How to keep moving forward...
...when nothing makes sense in this world including our place in it.
There, I wrote it, the post’s title. Words that sound bombastic, like as if I am a life coach — a “how-to” tease that creates the impression that I am on top of my emotions and am ready to share the secret with the world. My confab would have sounded even more inflated if I hadn’t added the phrase about “our place.”
I added “…our place…” because I was actually thinking about my place in this world. What can I even say or write in this part of the world about what people in other regions are actually living through? When will my words, expressed in solidarity, begin to appear meaningless? How do I stay sincere and relevant and humble with my intentions to mean well by showcasing all that is captivating about Ukraine when Americans supposedly are distracted from Ukraine’s catastrophes at multiple fronts — the looming government shutdown in the U.S., the Hamas-Israel war, the age1 of Biden?
I have no answers, but I do have a methodology that helps me through times of emotional helplessness. I turn to feeding my intellect. I make an attempt at understanding dysfunctions. Somehow, the understanding itself lessens the bewilderment, the grief, the feeling of being lost.
While my heart goes out to the civilian victims of both Palestine and Israel, my mind wonders if Ukraine would be pushed further back in the minds of Americans who, reports suggest, were already beginning to tire of the long, drawn-out war. American public wants an end game in sight; they don’t understand how Ukraine’s struggle is directly relevant to them; they are wary of continuing to fund a country that they see as being corrupt. To me, all these doubts suggest some degree of emotional fatigue in people who were once genuinely outraged at the unjust and unprovoked Russian invasion. But to sustain that moral outrage amidst newer and newer concerns requires an ongoing understanding of history and politics and the ways in which issues intertwine and fuel newer fires while previous years’ fires are still raging.
By now, President Zelensky’s condemnation of Hamas is old news, but if you are struggling to connect the dots, here is a link to a short article in the NYT:
Hamas and Moscow [are] “the same evil, and the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.”
At the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe writes that viewing the [Hamas-Israel and Russia-Ukraine] wars as entirely distinct from each other would be a mistake:
“What the wars in Ukraine and Israel have in common is that they are both the result of state-sponsored terrorism. In Ukraine’s case, Russia is acting brazenly and directly. In the case of Israel, Iran is acting through Hamas and others... [T]he alarming scale and competence of Hamas’s attacks couldn’t have happened without Iran’s funding, weaponry, training, and intelligence. And without its deepening partnership with Russia and China, Iran would be a far less potent actor.”
In The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum sounds the alarm on how a “rules-based world order” is rapidly and furiously deteriorating.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli civilians are both blatant rejections of that rules-based world order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all. Terrorists, by definition, are not fighting conventional wars and do not obey the laws of war. Instead, they deliberately create fear and chaos among civilian populations…Although a sovereign state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia first began deliberately hitting civilian targets in Syria in 2015, including power stations, water plants, and above all hospitals and medical facilities, 25 of which were hit in a single month in 2019. These attacks were unquestionably war crimes, and those who chose the targets knew they were war crimes. Some of the hospitals had shared their coordinates with the UN to avoid being hit. Instead, Russian and Syrian government forces may have used that information to find them…The Hamas terrorists paid no attention to any modern laws of war, or any norms of any kind: Like the Russians, Hamas and its Iranian backers (who are also Russian allies) run nihilistic regimes whose goal is to undo whatever remains of the rules-based world order, and to put anarchy in its place. They did not hide their war crimes. Instead, they filmed them and circulated the videos online. Their goal was not to gain territory or engage an army, but rather to create misery and anger. Which they have—and not only in Israel. Hamas had to have anticipated a massive retaliation in Gaza, and indeed that retaliation has begun. As a result, hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian civilians will now be victims too.”
If you are skeptical and wondering if an America-based writer like Anne Applebaum will gloss over America’s weaknesses and mistakes, don’t despair. Here she aims to make her American readers squirm too:
“Democracies, led by the United States, bear a lot of the blame too, either for refusing to enforce anything resembling order when they could, or for violating the rules themselves.”
And she goes on to list when, recently, America failed to act effectively to restore world order or even broke some rules of their own.
Where does this all leave us, the ordinary citizens of the world, who care, but singularly lack the power to wave a magic wand and set things right? How do we move on with our own sanity intact? Do we have the luxury to turn away?
I believe that it is our moral duty to not turn away just because we can. Just because we are removed a degree or two. Just because we feel pain that seems to go nowhere, help no one directly or immediately.
At times like this, I tune into those who bear witness, who tell their stories, who want to be heard. That is the very least I can do. Atrocities demand that people bear witness. And bearing witness is easier for those who are heard. Maya Angelou pointed out: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”
And so I invite you to listen to Victor Levenstein who told an uplifting story based on a mugshot and KGB interrogations that made him miserable all those decades ago in the Soviet Union. He was born in Ukraine and he turned 100 in July 2022 in Columbus, Ohio. The YouTube link below is just a preview of the story he told live, onstage at The Moth. Here is the link to the complete audio.
The voting public is unable to appreciate the popular policies of Biden. It appears that decimating and relegating the Indigenous communities, who see elders as protectors, mentors, teachers, keepers of wisdom, and intergenerational transmitters of knowledge, to tiny pockets of reservation lands hurts the larger, mainstream society too.