Ukraine is the largest country in Europe unless you count Russia, which is partly in Europe and partly in Asia. The Russian capital, Moscow, is considered Europe’s largest city.
Mostly, Russia is simply Russia – an area of land so massive it spans 11 time zones. Russians have universal healthcare and free university education, yet are considered by many Americans as foreign instead of forward thinking.
Ukraine has given the world Alexander Vindman, Louis B. Mayer, Sophie Tucker, Leon Trotsky, cellists, chess players, YouTube sensation Diana, and some serial killers. The country is known for its beauty and culture and being a breadbasket, like Iowa and Nebraska.
Both countries are pretty much like ours.
Russia is considered a federal semi-presidential republic where the president is the head of state.
Ukraine is the same, or at least quite similar. It’s called a unitary republic.
The United States, categorized as a democracy, is a federal republic based on a constitution.
Any nitpicking in definitions is solely up to citizens. There are plenty of governments scattered around the world that can accommodate any political persuasion – democracy, where people choose their leadership; socialism, which prefers cooperation to competition and each person contributes and benefits; communism, where a single party manages public ownership and controls labor, goods and resources; monarchy, where one person with a fancy bloodline is head of state for life; oligarchy, where wealth, heredity and race are the high cards; aristocracy, that has an elite ruling class somehow based on their right to do just that; theocracy, which involves religion, so clerics rule and see no difference between scriptural law and legal code.
If your stomach doesn’t hurt enough yet, there’s totalitarianism, where one person holds power through surveillance, control of media, and knows how to thoroughly suppress activism or opposition.
For those who have no interest in being free people, there’s military dictatorship. That’s the one where when citizens get sick and tired of paying taxes and getting zilch in return, experience high anxiety, and the military obeys the dictator. That way all civil liberties vanish instantly, so all one has to worry about is being killed quickly and for no reason.
And we wonder if there’s existence without cause. Big whoop, right?
Remember the Alamo?
It was one of those squirrely power trips where Mexico won its independence from Spain, and part of their land was what we now know as Texas. Texas in the 1835s was populated by native Americans, white immigrants from the east who didn’t like crowds, European immigrants who wanted to create a decent life, and Mexicans who really weren’t enchanted with the military government in Mexico City, so they moved north to an enormous barren land to have fun and ride friendly.
Suddenly it was important to Mexico to dominate what was technically theirs, but didn’t really belong to them, because they could.
Which annoyed men like knife fighter Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett (King of the Wild Frontier), and 26-year-old William Travis who might remind one of President Zelensky of Ukraine.
The men tried negotiation with the Mexican army, which tanked, so the Texans stole a cannon from the Mexicans then fired an 18-pound cannon ball at them and it was on.
Which was a great story until 200 men died defending the Alamo because help didn’t arrive in time.
But… it feels like the Ukrainians are in a bit of an Alamo situation and it seems like it could happen to any of us at any time. Maybe not from war, but from a dire situation that puts us in harm’s way. Severe and unexpected weather. A meteor. Running out of water. Shaking earth. Hungry virus.
We have chosen our form of government and we have chosen to live in the United States of America. The thing is, I hope we welcome refugees now as we would want to be welcomed. Wolves do it. Dolphins. Elephants. They take care of their own in sickness and in danger. But humans hesitate?
If all of this is about power, which can either undermine or enhance morality, isn’t it an obvious choice to opt for the power of love?
Or should just we turn over and go back to sleep and hope help arrives in time?