10.07.2024 / We're f***ed
I came back to Kyiv Tuesday morning. Heading home on the metro, we passed the medical clinic struck the day before by fragments of a russian missile that was intercepted in the sky by Ukrainian air defenses. Nine people were killed. People were still swarming around the building, its walls and windows smashed, and clearing debris. This work can take days.
Rescue operations continue in other parts of the city, where russian missiles targeted a specialized children's hospital and hit residential buildings in other neighborhoods. The number of casualties from Monday's terrorist attack by the russian federation keeps rising, as bodies are slowly recovered from underneath the rubble. Tuesday was an official day of mourning in Kyiv.
***
Last weekend I was in Mykolaiv for a three-day seminar to clarify the strategic goals of Hero of Ukraine, the charitable foundation I've been aiding since May 2022. In Mykolaiv the air raid sirens are loud and regular. Sometimes I listen to them as to accidental music, sometimes I curse them out loud. We spent our evenings outside, eating grilled meat by the meandering ubiquitous river, enraptured by the distinctive light and hues of southern Ukraine.
Yet my mind is primarily occupied with the impending US presidential election. Tressie McMillan Cottom's blunt prognosis in the New York Times, "Whoever the Democratic Candidate Is, Americans Have Already Lost," strikes at the heart of the matter.
"If you take your eye off the ball of democracy for any length of time, no amount of history will save you," she writes. Still, I believe in people—in their capacity to shape the future through their individaul vision and action.
I agree with the columnists who are asking—respectfully and kindly—for Biden to abandon his ambitions to seek re-election and to put our country first. It is ridiculous that these voices have started ringing the alarm publicly only at the end of June 2024, but I am heartened that these people have stopped feigning blindness.
Meanwhile, the democratic party elites and current president Joe Biden stubbornly cling to the position that he will be on the ballot. Now it looks like Biden and Trump are competing for kingship—the worst nightmare of our founding fathers. How is it that we Americans have come so far as to freely choose the one thing that our country was founded to prevent?
Some people are already resigning themselves to the idea of Trump becoming president again, as if it were a done deal. Who should Ukrainian leaders cozy up to, in case they need to bargain with the man who claims he'll end the war before he even enters office? Is it worth moving abroad? Friends argue that Trump is unpredictable, maybe a second presidency won't be as bad as everyone fears.
This all reminds me of the first days of russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when most Americans and influential international elites were sure that Kyiv would fall in three days. They refused to (or couldn't?) imagine actual resistance, where Ukrainians would overcome their own fear to do something big and risky with results that nobody could foresee, let alone guarantee. Only Ukrainians (and a handful of others with a deep visceral sense of Soviet history) knew that not acting in this situation could have no positive outcomes.
Mykolaiv, which did not succumb to russian occupation, bears the scars of two and a half years of russian attacks. Still, the city is full of civilians going about their business and pleasure; military enterprise; efforts to strengthen civil society and to aid veterans, military families, and IDPs. For all the loss and hardship the Ukrainian people and military have endured over the past years, I have witnessed among those of us who've survived a growing clarity, resolve, and intolerance for avoiding the harsh, glaring facts.
***
The nationally televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on June 27 was a gift. Americans could see with their own eyes what they have chosen: to leave this country up for grabs to two crotchety old men—one whose face barely moved as he recited (and sometimes stumbled through) prepared talking points, while the other animatedly spewed prepared talking points that had little connection to real conditions or to the questions of the moderators.
All of a sudden, a significant number of Americans lost the illusion that Joe Biden was the only member of the Democratic party capable of defeating Trump. By insisting it can be no other way, the candidate and party running on the promise to save American democracy from Donald Trump are now acting against American democracy themselves.
The Democratic party is using fear of Trump becoming president again (which by all means SHOULD be feared) to justify a course of action that looks manageable (say, by controlling what appears in the media and public sphere), but this approach is actually killing whatever remains of Americans' democratic sense, capacities, and imagination. In fact, it resembles the way Americans and NATO justify their halting support of Ukraine under the auspices of not wanting to provoke russian escalation. You can live with the long, slow-burning battle that kills Ukrainians by the dozens or occasional hundred per day. No alarms and no surprises. It seems that we prefer a familiar-albeit-awful march toward doom over the risk of reclaiming our human political capacities through determined, courageous action (whose results we cannot predict).
When and what will be crisis enough for Americans to stop looking for explanations and justifications for a miserable state of affairs and to remember that they—each one of them—has the power and the responsibility to run their own affairs? Sometimes you do know that doing nothing is empowering your own demise.
As I address you, Americans, from Ukraine, I cannot understand why you are not doing anything in this crisis. You took to the streets and marched in crowds—while Covid-19 rocked the country and you were being counseled to practice social distancing—to demonstrate your rage at the injustice of a black man cruelly murdered by a white policeman.
Where is your sense of justice when it concerns your own right and power to influence your elected officials to take your democratic country’s future seriously?
***
During my book tour, I was surprised how many Americans still looked toward russia for resolution of the war it is waging to annihilate Ukraine. We just need to get rid of Putin. What are the prospects of a grass-roots citizen revolution leading to regime change? "If russia stops fighting…"
I was in the US to rally support for the Ukrainians fighting to protect their lives and freedom from a ruthless invading enemy while at the same time struggling—and making headway—to ensure that Ukraine's democratic government actually serves its citizens. But how can Americans appreciate Ukrainians' efforts if they don't have their own sense of what it's like to be the force defending your country's existence and making your government work for you?
Instead I found myself talking about russia, reminding Americans that the majority of russian citizens support russia's war on Ukraine. Removing Putin from power would unlikely change the country's course or values. This russia (like today's US) did not take shape all of a sudden. Putin's power, while insured by a murderous state security service, gained strength from a citizenry that didn’t fight hard enough for self-government.
In fact, I kept repeating to Americans, you are facing a path that leads toward russia. When you keep quiet about actions and policies you consider unjust. When you can't be bothered to take the time to discuss what's going on in your neighborhood, city, nation. When you criticize and complain, but stop short of getting involved or speaking outside the home. When you "just live" in the US and absolve yourself of the duties of citizenship. When you don’t speak or act freely (or appropriately) out of fear of an anticipated response.
Look at russia, dear Americans. Not with admiration, like Tucker Carlson. Do you really want to live in a country where it is illegal to call the war you instigated a war? Where you can be arrested for a solo protest or put on trial for criticizing the war, for something your child drew at school, or just because it serves the interests of the authorities?
The US is still a democracy. It will remain a democracy for as long as you and I work and fight to sustain it. Once you give up or lose your rights, freedoms, checks and balances, you may never be able to get them back.
***
Democratic party supporters carry the most blame for this pickle we are in now. For not insisting on cultivating and advancing other presidential candidates. For making efforts to justify why we should vote for old Joe instead of making efforts to spark public discussion about the vitality of our government. Why are so many well-educated, left-leaning Americans so reluctant to speak up outside the dominant party line? Why do they refrain from exercising their individual power to keep democratic institutions alive through dispute?
So many Americans prefer helping victims—or being them—to supporting those who stand up and fight to claim what is theirs.
It is now the responsibility of each one of you Americans who does care about the fate of our country's democracy to make the contest for an appropriate president your priority. You do have to fight to defend the space for freedom, and you have to fight to win. You are empowered when you exercise your power. If Biden & co. and his opponent Trump are the only fighters left in this country, then we are fucked.
PS Two years on, Hero of Ukraine has a clear mission: using innovation to strengthen Ukraine's defense and build the country its defenders deserve. Today the foundation is still focused on supporting the Zli Ptakhy (Angry Birds) drone unit, which is growing in size! Your contributions are much appreciated.
Paypal: heroesukraine.org@gmail.com (Illia Shpolianskiy)
Credit card: https://heroesukraine.org/en/donate/
PPS Thank you to my new paid subscribers! Your donations are already helping Ukrainians defend their democracy!
For the record, Biden has contributed much to the US over his decades as a senator through to his service in the White House. He deserves our honor and respect and a chance to mentor the next generation of Democratic party leaders from the wings.
This should be compulsory reading for every American citizen.