Paradoxically, the events that have happened since Trump rode down his golden escalator in June 2015 have been the best thing that could happen to the United States. We’ve been forced to rediscover who we really are. Thirty years ago, when the Soviet Union fell apart and the Cold War that had dominated everything for the previous forty years came to an end, pundits celebrated the “end of history” and the “final triumph of the West.” And when it started to become obvious if you looked, that it really wasn’t like that at all, people turned away and said, “Oh, no, that’s not right.” We celebrated that “It really can’t happen here.”
I had to turn off MSNBC. I am in a world of hurt where I want to do SOMETHING that matters. Why do we call them "civilians"? These are human beings. Mothers. Wives. Sisters. Grandmothers. Aunts. Young boys. Young girls. Babies. Old people. Sick people. PEOPLE. Why do we call them "casualties"? They are human beings MURDERED by a cold blooded killer. I get all the more enraged at the sanitizing language on MSM. How about a little OUTRAGE?
In the interview President Biden did with our Professor, he explained why the struggle between autocracy and democracy was happening. Technology. The speed of life. Events happen fast, (mis)information travels fast, decisions are made fast. Democracy requires consensus. Consensus doesn’t happen fast. And, it seems a fair portion of us don’t want to deal with all that … let someone else do it… but scream, and spew hatred and name call if they don’t do it how they want it done. I don’t know, man. It doesn’t look good to me. It looks like a very hard thing to conquer.
“All of a sudden, we’ve rediscovered things people discovered back in 1949. All the talk about there being a struggle between democracy and autocracy is very, very real. Lots of people thought September 11, 2001 was “the new Pearl harbor.” It turns out that February 23, 2022 is the new Pearl Harbor day.”
This is the essay I’ve been waiting for, TC. Thank you.
I always seek to find the spiritual truth in conflict. Thus, this I have discovered. Light finds the cracks that fill again with the darkness of oppression and repression. And Light fills them again. So that we notice. And remember our true nature.
It grieves me that it has to happen so many times at the expense of lives and livelihood. Yet, I will never succumb to the temptation to follow a puppet master riding down a golden escalator promising bigger and better shit sandwiches.
Decades in 12 days.
“Right now we’re on the same page about saving the system that lets us have the disagreements.”
I’m not the only one who discovered that.
And then, in the past 12 days, an era has ended and several decades have happened that no one would have foreseen.”
Terrific writing. Thanks! And the quote from The Atlantic. A new purpose has appeared. The world has changed decades in days. For all its capacity to terrify the invasion of Ukraine, and the deeply moving and terrible courage of the Ukrainian people and their leadership, have finally revealed that there may be a way to cross all the divisions which have so riven the body politic these last 20 plus years. How is that these gop guys can look into a killer's eyes and see their soul? And who knows, maybe even agree that 4 years of Mr. Mar a Lardo, and 8 years of W, awarded the presidency as the result of an administrative coup(don't ask me to read James Baker's book) as beautifully orchestrated as if it had happened in the Kremlin, we'd be here today finally seeing in all its horror the difference between dictatorship/authoritarian rule (which too many gop folks have decided to love) and Democracy which too many of us do not understand in its fullness. But there is always another opportunity to learn, to figure it out, to be transformed, to do the new thing that has been needed so long.
Thanks for this...".the perfect is the enemy of the good."
We are definitely not perfect ( look at our advertising to see how self absorbed and distracted we are). We say "meh" a lot OR we whine about gas prices as we watch in real time 18 mos old babies die in Putin's War and see the braver than brave Ukrainians do what I am afraid as a society we would never be able to do ( but, per your post, maybe we still carry vestiges of moral rectitude and courage in our DNA!). And our world track record carries its own sins which always leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy.
But, as a democracy we are " good enough" and must stand with other democracies against what Anne Applebaum describes as the pervasive network of autocracies choking the planet. The flawed democracies of the west are the carriers of the oxygen of freedom.
We really needed to heed Russian expert Fiona Hill in the second impeachment hearings.....that she would not cooperate with anything that played into the Russian storyboard. Like you, TC, she recognized the smell of BS when it wafted its way in.
In all this real time horror and agony we are watching on the same msm we continually criticize ( but, thankfully, still have access to) there are many, many stories of heroism, people helping others at great risk to themselves, Ukranians fighting for their home, U.S Ukrainians going back to fight.
You recommended films to us yesterday. In many ways we are watching a real time documentary every day. The task is to put the popcorn away and realize that we are an escalator ride away from starring roles in our own horrible reality. We have been warned, at home and abroad!
I am not at all sure that we in the U.S. would come anywhere near the " grace under fire" shown by the people of Ukraine. But maybe you are right. When the world shifts we are capable of meeting that shift head-on.
Nice easily understandable summation of the Post War world.
I really hate how Biden is treated by the msm. That said, Biden is not without faults. One of them is NOT restoring our standing in the diplomatic world. We're getting support and are supporting NATO, I have confidence in the career state department staff, who work endlessly for decades when "Ambassadors" ( usually appointed for their loyalty to whomever is POTUS) grab headlines.
I wake each day in a cold sweat if that orange slime was successful in stealing yet another election.
What would the world look now is a question that leads me to my Xanax and a padded room.
FWIW: thanks, Joe for being Joe. It ain't love but it ain't bad.
'The power supply was cut to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said, blaming Russia's invading forces for the blackout and warning that it could lead to "nuclear discharge."
'The U.N.-backed global nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, downplayed concerns of an imminent radioactive release, but a Ukrainian national emergency services agency said if power to the plant's cooling systems — which keep spent nuclear fuel safely surrounded by water — is not ensured, it could create a "radioactive cloud" to blow over "other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Europe."
'The Chernobyl power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, "was fully disconnected from the power grid," Ukraine's national energy operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday in a statement on its Facebook page, adding that military operations meant there was "no possibility to restore the lines."
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called "on the entire international community to immediately demand that Russia cease fire and allow repair crews to restore power as soon as possible" to Chernobyl.
'He said the backup generators may only work for 48 hours.'
"After that, cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent," Kuleba said in a series of tweets. "Putin's barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately!" (CBSNews)
I am a couple of days late reading this one. Wow...just wow. Summed it all up beautifully. As I've said before, I hope none of this comes to our shores physically, but we have to wake up and see what will happen to us if we keep ignoring the signs. And Ukraine is a very big sign...
I had to turn off MSNBC. I am in a world of hurt where I want to do SOMETHING that matters. Why do we call them "civilians"? These are human beings. Mothers. Wives. Sisters. Grandmothers. Aunts. Young boys. Young girls. Babies. Old people. Sick people. PEOPLE. Why do we call them "casualties"? They are human beings MURDERED by a cold blooded killer. I get all the more enraged at the sanitizing language on MSM. How about a little OUTRAGE?
In the interview President Biden did with our Professor, he explained why the struggle between autocracy and democracy was happening. Technology. The speed of life. Events happen fast, (mis)information travels fast, decisions are made fast. Democracy requires consensus. Consensus doesn’t happen fast. And, it seems a fair portion of us don’t want to deal with all that … let someone else do it… but scream, and spew hatred and name call if they don’t do it how they want it done. I don’t know, man. It doesn’t look good to me. It looks like a very hard thing to conquer.
“All of a sudden, we’ve rediscovered things people discovered back in 1949. All the talk about there being a struggle between democracy and autocracy is very, very real. Lots of people thought September 11, 2001 was “the new Pearl harbor.” It turns out that February 23, 2022 is the new Pearl Harbor day.”
This is the essay I’ve been waiting for, TC. Thank you.
I always seek to find the spiritual truth in conflict. Thus, this I have discovered. Light finds the cracks that fill again with the darkness of oppression and repression. And Light fills them again. So that we notice. And remember our true nature.
It grieves me that it has to happen so many times at the expense of lives and livelihood. Yet, I will never succumb to the temptation to follow a puppet master riding down a golden escalator promising bigger and better shit sandwiches.
Decades in 12 days.
“Right now we’re on the same page about saving the system that lets us have the disagreements.”
I’m not the only one who discovered that.
And then, in the past 12 days, an era has ended and several decades have happened that no one would have foreseen.”
It’s up to us now to see it clearly.
United! 🗽💫🌎🌍🌏
Outstanding, thanks TC.
Terrific writing. Thanks! And the quote from The Atlantic. A new purpose has appeared. The world has changed decades in days. For all its capacity to terrify the invasion of Ukraine, and the deeply moving and terrible courage of the Ukrainian people and their leadership, have finally revealed that there may be a way to cross all the divisions which have so riven the body politic these last 20 plus years. How is that these gop guys can look into a killer's eyes and see their soul? And who knows, maybe even agree that 4 years of Mr. Mar a Lardo, and 8 years of W, awarded the presidency as the result of an administrative coup(don't ask me to read James Baker's book) as beautifully orchestrated as if it had happened in the Kremlin, we'd be here today finally seeing in all its horror the difference between dictatorship/authoritarian rule (which too many gop folks have decided to love) and Democracy which too many of us do not understand in its fullness. But there is always another opportunity to learn, to figure it out, to be transformed, to do the new thing that has been needed so long.
Thanks for this...".the perfect is the enemy of the good."
We are definitely not perfect ( look at our advertising to see how self absorbed and distracted we are). We say "meh" a lot OR we whine about gas prices as we watch in real time 18 mos old babies die in Putin's War and see the braver than brave Ukrainians do what I am afraid as a society we would never be able to do ( but, per your post, maybe we still carry vestiges of moral rectitude and courage in our DNA!). And our world track record carries its own sins which always leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy.
But, as a democracy we are " good enough" and must stand with other democracies against what Anne Applebaum describes as the pervasive network of autocracies choking the planet. The flawed democracies of the west are the carriers of the oxygen of freedom.
We really needed to heed Russian expert Fiona Hill in the second impeachment hearings.....that she would not cooperate with anything that played into the Russian storyboard. Like you, TC, she recognized the smell of BS when it wafted its way in.
In all this real time horror and agony we are watching on the same msm we continually criticize ( but, thankfully, still have access to) there are many, many stories of heroism, people helping others at great risk to themselves, Ukranians fighting for their home, U.S Ukrainians going back to fight.
You recommended films to us yesterday. In many ways we are watching a real time documentary every day. The task is to put the popcorn away and realize that we are an escalator ride away from starring roles in our own horrible reality. We have been warned, at home and abroad!
I am not at all sure that we in the U.S. would come anywhere near the " grace under fire" shown by the people of Ukraine. But maybe you are right. When the world shifts we are capable of meeting that shift head-on.
Nice easily understandable summation of the Post War world.
I really hate how Biden is treated by the msm. That said, Biden is not without faults. One of them is NOT restoring our standing in the diplomatic world. We're getting support and are supporting NATO, I have confidence in the career state department staff, who work endlessly for decades when "Ambassadors" ( usually appointed for their loyalty to whomever is POTUS) grab headlines.
I wake each day in a cold sweat if that orange slime was successful in stealing yet another election.
What would the world look now is a question that leads me to my Xanax and a padded room.
FWIW: thanks, Joe for being Joe. It ain't love but it ain't bad.
UPDATED ON: MARCH 9, 2022 / 10:27 AM / CBS NEWS
'The power supply was cut to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said, blaming Russia's invading forces for the blackout and warning that it could lead to "nuclear discharge."
'The U.N.-backed global nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, downplayed concerns of an imminent radioactive release, but a Ukrainian national emergency services agency said if power to the plant's cooling systems — which keep spent nuclear fuel safely surrounded by water — is not ensured, it could create a "radioactive cloud" to blow over "other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Europe."
'The Chernobyl power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, "was fully disconnected from the power grid," Ukraine's national energy operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday in a statement on its Facebook page, adding that military operations meant there was "no possibility to restore the lines."
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called "on the entire international community to immediately demand that Russia cease fire and allow repair crews to restore power as soon as possible" to Chernobyl.
'He said the backup generators may only work for 48 hours.'
"After that, cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent," Kuleba said in a series of tweets. "Putin's barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately!" (CBSNews)
I am a couple of days late reading this one. Wow...just wow. Summed it all up beautifully. As I've said before, I hope none of this comes to our shores physically, but we have to wake up and see what will happen to us if we keep ignoring the signs. And Ukraine is a very big sign...
Thank you TC for this very moving piece.