You can learn all you need to know about the world, how it works and what is true just by observing the events related to Ukraine as of late. That is a profound and deep statement because I meant “all”, too deep for me now to write about. If we back off from the depths and just focus on the ironic, man do we find a comedic gold mine.
In the official and popularly portrayed narrative, we are told the duly elected and not at all corrupt or inorganic government of the very nice and peace-loving Ukraine was invaded without provocation or reason by the perpetually evil Russian bear. Russia is of course led by the immortal caricature of every cartoonish evil bad man to ever rear their heads against the definitely not expansionists, non-exploitive, non-threatening West. From Hirohito to Saddam the persona has been the same, journalists can simply reuse old material for new conflicts. Except for Stalin, because Stalin was of course a good bad man and our journalists told us that he was a good man regardless of the fact that his purges were occurring and millions were starving precisely as the New York Times published glowing pieces about him– but I digress.
We hear now that Finland feels so threatened by Russia that they simply must join NATO. Never mind the fact that Finland was actually invaded by the Soviets in 1939 and despite facing the might of the entire Soviet Union, led by a proven and undeniably bloody dictator in Stalin, Finland did not feel threatened enough to acquiesce to German diplomacy and join the Axis for protection. The Allies, those Western powers bound together ostensibly for the purpose of guarding freedom from tyranny did nothing but protest the unprovoked invasion of Finland, and kick the Soviets out of the useless League of Nations. Principles, right?
The pragmatic approach to principles exhibited by Britain and her allies was not lost on Finland at the time. It was not forgotten in the Cold War to come. To be sure, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland again in 1941 the Finns did cooperate with the Germans but they never felt “threatened” enough to join an alliance.
After WWII, as Finland sat right on the border with a global superpower that said quite plainly in its strategy documents that it believed the territory of Finland ought to be returned to a pre-1917 status the little nation never felt threatened enough to join NATO. When NATO, the organization created to thwart the Warsaw Pact began its steady eastern expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact (much irony there), Finland never felt threatened enough to join NATO.
But now, just as Russia becomes an active participant in a civil war in Ukraine in a fight over territory that has been more Russian than Ukrainian since the days of the Kievan Rus Finland just now, all of a sudden, is so threatened by Russia that it feels the need to aid in the further expansion of NATO east in an encirclement of Russian territory.
Does any of that really make sense to you?
NATO claims in statements of principle to exist in part to “express common democratic values” of its members. Common democratic principles to me imply the notion of self-determination, it seems to mean that people ought to be protected from tyranny in all forms even the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of their own governments. We sense no small degree of hypocrisy in all this if we but look.
What the heck is so special about Ukraine anyway? Does it represent the sort of nation that fits with the principles that NATO claims to uphold? We know, if we but look, that there is no reason to have any confidence in any election that has occurred in Ukraine for decades. We know because it is a fact, that since 2004 external powers have extensively meddled in the country. Corruption is rampant. We also know the government turned a blind eye to, and at times enabled the commission of crimes and atrocities by radical groups against people in the east that the Ukrainian government insists are citizens. It is oddly ironic that those radical groups, supported by, enabled, and even rewarded by the Ukrainian government have the look and smell of neo-Nazism all over them, right down to their symbols, salutes, and ideology.
Ukraine seems exactly the sort of nation “liberal democracies” in the West, under the banner of principles ought to be interested in, no? It makes me wonder why the Khmer Rouge and Slobodan Milosevich never received a NATO invitation. Oh but I go to far you say, the Khmer Rouge was clearly much worse….It is all in the eye of the beholder, neither you or I live in Donbas and we have never been subjected to Azov battalion neo-Nazi thuggery supported by a government that claims us as their own.
As they say on late-night television commercials, there is more. We read with amazement that Youtubers, Ukrainian citizens living in other countries have been hunted down and arrested for “subversive” speech. Spanish and Italian police assisted in this effort. We have seen the reports and videos of what looks like SWAT teams raiding the homes of various “dissidents” inside Ukraine, these dastardly dissidents having the audacity to speak out against the Ukrainian government’s actions. We learn that cable news in Ukraine has essentially been censored down to one official source now. And just yesterday, we learn that Zelensky has “outlawed opposition parties” inside Ukraine. This is all very “democratic”.
This is what has garnered such wide-spread and slavish devotion? If you consider all the real facts about how the nation behaves and then turn the Ukrainians brown and give them a bunch of oil that nation begins to look exactly like the sort of country that the US regularly invades. Place them in the middle east and add “stan” to the back of the name and Zelensky would have already been raided by a bunch of dufus SEALs planning a book deal. His little girly-man body would have been dropped from a helicopter in the ocean in the middle of the night weeks ago.
Who is Zelensky anyway? He looks like a little guy some shady organization observed dancing in tight pants on a third-rate version of that abomination “Dancing with the Stars” and someone decided that he had some characteristic that would be useful. He seems to me a coked-up, faux-badass that cannot grow a beard even though he has forgotten how to shave since this all began and seems to own only tee-shirts. Zelensky is a Disney actor in some Western Intelligence agency’s play, hand-picked for this moment to appeal to the cell phone addicted under 40’s in the West. He is “so cool” don’t you know.
If you pay attention, you can learn all you need to know about The West and the world from what is occurring in Ukraine. The powers that be have really put their true nature on display. Sadly, the true nature of most of the people walking around us is also on display as they are incapable of seeing it all for what it is.
There is simply too much irony and hypocrisy surrounding all of this, too much absurdity spoken as reason - it is almost as if we live in some strange antimatter universe. If it were not so real, it could all be very funny.
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