If you have even a scintilla of appreciation for freedom and democracy, it’s impossible to watch Ukrainians’ bold defense of their country from the dyspeptic Goliath next door and not feel inspired. President Biden deserves immense credit for rallying the free world to Ukraine’s cause and imposing massive sanctions on Vladimir Putin, but Ukrainians are the ones who are fighting, bleeding, and dying.
It’s tempting to compare them to the 300 legendary Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, standing in the gap for liberal democracy, self-determination, and a saner, more just world free of autocrats and wannabe tyrants. Indeed, Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is essentially conducting a real-life reenactment of Air Force One, refusing to abandon his country and its citizens during the conflict—most recently refusing an offer from the U.S. to get out of Dodge.
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” he told the Americans, according to the U.S. embassy. Whether that’s a carefully scripted line meant to boost the morale of his people is unimportant. He’s staying in Kyiv and, live or die, he’ll go down as a legend.
Meanwhile, we live in a country where senators flee to Cancun during natural disasters—leaving their constituents to fend for themselves—because it’s cold.
All indications are that things are not going nearly as well for Li’l Vlad as he’d hoped. Ukrainians are putting up stiff resistance seemingly everywhere, Zelensky remains defiant, and Putin lost the battle for hearts and minds right out of the gate. The world, with few exceptions, stands behind Ukraine. (Sadly, some of those “exceptions” live right here in the good ol’ USA.)
Democracy will not go down in Ukraine without a fight—because it’s worth preserving, even to the death. That’s a sentiment that used to be woven into our DNA, not simply commandeered for use in puny political bromides.
If you haven’t despaired for the future of our democracy at any time in the past six years, you either haven’t been paying attention or aren’t that into democracy. And if you haven’t felt helpless about the dark, autocratic undercurrents threatening the foundations of our republic, you’re either not human or you’re Josh Hawley.
It’s immensely frustrating to see a dictator’s sidekick who has no respect for democracy at home or around the world receive the admiration and votes of tens of millions of your fellow citizens. And it’s maddening to see so many power-mad ass-kissers—including just about every member of the GOP not named Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger—essentially throw in with Putin’s years-long plot to undermine the U.S. from within by elevating a venal buffoon with no sense of history, understanding of our traditions, or respect for democratic norms. But, for now at least, we get to sit at home, safe and warm, while we stew.
Watching Ukraine give the middle finger to Putin while facing impossible odds and imminent death should shame us all to some degree. But we can’t sit on that feeling. We need to get off our asses and rally to the flag. And if not the flag, the Constitution.
Putin tried to make the U.S. more like Russia—and more amenable to Russia’s vile overtures—by saddling us with a Manchurian cancer who couldn’t even summon the decency to concede the election he lost. And when Putin’s sleeper agent was bounced from the White House, the butcher of Moscow figured the time was ripe for an escalation of his war against the West. (Anyone thinking Trump had deterred Putin with his “toughness” needs to stop and ask themselves why Putin would have ever endangered his plans by embarrassing the guy who was undermining our allies and promising to withdraw from NATO—a move that would have left all of Europe vulnerable to Russian aggression, now and well into the future.)
But while Putin no doubt thought his brutal little adventure would be a cakewalk, Ukrainians had other plans.
When I think about what President Zelensky is doing—standing firm against this invasion when he could be sitting in Brussels eating pastries and patting himself on the back for trying his best—I literally get the chills. If Republicans want a foreign leader to fetishize, they need look no further than this unlikely hero—an ex-TV personality who, unlike our own reality-show president, has grown into his role and then some. He’s telling Putin to fuck himself, and in the process, he’s putting his life on the line for his people—and for the promise of democracy not just in Ukraine, but everywhere around the globe.
The sour winds of autocracy still swirl in Europe, and they’ve now found their way here. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the post-World War II global order, to our freedoms, to our way of life, and to democracy itself. His Jan. 6 bumblefuck putsch should have been the last straw, but it was just another nail in a coffin he somehow keeps busting out of. Will his effusive praise of a James Bond supervillain finally wake the MAGA mites up? Probably not. Which means the fight comes to us now.
Are we brave enough? Are we worthy enough? Is our 246-year-old democracy as important to us as Ukraine’s fledgling democracy is to them? It better be, because if the U.S. falls, autocrats will be only too happy to fill that power vacuum.
So we continue to fight—even when the fight looks lost. No surrender. Not now. Not ever.
That fighting spirit—that yearning for a free society that respects the inalienable rights of every one of its citizens—lives in all of us. But it’s now shining brightest in the unlikeliest of places—a former Soviet republic led by an ex-comedian. If we ever feel defeated in our own struggle to keep our country from flying off the rails, we need look no further than the heroes of Kyiv.
Still think our own situation is hopeless? Fuck that. It’s only hopeless if we lose hope. And that, good patriots, is something we can never—and will never—do.
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