Did you know that one of Donald Trump's golf courses included a Civil War battlefield? Neither did I, but the Orange Toddler wants you to believe it did.
The sidewalks outside San Francisco's Tesla dealership on Van Ness are busy these days.
I have to admit I was gobsmacked to encounter several iterations of this photo on Facebook. The picture is of the lighted facade of the church in Washington DC which my Episcopalian comrades presumptuously call the Washington National Cathedral. It's the Protestant denomination's big diocesan church in the capitol, only by custom called "national." Episcopalians aren't "the ruling class at prayer" any longer.
As far as we can tell, though many Christian nationalists intend to be our ruling class, broad based Christian nationalist attention to humble petition to God for the poor and suffering is pretty muted these days.
Nonetheless, I guess I'm happy to see being passed around what is clearly an affirmation of support for the brave and desperate people of Ukraine under Russian attack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the image derives from an ecumenical prayer service held alongside the Ukrainian ambassador in July 2023.
Anyway, I'm a Christian fully in the camp of supporting Ukrainians in their war for their country and their lives. It has not been simple for me to find myself supporting one side in a war. I've spent a lifetime opposing the wars of the United States empire; I've explored pacifism and find it the better way to live. But not in the case of this conflict. Ukrainians deserve their own country if they want it enough to fight for it and they've shown they do. The Russian invasion is brutal and criminal; it aims at the erasure of a particular history and people. Insofar as the US has been supportive of Ukraine, I think that has been a good use of a tiny fraction of my taxes.
And I know Donald Trump's infatuation with and capitulation to Russia's strong man is a betrayal of all that is decent in our complex land.
I bemoaned Donald Trump's betrayal of Ukraine and of this country last week. Our country is being disgraced by small empty men and the ignominy is just beginning.
Today I'll outsource commentary on the Trump/Vance boys bullying the brave Ukrainian President in the Oval Office to Phillips P. OBrien, an American historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Just Say Thank You and Shut Up
... The key theme throughout is that Trump is a great man who can work with Putin, while Ukraine needs to shut up, show gratitude, and take what is coming to it. Trump makes that clear when he criticizes the Ukrainians for basically wanting to fight for their freedom and not cave in to Putin, which he terms being “very disrespectful to this country” (this country being the USA—in other words, himself).
Then Trump and Vance go on what can only be called the great gratitude rant. Even though the USA under Trump has approved not a single new dollar in aid for Ukraine, Trump and Vance want Zelensky to constantly say thank you to them. Its, as always, an attempt to be humiliate a democratic state and for Trump to take credit for something other people have done. As Vance finally snaps. “Just say thank you.”
And then Trump lets the cat out of the bag. This was not a meeting or disagreement over the minerals deal. He was trying to pressure Zelensky into agreeing a cease fire along Putin’s lines and Zelensky refused. Trump comes out and says that explicitly at the end.
“You’re buried there. Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers. No, listen … And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a ceasefire. I don’t want a ceasefire. I want to go and I want this… You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.
So there we have it. Ukraine should shut up and take Trump’s and Putin’s terms. It is not an independent, sovereign, democratic state, it is a dictator’s plaything which should be eternally grateful for the scraps from Trump’s and Putin’s table.
Thousands of Ukrainians didn't die for this -- and millions of Americans over three generations didn't fight fascism and for more complete democracy for this. As O'Brien goes on to say, it's now up to Europeans to step up and repudiate Trump's betrayal of all the European zone has stood for. Can they rise to their own defense?
The New York Times reports:
European leaders quickly pledged their continued support for Ukraine on Friday after President Trump’s blistering criticism of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting at the White House.
Leaders lined up behind Ukraine and praised its embattled president, the statements coming one after the other: from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Ireland. Canadian, Australian and New Zealand leaders added their voices to the Europeans’.
For once the paper got a headline right:
His remittances were the main support of his extended family back home. No charges were brought against his killers. More here.
Once again, we remembered an irreplaceable young man who didn't have to die. His family received a small settlement from the city ... a cash settlement for life taken needlessly.
The Trump Presidency Is an Unmitigated Catastrophe for Ukraine
Ukrainians aren’t shocked—they have a lot of experience in the betrayal business. ...
... the mood here in the days running up to the third anniversary of the start of the war has oscillated between despair and grim fortitude. It could hardly be otherwise, and for the obvious reason: With the rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, as exemplified by the U.S.-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia that excluded Ukraine, the presidency of Donald Trump has already been proven to be an unmitigated catastrophe for Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy apparently will be putting in an appearance in Washington this week to receive our Orange Toddler's ultimatum. There's plenty of speculation about how that will play out, but whatever results almost certainly will be horrible for Ukrainians -- and all of Europe now under the Russian imperial gun.
It's worth remembering the sort of figure Zelenskiy has been over the last three years.
Zelenskiy’s sang froid during his press conference, at what amounts to nothing less than the Trump administration’s betrayal of every promise and commitment the United States has made to Ukraine, both unilaterally and through NATO in concert with Washington’s European allies, was remarkable. It served as a gripping reminder of how important, for all his faults and both the military failures and failures of governance in Ukraine that have occurred during his watch, Zelenskiy’s leadership has been since, in the first hours of the full-scale Russian invasion three years ago, he declined the Biden administration’s offer to evacuate him with his family to Poland, defiantly saying, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Even the many Ukrainians who are disenchanted with him in general terms accept that the country could not hope for a better war leader. In this, the oft-made comparison between Zelenskiy and Winston Churchill is anything but hyperbolic. Like Zelenskiy, Churchill before the war was considered something of a buffoon, a political dilettante who had changed parties several times and who had done everything but distinguish himself during various periods as a government minister. And then, of course, immediately after the war, in the so-called “khaki election,” in which the votes of the war veterans proved dispositive, the British public voted Churchill out of office.
But although many Ukrainians are predicting the same fate for Zelenskiy in a postwar Ukraine, as long as the war goes on, like Churchill between 1939 and 1945, Zelenskiy has proven himself the invaluable man. ...
Donald Trump is going to get away with his crime against brave Ukrainians -- just as he has skated on his crimes from his last tenure and most likely will continue to escape justice for his current even more corrupt and vicious assault on us here at home. This Friday's meeting may -- or may not yet -- resolve the shape of the Ukrainian betrayal.
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| A vigil in Chicago this week. Ukrainians are not without friends in the States. |
... European political elites misunderstood and misunderstand the U.S. in a way their Ukrainian opposite numbers never did. Betrayal is a good teacher in that regard. And throughout its history, from the days of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth to the subjugation of Ukraine by the Russian Empire to the murderous days of Red Power and the Moscow-made famine of 1932–1933, the Holodomor, to the contemporary era in which Ukraine was constrained to give up its nuclear weapons in return for independence and security from Russian revanchism, through to the Biden administration’s consistently insufficient grants of aid, to Donald Trump’s monstrous U-turn, Ukrainians have the misfortune to be connoisseurs of betrayal.
... Then there’s the victory of the Christian Democrats in Germany, and, more importantly, the statements by the soon-to-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz ... Donald Trump, Merz went on, had made it clear that his administration was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” The message was clear: As far as Merz was concerned, the fate of Europe was inseparable from that of Ukraine. ...
... if Ukrainians continue to hope, what other choice—besides flight—do they have? Which is why this bitter defiant twist on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous theory of the five stages of grief—defiance, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—is now making the rounds in Kyiv. In the Ukrainian telling, the first four stages are the same. But instead of acceptance, the fifth stage is the polar opposite: It’s “Fuck you.” There are worse ways to prepare oneself for the ordeals that lie in store.
For me, the historical analogy which the Ukraine war has always brought to the fore is of the European democracies' betrayal of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s. Oh sure, Britain and France were (mostly) glad to see the Spanish monarchy give way to a multi-party Spanish democracy. But that democracy was messy and contained leftist, pro-Soviet elements. Better to allow a Spanish Christian Fascist with German Nazi support go on to murder, pillage, and eradicate this unsavory, short-lived Republic.
In the '30s, abstaining from supporting Spanish democracy only meant Britain, France, and eventually the United States had to fight the Nazis a few years later. This time around, Donald Trump is bringing us in on the side of the Nazis. We, the citizens of these United States, also have been betrayed this week.
When federal Housing and Urban Development workers clocked in this morning, they encountered this:
Enjoy.
