s filled with people who are basically good at heart, but who are more than willing to accept the murderous and corrupt actions of a head of government. At present, that role is taken by Vladimir Putin. This is a lesson that should not be lost on the citizens of the Untied States. A corrupt minority can manipulate a good people into becoming co-conspirators in their villainy. Indeed, in America this already occurred when the avarice of a few decimated the American Indians, and when the plantation owners resisted all attempts to eliminate slavery, taking up arms to defend their barbarism. For those who think it can’t happen in this modern age, think again. It is happening.

Minorities are being prevented from voting in many regions because the politicians do not want to relinquish their control. Knowing that minorities often vote for more liberal candidates, conservative and reactionary state and local officials have put obstacles in the way these minorities to prevent them form registering to vote, and barring that, to prevent them from participating in the vote. Some of the obstacles: requiring a photo ID which occurs simultaneously with the state (Alabama) deciding that Department of Motor Vehicle Offices would be open only one day per week. Some offices in the “Black belt” of the state (80% minority) were closed altogether. Such Draconian measures are not limited to the south. Wisconsin recently suppressed 200,000, mostly Black, citizens using similar tactics. The refrain that immigrants are abusing the voting system rallies the reactionaries to act.

This is worth restating in another way. Russia matters because the corrupt government their citizens overwhelmingly support has been successful in its propaganda, education policies, and crafty use of its oligarchs’ wealth. Relying on radical Russian nationalism, Moscow has also been successful in its use of the “Enemies at the Gate” strategy, too. Autocrats and dictators know that one sure-fire way to promote support for the government among its population is to exaggerate the influence of its enemies and to control the media into echoing their concerns. The long-term success of the insidious attempts to fill their citizens’ heads with disinformation depends on eliminating dissidents and political opponents.

As I so often do, I will refer to Ukraine’s historical problems with Russia for examples of how well the Kremlin has indoctrinated their citizens over the years. After all, Ukraine has been the target of Russian disinformation for centuries. Many, if not most, Russians deny that Ukraine is a separate country. They deny that Ukrainian is a separate language, relegating it to a curious, odd dialect. They’ve claimed that centuries ago Ukraine was an empty, unpeopled place, eventually filled with enterprising Russians searching for adventures and a freewheeling way of life. They assert this despite Ukraine being among the most arable land in the world. And if it weren’t for the millions murdered by the despotic Russian and Soviet governments, the 45 million Ukrainians would number much, much higher, very near to the number of Russians.

Russia matters because their political system of oligarchs – hardly changed from Czarist times through the Soviet era to today – is alarming. Small segments of the population, awash in the type of grand wealth with which kings and princes would be familiar, make decisions for Russia that line their pockets while pilfering the nation’s resources with no thought to ramifications on the environment or society. This system of oligarchs running the country maintains a shrunken middle class and entrenches tens of millions below the poverty line. And this is still a society that has provided to the world some of its greatest heroes, writers, scientists, and explorers.

Consider Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He suffered imprisonment in the GULAG because he’d written a letter home critical of army life. After suffering through his internment, he stunned the world with his courage in writing fiction critical of the USSR. His most important project was the writing and smuggling out from the USSR the tome, The GULAG Archipelago. His thoughts on Ukraine? “All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is recently invented falsehood.” ( “Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals” 1990 essay)

Alexei Navalny, proponent of democratic values and a political opponent to Vladimir Putin sits under arrest in Russia as I write this. He’s been the victim of an acid attack, beatings, and being thrown out of a window as well as other earlier arrests. He’s spoken twice to the Congress of the United States, and is accepted world wide as a noble man who values society more than his own welfare. But he has cataracts when it comes to the issue of the national rights of the previously captive nations of the former USSR. On a Russian television talk show he stated, “I’m convinced that Ukraine and Belarus are the two most important geopolitical allies of Russia. Our foreign policy should be maximally directed at integration with Ukraine and Belarus. In fact we’re one nation.”

And if the country in question wants to join the European Union instead of huddling with Moscow? Then the Kremlin foments rebellion based on lies, infiltrates the country with spies and propaganda, infects the country’s computer systems with viruses, arms the fifth columnists, and invades with Russian army regulars with their officers directing operations. That’s how Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and disrupted its Donbas area. Human losses in the conflict are approaching 20,000 and the conflict remains frozen in place, leaving two of the country’s richest areas under the control of a hostile power. And reports reached the West that Putin was decidedly surprised that their efforts at creating an upsurge of Russian patriotism failed, particularly in the Donbas. And so, Russian regulars became necessary. I’m sure Putin believes Ukrainians are misguided Russians, but having been taught that in his youth doesn’t make it true.

Russia matters because good people (and bad ones) can be blinded by propaganda and the labeling as evil those forces opposed to the present leadership. Trump either adopted Russian tactics or is simply a natural when it comes to being a demagogue and an authoritarian. It doesn’t matter if he’s an idiot, has no ideology beyond wanting extreme wealth, and remains a petty shell of a man because of his ability to convince a solid minority of the country that he’s the answer to what ails the nation. That’s dangerous. After all, it was a very tiny percentage of Russians who were known as Bolsheviks, and they were able – through brutishness and bullying – to gain control of the nascent Soviet Union. The results were over twenty million Russian citizens murdered under Stalin alone, and this account comes from a post-Stalin Soviet newspaper. Lenin also had his victims as did Khrushchev and Brezhnev. And what of those who survived the camps, didn’t get a bullet, or only lost their jobs? The number at least doubles.

This may happened in Russia, but Russia matters because its people do form a great nation. Think such events could never happen in the US? If it can happen – repeatedly – to a great nation like Russia, then it can happen once in a while in the United States. Washington may be a place of much avarice and hypocrisy, but we get to choose. Vote. We’re a good people, too. Think critically and vote.

The connection between the Trump Administration and the Kremlin is dangerous because Trump is already a man with autocratic tendencies, and the Kremlin is filled with people who know exactly how to make their citizens meekly accept such authoritarianism. But first, some background:

As a young man, I felt more Ukrainian than American. In some ways my parents’ personal history made my life at home pretty adventurous – Romantic with a capital R. Stories of being forced from their homes and sent by train to unknown and forbidding destinations. Navigating dangerous refugee camps, learning to communicate in a third and fourth language. Dodging Allied machine guns strafing the countryside. Making the courageous decision to move to another continent and learn yet another language.

I grew up learning Ukrainian as a first language, all the while hearing about the old country, a comfortable place where everything was done properly, correctly, and according to custom.

But not everything was idyllic. My life in upstate New York, while pleasant enough at times, had a certain threatening air about it. Requests were never made. My brothers and I were alerted to tasks our parents wanted done in a way that never involved asking or explaining. Family plans were made in secret, methods to be used determined in advance, and orders being issued in a tone normally reserved for privates in the army, prisoners, or beasts of burden. No smiles just work, work, work. I couldn’t help but think, If this is how it was in the old country, I’m not sure it was the Canaan they described it to be.

Right or wrong, I certainly felt somewhat put-upon as a youngster. However, living in an ethnic neighborhood where others my age had similar experiences made this existence infinitely more tolerable. I used to attribute the brutishness of my parents to their own experience as the hardworking children of farmers in a rural setting about 100 years behind that of the west, but not everyone in our neighborhood came from such a background. Some of my parents’ immigrant neighbors were officials in their local government. Some were the children of professionals back in Ukraine. Some had more or less education than the eight years my mother was able to squeeze in before the fields beckoned. So why did all of my parents’ contemporaries sound as autocratic with their children as my Mom and Dad sounded to me?

Autocracy. I feel I’ve suffered under it first-hand. Autocracy is why Russia is important, or more aptly, this is why Russia’s influence over Donald Trump is important. It doesn’t even matter if the collusion between them during the election ever amounts to a criminal act. The Russians are the enemy of democratic principles because their values regarding fundamental human rights do not match our, more lofty values. And Donald Trump’s actions and statements involving the media, rights of minorities, personal freedoms, independence of the judiciary, and relationship of the Congress to the White House clearly illustrate that his own concept of his powers is one of authoritarianism. Sadly, dangerously, his concept of what government should be is chilling in its similarity to that of the Russians.

It’s taken me decades to discern, and I don’t want to sound racist, but I’ve come to believe that there is a mentality pervasive in Eastern Europe or Eurasia that not only is there virtue in governing with a top-down focus, but to do so in a way that is as arrogant and aggressive as possible. That is not the American way, but it was the way in my home, in my neighborhood, and certainly in Russia and the USSR. One of my acquaintances who’s visited and worked in Ukraine for long stretches shared a story with me that illustrates how this attitude permeates even average citizens.

My friend and his adolescent daughter were in Kyiv in the spring and attended an Easter service at one of the cathedrals in the Capitol. Standing room only, he and his daughter remained in the back, and she stood with her arms hanging down but crossed in front of her hips. As the service proceeded, a middle-aged, somewhat older gentleman standing next to them eventually reached across to the girl and gently pulled at her arm so that they became uncrossed to hang limply at her sides. The girl and her dad exchanged glances but opted to say nothing. After some time she again crossed her arms before her and their too-familiar parishioner repeated his move to force her to uncross them. Her Dad admonished him this time for interfering with his daughter to which the man replied in a whispered but urgent voice, “What’s the matter with you? She can’t stand in church with her arms crossed like that. What kind of father are you?” Incredulous, the dad pointed out the obvious and no more intervention took place.

It seems to me that in the Ukrainian/Russian mentality there is one way to do things – My Way. And this would mean “the way” of whoever is in charge at that time, in that place. After reading the book, The Russians, by Hedrick Smith, I realized that Russians and Ukrainians do indeed share a common culture. How could they not with Ukraine being ruled by Moscow for so long? In that book I read with fascination how a Russian in Vladivostok – 9,000 miles from western Ukraine – sounded and acted just like my father did. And he grew up nine thousand miles from Vladivostok. There seems to be an attitude of not trusting others. An attitude of “Do it because I said so.” And a general attitude among the regular populace of, “Hey, what can you do?” Even worse, sometimes the populace in Russia bemoans the loss of a strongman like Stalin. Actually, not sometimes, but often.

Before the national media began questioning the coincidence between Trump’s public comments and the exposure of his political opponent’s emails; before the Congressional inquiries into the possible quid pro quo involving Russian favors to Trump and his decision to eliminate providing Ukraine defensive weapons to hold off the Russian invasion; and before the nation’s media began noting Trump’s affinity for authoritarian pronouncements; I became very concerned during the 2016 election year about the eerie similarity between the way Trump argues his points and the way the Russians have historically argued theirs.

The Russian government at present, like the Soviet government before it and the czarist regime before that, follows a pattern of lies. At first they deny any responsibility at all. The denials are vehement and often so defensive that we imagine they are insulted and disgusted by whatever accusations are being made. Secondly, they assert that it is their enemy that is actually guilty of whatever accusation has been leveled. Following or accompanying this counter-claim, the Russians often produce documentary “evidence” of this counter-claim. Fortunately for the world, most of the time this “evidence” is prepared so sloppily that even amateur investigators easily de-bunk the material. Sometimes the fabrications are truly laughable as when Russia’s Defense Ministry used video game footage as “proof” the United States actually supported ISIS’s military in Syria. See the article from The Guardian at this site: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/russia-us-isis-syria-video-game-still

Finally, when the Kremlin finds itself backed into a corner, and if word of its misdeeds becomes a fait accompli, it usually admits to the accusations but justifies them because other nations have done the same thing. Invading Crimea and the Donbass territories of Ukraine is supposedly acceptable because the Untied States increased its territory through an illegal war against Mexico. Their history of ethnic cleansing (There is a reason why the percentage of Russians in eastern Ukraine and Crimea is so large, and it’s not because Russians are indigenous to those areas.) is supposedly justified because of the annihilation of the American Indians throughout the 1800s. This is the famous “What about . . . “ defense. In Trump’s case it sounds like this: :”What about crooked Hillary?” Or when Trump’s reputation suffered from accusations of sexual assault and harassment from about twenty women, he asked, “What about Bill Clinton?” Well, Bill Clinton was caught being a womanizer, lied about it, and was impeached by the House of Representatives. One can only hope such transparency and consequences occur for the present Trump administration.

To illustrate the Russian pattern of lies, one need only look at their activities and statements surrounding Ukraine, both historically and at present. During the early 1930s, the Holodomor occurred when Moscow targeted Ukraine for forced collectivization and uncounted millions of Ukrainians were purposely starved to death. The reason? Continued nationalism in the country and the support for national rights among the communist leaders in Ukraine. The leaders were arrested and shot. Following a later census when the world learned that the population of Ukraine decreased by millions, Stalin blamed World War II for the attrition rate. Of course, World War II hadn’t yet occurred when millions were erased by the Kremlin’s brutal policies.

When the evidence and truth of the genocide became accepted in the 1980s, Russia’s response then as now was that the collectivization targeted no nationality in particular and that Russians also perished. While especially true in the area just east and northeast of the Black Sea, that area (known as the Kuban) was filled with Ukrainians, many of whom had been moved the previous century to allow for the infiltration of Russians. We refer to such populations transfers today as ethnic cleansing. In the 1930s, many more Ukrainians than Russians lived in the Kuban. So while some areas outside of Ukraine were affected by the Holodymor, those areas were primarily populated by Ukrainians. Those Russians who did live int he Kuban were sacrificed. After all, Moscow has never been very concerned about its citizenry. Just ask the poor souls who were handed wooden guns in World War I to defend against the Kaiser’s armies.

More recently, in 2014, a Dutch airliner that was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Personnel monitoring the conflict zone noted the flurry of congratulations captured on radio and Facebook accounts – radio and Facebook controlled and owned by Russians and their patsies in the Donbass. Those radio recordings survive although the Facebook accounts were erased. Moscow’s first reaction to the news was denial. It’s second reaction was to blame Ukraine’s armed forces, and the Kremlin produced a flawed image showing a Ukrainian jet actually in the process of firing its missiles at the airliner in the distance. The image was proved a fabrication, but the Russians still proclaim innocence and point the blame at others. Sound familiar?

A year earlier Russia invaded and illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula, Crimea. They denied Russians were involved. They claimed it was Ukrainian nationalists at fault. And finally, when presented irrefutable evidence of the invasion, the justified it saying Crimea was the cradle of Russian civilization (even though Russia never controlled Crimea – ever – until the 1790s when Catherine the Great conquered the area).

Deny. Deflect. Fabricate. Rationalize.

Likewise, as Trump’s campaign continued, I became alarmed at what I saw as his mimicking Russian propaganda and disinformation tactics. Accused of sexual assault? He claims all 19 of his accusers are liars! Continue pressing his sexual deviance? It’s Bill Clinton who’s guilty, not he! There is a frightening aspect to Donald Trump’s prevarications: Denying the truth and claiming untruths are reality; saying, in effect, that we should not believe our own senses, but rather, believe only what he tells us . . . This is the way autocrats, dictators, and the other evil leaders of the world conduct their business. It is the way Hitler and Stalin gained and maintained power.

The Russian involvement in our 2016 election is not some weak attempt to entice the US into an unlikely friendship. And it’s not “past tense.” Their efforts to destabilize the United States is constant. Moscow’s intent is as it always was: Weaken the United States so that Russian hegemony can continue unabated and undeterred. Weaken the Untied States so that Washington’s leadership role in the world is diminished, allowing flawed, corrupt leaders like Putin to increase his influence, and his wealth and that of his cronies. Weaken the Untied States by dividing the population against itself so that nothing of value is accomplished and its citizens become less and less concerned about the world around us.

And sitting in the White House, the Kremlin has a friend who is willing to have this enemy of America, this enemy of truth clutter up our free press and our democracy. In the White House we have the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorist ignore the magnificent intelligence apparatus at his fingertips while re-tweeting fabricated anti-Muslim videos, parroting the lies promoted in RT (Russian Television News), and offering his own deflections and rationalizations – his own version of the truth. His “alternative facts” as one of his advisors has said.

Nero fiddling while Rome burned will pale in comparison to the catastrophe that will occur on this planet should America abdicate its responsibility to the truth and fall in line beside other autocracies as they carve out their niches, all at the expense of the freedoms we have enjoyed.

Russia matters.

Most successful people have lived through multiple failures because, ironically, our failures help guide us to success. We learn which mistakes not to repeat, and we learn to avoid those paths that lead us to places where we are not comfortable, not at our best. Thus we avoid becoming braggarts or bullies, thieves or lazy ne’er-do-wells. We may adopt such a label at one or time or another, but those with noble achievements don’t accept their character flaws. They recognize and discard them.
Everyone exhibits poor judgment sometimes. Moral dilemmas force an ethical and logical internal examination that leads to a better understanding of the surprises life presents us. Making the wrong choice in a situation forces an internal examination of one’s motives and goals. Learning from our mistakes is what eventually and collectively contributes to our overall wisdom. The kind of stuff that we don’t learn from teachers or books.
When someone claims to never lose, to never need to apologize, to never having made a mistake, that person is rationalizing his decisions, perhaps lying, and living a selfish existence. And someone who rationalizes most decisions he makes, or blames others for his own misfortune, or who professes to always be a winner is concerned only with his image, not the reality of who he is.
Not only have we all known braggarts, bullies, and boneheads, but at times many of us have filled one or more of those roles ourselves. We assume many personas as our conscious and subconscious selves try to establish who we are to become. We don a mask and behave accordingly only to discard it later for one good reason or another as our characters evolve. As we become who we are destined to be.
Unknowingly, I wore the mask of a braggart into my teen years. I can only hope I’ve long since removed it. I know I’ve been a bonehead but I’m fairly sure that my current life choices don’t reflect boneheaded-ness. And it’s with more than a little shame that I admit to having been – for a very short time, less than a day – a bully.
This episode from my past involved a high school classmate of mine, Bill, who disliked me as much as I disliked him. Our animosity may have arisen from our different backgrounds and simply being thrust together in the crucible of public schools. As our surnames began with the same letter, we shared homeroom for a few years as well as a number of other classes including science, English, and social studies. We had more in common than we realized because we also gravitated to the same electives, including Creative Writing, and it is there where we had our most pitched battles.
Our teacher required us to write a short story for every class. Every one. We met twice a week for ninety minutes, and that offered the small number of students the time to read their fictions aloud and offer critiques. At the time I was taken with science fiction and fantasy, and in the space of 350 words, my characters found themselves experiencing all sorts of drama, like protecting the Earth from aliens or exploring undersea caverns filled with as yet undiscovered creatures. Bill’s stories were invariably about a set of parents arguing, verbally clawing at each other while their children cowered in fear or distanced themselves in confusion at what they witnessed. He’d never seen any plots as ridiculous and inane as mine, and I’d never seen any so unappealing as his. Our critical commentaries were often the stuff of rancor, insult, and disdain.
But by the time of Creative Writing in our senior year, he and I were at least equals in each other’s eyes. Two years earlier that wasn’t the case. Growing up in the west end of town, I admired some neighborhood toughs and had learned the importance of standing up for myself. I also learned that arrogance and bluster sometimes played a role when fisticuffs were imminent. And all by myself, I learned that such an attitude also worked in kowtowing those who had difficulty in standing up for themselves. In short, I believed that I could, with a little bravado and the threat of force, get some people to back down.
Some months into tenth grade, with Bill and me already disliking each other, I apparently concluded that he was not the type to stand up and fight. Sitting in class, following an exchange of insults, I began periodically punching Bill from behind. Nothing too hard, I simply punched him in the shoulder every so often. My air of superiority was evident, my “courage” on display before everyone but the distracted teacher. And my tough guy attitude continued right up until another student quietly intervened and ended my bullying forever saying, “If you hit him again I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”
I was hot with humiliation, immediately and thoroughly. The shock of the statement landed like the promised fist. His few words made me realize that my own abhorrent behavior had cast a spotlight on my corrupt soul. The noble classmate simply opened my own eyes to what was already on display before all. Awash in shame, I knew my behavior was detestable, and I’m thankful to this day another teen had the courage and character to point it out to me.
It took a righteous young man to stop my behavior, and the dishonor and embarrassment I felt that morning forever ended any thoughts I might have had about bullying in the future. My embarrassment was wholly the result of accepting the truth of what I’d evolved into. It still distresses me that I became such a person, if only for that morning, that memorable ten minutes. I cringe just a bit as I publicly share this memory.
My experience as a bully taught me more than just regret and shame; I learned that in making mistakes, we all have a chance at redemption. The enmity Bill and I shared never devolved into anything resembling the earlier situation in that classroom – I certainly never considered anything remotely similar – though we didn’t become friends. Two years later we would verbally spar in that Creative Writing class, our dissimilar interests on display, with each playing the part of the other’s foil. And I grew to like Bill. Meeting on occasion in the years following graduation, my regrets led me to apologize for that episode in class, and gentleman that he is, he whisked the memory away with a wave of his hand.
The experience taught me to challenge bullies as I was challenged. I learned that in accepting the truth of what I had become, I had the freedom and ability to change myself. I learned to recognize my faults, and through effort and honest apology, to end them. That may be the secret to life: Always do what you think is right, and when you’re wrong, learn from it, recognizing and avoiding the earlier behavior. The first time you make a poor decision you commit a mistake. Repeating the same mistake over and over may not be insanity, but it does reveal shortcomings in one’s character. Or as Donald Trump might comment, “Those people are bad dudes.”
By age 70, such bad judgment is part of one’s character, but even at 70, people can change. The epiphany of Ebenezer Scrooge from “A Christmas Carol” may be fiction, but opportunities occur often to change for the better. Still, without accepting the truth about oneself, any evolution of character is hit and miss at best. Donald Trump denies any and all accusations that he has a flawed character. He flaunts his extra-marital affairs; he lies with a consistency that is shocking; he makes blatantly racist comments, betraying his anathema toward minorities; and he accepts no responsibility for his failures, whether it is bankruptcy, losing court cases, or being unable to get a Republican-controlled government to successfully pass any bills. He won’t improve in any of these areas – family, finances, racism, government – because he denies he has a problem in these areas.
I would argue that he has a flawed character because he’s never accepted the truth about himself. The spotlight of his words and actions continues to make Americans and the world aware of his flawed character, but does nothing for Trump except make him lash out frenetically against the truth. And this is the most dangerous aspect of Donald Trump’s tenure as president; it is no longer enough for him to live in his own land of make believe. Trump now demands that the entire nation subscribe to his version of reality.
Donald Trump believes that actual facts can become untrue as long as he doesn’t acknowledge them as true. That’s when terms like “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and “doublethink” spring to mind. The examples of dictators actually using “fake news” are easy to find. Most of the time, the propaganda targets the home populations to keep them in line. Trump, who bristles at the slightest criticism, would feel at home in such a regime. Some of the most egregious lies came from dictators like Stalin who had historical photographs edited to amend the collective memory of an entire nation. Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Yezhov, and others were erased from well-known photographs after their falls from power. Such censorship and lying continues in Russia to this day. These are same Russians for whom Trump has such lofty praise and never a word of disparagement.
Donald Trump refuses to admit he is wrong on even the slightest of facts. He was willing to derail the focus of the US citizens by maintaining his lie that President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped. His own Justice Department eventually dismissed this claim. Like a petulant child, he hangs onto his lies because never backing down is more important to him than the truth, as if by not backing down he has somehow molded reality to his vision of what he wants to be true. In the days following his inauguration, he expected people to dismiss what they saw with their own eyes as the White House claimed more people attended his inauguration than any other, this despite the photographic evidence to the contrary. I don’t understand why supporters of Trump accept the idea that he is never wrong. They must recognize the blatant arrogance and condescension he has for seemingly all other people.
Donald Trump’s rejection of the truth is at the core of why I cannot support him. It corrupts his character, it endangers society by introducing scatter-brained ideas in place of rational thought. Millions of illegal aliens did not vote for Hillary Clinton, and it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to spend millions on trying to prove this idiotic conspiracy theory. He will not apologize for his abominable behavior even when that behavior replays repeatedly on TV. Thus, he must approve of his abominable behavior.
Trump lies and lies and exhorts us in almost every public statement to “believe me.” Only liars and exaggerators feel the need to earnestly persuade their listeners to “believe” them.
That he is a bully is widely accepted. Trump admits to bullying behavior and seems proud of it. It means he’s winning doesn’t it? As a result, he cannot improve his character. How can he? Why bother improving if you never accept that what you do is wrong? And he insists he’s never wrong even as he insults the mayor of a city (London) who had a day earlier experienced a terrorist attack. Even as he insults the mayor of a city (San Juan, Puerto Rico) who is waist-deep in the mire trying to save people from dying in the aftermath of a hurricane. Even as he coddles white supremacists, even as he pardons a racist sheriff who ignores a ruling from the Supreme Court, and even as he repeatedly lies to the public about his campaign’s involvement with the dictator in the Kremlin.
Russian involvement with the election? Just fire the FBI Director Comey under the pretense that Comey’s comments regarding Hillary Clinton during the campaign is the reason. Given that Trump praised Comey’s actions in this regard during the campaign, only reinforces the position that Trump really eliminated Comey in an effort to end the Russian investigation. Hell, he admitted as much on a national news broadcast. The trail of lies and untruths from the White House is long indeed, and this is more than sad when the leader of the nation relies on untruths to make his points and defend his dishonorable comments and actions.
We have a bully in the White House, and that bodes ill for the Republic. He slaps America’s allies and neighbors (Mexico, Australia, S. Korea, Germany) and compliments and/or rewards corrupt dictators (Russia, Putin, China, The Philippines, N. Korea). Like any bully, when faced with firmness, he backs down. China is no longer a currency manipulator, a term he used against China during the campaign and which his supporters praised as evidence of his toughness. I wasn’t tough when I abused my classmate, and Trump isn’t tough when he refuses to shake the hand of Angela Merkel, president of America’s most important ally in Europe. As president of the United States, he is in position to be a bully to every single country on earth because bullies target those weaker than they. As a bully, he is the worst possible role model for children. As a person who claims to make no mistakes, he is the worst possible role model for adults.
There have been three intense hurricanes this season, devastating Puerto Rico as well as parts of Florida and Texas. Weathering the storm that is Donald Trump may prove more damaging to the United States than were those cataclysmic events. Until Trump evolves into the beloved Ebenezer Scrooge of Christmas morning, the entire world is reduced to waiting out this overgrown child for whom having the last word is more important than whether or not the planet falls into the abyss of nuclear war.
Trump supporters wanted a tough-talking, tough-acting head of state, someone who spoke to allies and foes alike with frankness and hard-as-nails common sense. But this guy? Donald Trump may talk tough at times, but how effective is such talk when the words coming out of his mouth are untrue? When his views are racist and his ideals absent, who really wants this guy to be the one who speaks for us all? Continue reading “Bully, Bully” →

My mother told me of an experience when in her 70s she was at some store paying her phone or energy bill. She always kept her money in the bank envelope, perhaps thinking that it somehow guarded against prying eyes. With shoppers milling about while she waited her turn standing in line, she would count and recount her money in that envelope. With all of her handling of the cash, she eventually realized she was missing $20 she’d earlier counted and scanned the floor around her.  Still confounded by the missing bill, she looked at a young couple behind her in line and asked in her broken English if they’d seen her drop any bills. The young wife (“She knew,” my mother confidently told me later.) looked askance at her husband as he denied seeing anything, his awkwardly placed foot apparently covering something on the floor. “Are you shure, maybe you step on by accidents,” she asked, but he continued his denial, and she let it go.

It’s sad when someone takes advantage of innocent people for his own gain. I couldn’t vote for someone like that for student council president, forget president of the United States, but that’s the kind of guy many of my friends helped put in the Oval Office.

When watching one of the Clinton-Trump debates in 2016, I was noted with interest that Secretary Clinton pointed out Trump’s history of underpaying firms he’d contracted for his hotel projects. She referred to a man whose firm did exemplary work at one of his hotels, but when it came time to pay, Trump balked. I had already learned in the press about his penchant for offering less money than promised to contractors who’d completed their jobs. One needs only to read a USA Today article from June of 2016 (“Hundreds Allege Trump Doesn’t Pay His Bills”) to get details of some of his most notorious schemes at denying the little guy what he promised. For those who believe that anything negative about Trump is “fake news,” know that Fox News also ran this story.

His lame response to Clinton’s accusation at the debate was to say, “Maybe he didn’t do a good job.” I refer to this response as lame because video evidence from that hotel showed Trump offering effusive compliments to hotel visitors about that same work the contractor performed. But as always, Trump does not allow the truth to impede his attempts to maximize his profits. Even the juvenile phrase he used to justify his avarice and bullying illustrates his insecurity about what people might think of his unethical practice. Maybe he didn’t do a good job? Either he did a good job or he didn’t. Either you had a reason to deny him his money or you didn’t. What’s with the maybe? Like an immature kid he thinks that planting the idea of some other possibility is enough to take the stain of his behavior away. Perhaps he should have thought of that the dozens of other times he’d underpaid those under contract to work for him.

Even adolescents know better than to use such an excuse. “Why don’t you have your homework today, Donald?” – “Well, maybe I had to spend the night at the hospital.”

What compels a businessman like Trump to withhold the wages he agreed to pay, especially when the work was properly done? I think the answer is that he knows he can get away with it. Trump realizes that the contractor will incur court costs that eclipse the reward for winning the case causing most of those who are swindled to take whatever percentage Trump offers. Trump would rarely build in the same city again, so these contractors represented irrelevant pawns to him that allowed him to pick up some extra pocket change of a few thousand dollars here and there. Kind of like standing in line with your foot on the $20 bill the old woman in front of you just dropped. And when you’re caught, it’s okay to lie or be ambivalent in your answers.

I won’t argue with those who say Trump has “balls.” It does take “balls” for someone to very purposely cheat another out of his contracted salary. It takes “balls” for someone to accept the animosity of others who see your pure greed and lack of morality. It takes “balls” to step on a $20 bill dropped by an old woman while in public. Though I don’t think this will help make America great again,.

I was taught that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Morals need to be considered when taking an action because life isn’t only a risk-reward, winner-loser experience. What compelled so many hard-working, middle class Americans to vote for such a person? What compelled the religious right to support such an immoral, unethical individual? I guess I don’t understand how America comes out looking like a winner having an individual with this mindset in the Oval Office.

I offer one hypothetical to these voters: If you’d been denied your agreed-upon wages by some hot shot real estate developer in your community, would you have cast a vote for this him if he were running for mayor or county legislator? What if you simply knew your mayoral candidate had this reputation? I know I wouldn’t cast a vote for him. There’s just too much self-interest in such a person for him to avoid promoting self-serving legislation and policies.

How does a person get like that – willing to hurt others just to get ahead? Probably a family’s impact is paramount in shaping a principled state of mind along with notable experiences we have as individuals early in life. When I was 10 or 11 I learned that a someone a few blocks away wanted his backyard cleared of overgrowth and debris. Motivated by the satisfaction of doing yard work – something I kind of liked at home – and my tiny allowance of fifty cents, I steeled myself to do a cold call one Saturday morning. The door opened, presenting me with a gentleman holding an open newspaper and peering over his glasses. I explained the reason for my being there, and he said simply, “It’s a big job. How much would you want?”

“Is ten dollars okay?” The prospect of receiving in one day what it would take four months of allowances to accomplish blinded me to the fact that I hadn’t yet looked at the task awaiting me. The manicured part of the property ended at the base of a bank of earth sloping upward to an ancient railroad bed. In many places along the track even the rails were not visible. The bank was the width of the entire property and stretched upward for about fifteen feet. About 50-60 feet wide, my charge was to clear nearly 900 square feet of thick foliage.

With Mr. _____’s tools in hand – a hoe, pitchfork, two rakes, and more – I attacked the brown, yellow, and green brush and vines with gusto. Soon the black and gray roots, shoots, and stumps felt a tearing hatchet hoisted by two skinny arms, and the undergrowth felt the scratch of my rakes. I generated piles of rubbish as I labored on through the morning. But who knew that flora can fight back?

My war wounds included scrapes from nettles, gashes from thorns, and welts from things unknown,and I faced friendly fire in the form of cuts from extraordinarily sharp clippers. Burdocks girdled and annoyed me as I worked on. By the second hour, I was heartened by my progress. I had exposed a small patch of earth on the embankment. Confident of success, I thought that by lunch I would be well on my way to completing the project. Its grave-like shape foreshadowed something less optimistic.

By mid-afternoon I increased the size of my clearing to nearly twenty feet wide at the base, and perhaps ten feet wide at the top as I worked across the embankment at an angle from that point to the top of the bank at the property’s edge. Two hours later, I had less than a third of the job finished, but I was spent. A good job but I didn’t get it done. Beaten by some pretty tough plants and a weakening attitude, I knew that I didn’t have the drive to return the following day to finish what I had begun.

Slowly, I stacked the tools near the house and returned to the entrance, softly knocking on the door. “Uh, I couldn’t finish the job, Mr. _____.”

He smiled, “I told you it was a big job. You’ll get it tomorrow.”

“No, sir, I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. After I acknowledged that I wouldn’t be coming the next day, he reached around for his wallet and said, “Well, let me give you something for what you did today.”

I stepped back from him and waved the money away, “ No sir. I didn’t finish the job. I can’t take anything from you.”

Mr. _____ insisted and held out a bill toward me, but I said, “I wouldn’t feel right about taking your money, sir. Thanks all the same,” I added.

He opened the door further and stepped out onto the landing. “Listen, you worked all day, and I’m not letting you leave without something for your efforts. Take it.” And with that he put the five dollar bill in my hand, nodded once, and returned inside.

The walk home gave me a little time to think about matters and forget about the burdocks cleverly hiding from my searching fingers. I thought about the importance of being fair to oneself; I wasn’t going to underbid jobs anymore, and I’d do a better job of determining the amount of work something entailed. But I also thought about how this gentleman did not accept my initial reasoning, that somehow I deserved nothing for my work because I couldn’t finish it on time or left it incomplete. He made the extra effort to ensure that he paid me something.

I can think of one person who wouldn’t have done that.

My experience reminds me that there are children with better ethics than he. That in the moment when a job is done poorly or left incomplete, those with principles of morality will be fair to themselves and to the employee. But to penalize an employee for doing a good job? And to do this dozens if not hundreds of times? With attorneys on retainer he can with impunity waste the time of the courts and wait until his former employees simply give up the idea of getting satisfaction from a judge. After all, eventually they realize that even if they gain a favorable judgment, they will have lost more money in legal fees. And for having fought Trump in court, they become blacklisted as contractors in the community, receiving fewer jobs on which to bid. The irony is astounding. Shouldn’t it be Trump who should be blacklisted by the contractors in the area? It is the contractors who have told such stories to the press. This is not “fake news.”

Many of my friends work or have worked in the construction trades. I’ve worked as a painter and a roofer; I’ve built decks and remodeled basements. These co-workers – my friends – speak their minds when in conversation. They don’t put up fools for very long, and yet many of them voted for Donald Trump. They voted for him even though he’s shown himself to be the kind of man for whom they would never choose to work. I can’t imagine these friends of mine ever sharing a beer with someone like Trump. They’d be unwilling to handle the bragging and the exaggerations. If they looked closer, they’d see he’s not their kind of guy. Always talking and only about himself. And when they find out he doesn’t pay his contractors in full, I expect sparks would fly

I just don’t get it.

Many who voted for President Trump and who continue to support him, believe that a businessman would prove more effective in government than a career politician. It’s a reasonable assumption and one worthy of consideration. Could this president balance the budget? Could a successful businessman get the military to stop overspending for their hammers and toilet seats and aircraft carriers? Could we really get a better version of health care for every citizen and at a lower cost. Electing a successful businessman seemed like a good bet to many, and who among us will confess that they never suspected that someone’s success in business could translate to success in government leadership? Especially when the person in question brags that he never loses.

The correlative associated with this line of thinking is that career politicians are not nearly as concerned with their constituents as they are with lining their own pockets, that they find lying as easy – and essential – as breathing. Sadly, the evidence exists that such a position is also worthy of consideration for some – hopefully not most – politicians. But an examination of the 2016 political season along with some historical observations shows that we made a mistake selecting Donald Trump to be that businessman who would end waste in government, balance the budget, end corruption, and tell us the truth.

Trump’s proposed budget would increase the deficit dramatically, and it supports the opposite of what he promised the American voter. This biggest tax break ever does allow for tax cuts to the middle class, but it eliminates deductions that the middle class relies on. His health care plan does the opposite of what he promised the American voter. The buzz word for supporters of Trumpcare is “access.” Citizens will have a right to purchase heath care. That’s not much of a plan. It’s like the old days when those who were not insured got free health care coverage by showing up at the emergency room, causing the rest of us to experience higher premiums. I seem to remember Trump promising “better health care at a fraction of the cost.”

This successful businessman has continued his involvement with his business interests according to his sons who claim they meet regularly with Trump to discuss such matters. This continued involvement has created more than conflicts of interest; they have encouraged dictators around the globe where he has financial dealings or wants to build Trump Towers. Is that what Trump voters thought they would get when they elected a businessman to our highest office?

In hindsight, there are some notable politicians we should never have trusted because of their flaws. Andrew Johnson, a racist who stood tall among other racists. Richard Nixon because of his abuse of power, lying, and willingness to allow his flunkies to commit crimes to further his own ends. Huey Long because of his abuse of power and dealings with shady characters. Joseph McCarthy who created a national paranoia about communism and fifth columnists among us by openly lying about those accused (sound familiar?). Warren G. Harding because of his corruption and that of his cabinet officials (see Teapot Dome scandal).

Also of note are those presidents who engaged in illicit affairs while in office. Had their character flaws been widely substantiated during their campaigns, it is doubtful any would have remained in the race let alone been elected. However, their flaw of adultery did not necessarily indicate an inability to govern. In looking at their accomplishments, one can see that their goals as president went beyond successfully seducing women. Bill Clinton balanced the budget and got the economy growing at a fast clip. John Kennedy was a wonderful ambassador for US interests around the world and manned up to the USSR, keeping ICBMs out of Cuba. However, they were also responsible for hurting the United States.

Bill Clinton’s lack of morals continues to overshadow the economic success he enjoyed. John Kennedy’s own inexperience led to the grave Russian threat that led to him having to stand up to Moscow. Kennedy also bears some responsibility for the build up of our military involvement in Viet Nam. Knowing what I now know, I might not have voted for such men either because trust is an issue of importance for me. If such men feel no compunction about screwing their wives by screwing their girlfriends, they would have no compunction about screwing me, too. As they do with their sexual conquests, they use sweet-talk and persuasion to get us to believe their lies putting voters exactly where they want them. But sometimes we must weigh one flawed candidate against another flawed candidate. Such was the case for many in 2016 as many saw Trump as the blemished candidate who nonetheless was somehow an improvement over his opponent. I disagree that her was an improvement over Hillary Clinton, but that’s a topic for another essay.

There are also examples of extremely wealthy politicians working hard on behalf of the common citizen. Franklin Roosevelt is an obvious example as is his cousin Teddy Roosevelt. Between just those two they are credited with making conservation a national priority, creating the first national parks, standing up to monopolies and breaking them, creating the Social Security system, establishing a national minimum wage, making it illegal to discriminate in the workplace, supporting the cause of labor unions, and other positions supporting vast majority of Americans. These wealthy politicians worked against their own personal interests to secure a better life for those who needed it most. And they fought against wealthy businessmen who opposed their attempts to make things easier for the little guy.

With the profit motive being paramount for CEOs, concern for the middle or poorer classes is sometimes nonexistent. Child labor laws were first enacted in the 1830s, but they were mild and had little effect. In fact, it wasn’t until 1938, when FDR was president, that federal law set minimum wages and limits for the number of hours children could be forced to work. Such laws would hardly be necessary except for unscrupulous businessmen, the kind who used strikebreakers to bloody workers who dared support work stoppages for fairer wages and safety in the workplace. Today we have a businessman as president who underpays his subcontractors so he can put a few more dollars in his pockets and places executives from Goldman-Sachs in cabinet posts. Far from “draining the swamp,” Trump is pumping in more refuse.

Businessmen and industrialists opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They opposed child labor laws. They opposed – some continue to oppose – equal pay for equal work. They opposed Social Security. They seem to oppose anything that will stop them from maximizing their profits and their control over those who work for them. So, no, I am not one who thinks we need a businessman in the White House, at least not one who is  unscrupulous.

The objective for businessmen is to make a profit. That is what business leaders desire first and last. That the vast majority want to create a good product is laudable, but the bottom line – profit or loss – is what counts. It isn’t strange that we vilify politicians for that same selfish goal because politicians should be concerned with the general welfare of the entire nation. So why then are we convinced that a businessman could do the job of politician better than those who’ve been a part of government at multiple levels? Why do we hold in contempt those who are interested in their communities and continue to take that interest to the halls of Congress? Why do we hope that a person whose only goal is to make money can conduct the ship of state better than a person who learned the craft while being raised in a political family? Sure, it would be nice if Trump came in and made America richer, but the only ones getting richer are millionaires and billionaires. I guess businessmen are only good at getting profits for themselves, not everyone else. After all, there is a finite amount of money in the country, and the administration is shifting hundreds of millions from one group of people (the poor and middle class) to another group of people (the billionaires club).

Most important, why on earth would we think Donald Trump is the one businessman who can do the job? His business history is literally riddled with thousands of lawsuits (4,095 in thirty years according to USA Today) with dozens filed after becoming president. He followed racist policies as a landlord and wound up being sued by the federal government. According to an article in The Washington Post (1/23/16), Trump was forced to correct his practices. Despite settling out of court, despite admitting no guilt, (His countersuit against Washington was dismissed), Trump was forced to “. . . place ads informing minorities they had an equal opportunity to seek housing at their properties.” They were required to “. . . thoroughly acquaint themselves with the Fair Housing Act.” So while paying a settlement, being forced to publicly state minorities were welcome to rent at Trump tenements, and being forced to become familiar with federal law, Trump still believes he was victorious because he didn’t admit guilt. He didn’t have to admit guilt when that guilt is apparent in the penalties he faced.

He cheated students out of their tuitions who wanted nothing more than to be successful in business like Trump, and in January, 2017 paid a 25 million dollar settlement in damages. He may not have admitted guilt this time either, but that technicality is irrelevant to any thinking, rational person. These aren’t examples of someone who cares about the little guy. The only evidence we have of his being even a little concerned about the American citizens are his many promises while on the campaign trail. Promises he’s already broken on taxes and health care.

Donald Trump lies and then he lies again.

Politicians lie, too. Politicians make promises they know they either can’t or won’t keep. Politicians lie in an effort to keep the electorate from learning about their flaws. In that way, I suppose Trump fits right in. But Donald Trump, after being caught in a lie or a failure, will shout that others are lying. He will claim that he really said something else. He will attack the character, motivations, or credibility of those who oppose him. He will attack the physical appearance of his detractors as if such a non sequitur will somehow make others agree with him. His distractions and outright lies seem to be ignored by some sections of the public, and I simply do not understand why this is so. But Donald Trump also lies to prove his horrid behavior should be seen as acceptable, even desirable. He did this with the racist Birther controversy lying enthusiastically as he described the “amazing information” his investigators were uncovering in Hawaii; he lied about the nature of his comments when he admitted to groping women; he lies to paint the truth fiction and to make fiction a reality in the minds of his followers, and this is dangerous for the country.

I don’t understand why my friends would vote for a guy who arranges for his friends to get massive financial rewards from the government while simultaneously ignoring the rest of us. A lying businessman this corrupt should never be in charge of anything more complicated than the remote control on his TV. I am not opposed to the idea that a successful businessman could use his talents to help the government balance its budget or find new ways to generate income or simply manage its financial reserves better. I am opposed to a businessman who has cheated and lied his way to success employing his particular talents to continue promoting his personal finances at the expense of America’s poor and middle class.

If you’ve been a Trump supporter, please look into some of the claims against him, learn more about the way he runs his businesses, and reconsider the support you offer. If you do, you may find that you wouldn’t want to work for a boss like that. And if you wouldn’t want to work for such a person, you probably wouldn’t want him to be in charge of the country where you reside.