Slava Ukrayini — Glory to Ukraine
I have been trying to write my thoughts for days.
This yearning, to get down the words, has been generating (or, perhaps, has been generated by) a faint vibration in every strand of DNA in my body.
It is as if these collections of biological code, in my body, can actually remember a distant-past-rumbling, of military machinery and of boots on the ground. And it is as if they are, somehow, experiencing today’s geographically-distant PetroMilitary terror. Some sort of web is stretching across space and time, connecting me and Ukraine.
My ancestors fled the distant-past terror. Just in time to avoid violent pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and eventually, full-scale genocide. We found refuge in an imperfect land, America. Imperfect, but striving to implement progressive and humanistic values, based on liberty, the rule of law, and the equal respect of basic human rights.
There were times where my people, in what was once the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, would have been safer on the eastern side of the conflict zone with the Red Army. Many of them were intellectuals. And for Fascists, any Jewish intellectual was (is) treated like a Communist. Before the Nazis that might mean a pogrom here or there… during the Nazi terror, well, we all know what happened to nearly all of my people who did not make it beyond the reach of ethnic hatred.
Today the people of Ukraine face an irrational and violent dictator, who is drunk on PetroRubles, and is seeking to dominate and subjugate his neighbors. The Ukraine people wish only to have the liberty and sovereignty with which they can, however imperfectly, exercise their basic human rights in a global society based on the rule of law.
So, I shout “Slava Ukrayini” into the cyber void or on the streets to show support for Glory to Ukraine.
And my body hurts. My head hurts. My neck, my lungs, my back… they all hurt as if I am there now… or there through the centuries… watching evil unfold. My heart breaks to know that my ancestral cousins, and their neighbors, are facing this type of evil once again. And my soul aches knowing that in America, the home I love, the PetroPopulist Republican Party have been (and continue to be) aiding and abetting this horrific crime since 2016.
What is happening in Ukraine is terrorism, bold and blatant terrorism. It is heart-warming to see the world begin to awaken and respond to the aggression in Ukraine. We can not stop there. We must awaken and respond to the reality of Petroleum-instigated terror in America.
