Times of Terror, Truth, and Determination
Ukraine and where it fits into the world... What about China? ... Race, Race, Race, and More Race... What does it means to be an American?
Part One: Early in the week, a few days before Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A United States, is a strong nation, but divided, we are nothing more than a squabbling people hellbent on destroying a land of promise. There isn’t original sin in this country. There is only a time and place where pain was projected — but is that any different from now? Both good and evil reside in the same place and time, but triumph on separate plains. Which side will swallow us whole? And do we even see the same evil as evil, and good as good?
The creed of this country is to honor the beliefs of all, and respect the right for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have strayed into a nation of hatred once before, and it feels we may do so once again. The terror of truth tells me nothing is sacred when anger and malice coincide with mobocratic action and resolve. When the core becomes hollowed out by swarms of unrelenting falsehoods and entrenched values, there isn’t a way to refill that void. However, I see a sun, bright and illuminating, through the clouds of doubt hanging over our heads. How can I not? We have done so many times before.
Ukraine and our continuously divided populace darken the sky and blot out the sun. Ukraine is not out of our hands, and means a great deal to the world’s future. Giving into Putin’s wrath will extend onto us. We mustn’t relent or give into his demands. Freedom and Democracy our at stake...
It must be noted, however, we’ve engaged in wars for similar purposes and created larger messes and dysfunction. We must tread carefully before pushing full steam ahead. We’ve already lost so many young men and women. Nevertheless, we can’t stand idly by as bullies terrorize the playground.
As I write this, February 22, 2022, Ukraine stands on the brink of war. Russian lawmakers have given Putin authorization to use force, and Russian troops have marched into rebel-held areas in Eastern Ukraine, after Putin recognized their independence.
“We aren’t afraid of anyone or anything,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, after troops crept closer into the mainland.
Biden called this incursion, the “beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Initial responses ranged from sanctions, bolstering troops in NATO countries, to the suspension of Germany’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. China attempts to walk a tightrope, but will benefit either way. They are steady trading partners with Ukraine, while equivocally ramping up energy trading with Russia.
Part Two: After Russia invades Ukraine.
Here is an unpublished letter sent to my local paper (The Winston-Salem Journal) that analyzes China’s intentions:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a domino effect falling towards Taiwan and other democratic nations all over the world. “Foremost in Xi’s mind might be what the Ukraine crisis means for his desire to recapture Taiwan… whose unification he has repeatedly called ‘the great trend of history,’” wrote Charlie Campbell, of Time magazine. Although China hasn’t “recognized” Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, following the invasion, “several Chinese state banks provided loans for Russian counterparts sanctioned by the West.” Additionally, Russia-China oil trading rose 36%, and reaching $140 billion in 2021. This type of thuggery and horse trading will continue if we don’t relinquish divisive rhetoric and stop promoting falsehoods of “weakness” exhibited by Biden. And Trump, calling Putin a “genius”: insults and diminishes Ukrainian sovereignty, its people, and democratic principles globally. “You can criticize policy but this is insane and feeds into Putin’s narrative,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
If a free Ukraine falls, so will western autonomy. Free markets can only operate in freely democratic nations. Under authoritarianism, economic extraction and suppression ensues. Funnily enough, where China’s economy thrives, is where elements of capitalism proliferate. These sections are called: SEZ’s, or “Special Economic Zones.” These are engineered regions essentially mirroring free market capitalism. But there are always caveats.
Opposingly, in America, our safety nets keep farmers farming (welfare) and elders sustained and free of economic woes (social security). However, welfare is not the answer, and is exactly what it should be: safety nets. I am sure some (or many) of our fellow countrymen would like to see our downfall... but I hope they can fathom the cold realities of botched idealism and stagnating communism. Government won’t fix all our problems. Market capitalism is our best chance to alleviate poverty – if regulated to bulwark against astounding greed and attempts to cripple our middle class.
I digress. There are obvious cultural differences between both systems, but the results are the same and so is the mission: install markets to produce commerce and profit and keep society from falling. We can hate ourselves all we want, but digging into that hatred is societal suicide. There are deeper and global implications at work; much more important than winning petty culture wars.
At this pivotal moment in history, we should not pretend any other American president would have done anything different. How could we? When our recent ex-president called Putin a “genius.” Trump’s love affair between Putin is simply sick and concerning. His words are propped up by Tucker Carlson of Fox News, and perpetuated by far-right groups.
In response to the New York times, conservative commentator, Joe Oltmann said, “You really have no idea about Ukraine. People support Russia because you did not do the right thing when it came to the fraud and corruption of Biden. I pray for the people in Ukraine but equally pray the people who facilitated the evil communist agenda in the U.S. are held accountable.”
Additionally, Candace Owens spread a similar message in an email: “Ukrainians are dying because of the Biden family’s criminal connections and insistence on stoking conflict in the region.”
“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”
Not all republicans have illogically veered domestic failures into the fold, and blamed Biden for Putin’s actions. There has been, for some time, a “civil war” in the conservative world. This dysfunction and division created myriad of responses from either side. The above rhetoric and viewpoints are reprehensible and crack away at our union, but so is the left’s declaration of media “hypocrisy” towards the Ukrainian conflict. They have proposed that coverage is different for “white and blue eyed” Europeans than for brown Syrians and Middle-Easterners.
What got them heated, was a comment by CBS News senior correspondent Charlie D’Agata, reporting from Kyiv, on Friday: “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”
D’Agata would later say he regretted his comments. But that didn’t stop Al Jazeera English presenter Peter Dobbie, On Sunday, from describing Ukrainians fleeing the war as “prosperous, middle-class people” who “are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war; these are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa, they look like any European family that you would live next door to.”
Most of the other commentators have cried “double-standard” because our coverage of the war in Yemen and Syria, they say, reflect “racist” sentiments and “fear-mongering” – instead of “praise” as the media has for embattled Ukrainians.
“Amazing mainstream Western media gives glowing coverage of people resisting invasion by making Molotov cocktails,” one social media user remarked. “If they were brown people in Yemen or Palestine doing the same, they would be labeled terrorists deserving US-Israeli or US-Saudi drone bombing.”
We are so divided into racial hallways that we’ve mazed ourselves into inescapable discussions – that within themselves – create insensitive and inconclusive camps of thought. We are trapped in a doom cycle about race where no one wins, and everything appears to be against white or black... even when progress is made! It is terribly maddening. No system is ever perfect, but our constitution provides a road map for us to follow. Amendments are made for that very purpose. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Frederick Douglass used the constitution to make their arguments – and won through said constitution.
It may seem that I’ve fallen off a cliff, but all of these topics collide into the 20-car pileup of nonsense we’re parsing through today. I do not write to make people feel better or worse; right or wrong; I write to show the entire picture, not simply the bifurcated lens in which most of view it today. I love all facets of this country – good and bad – because like myself, I have done both, right and wrong. But I still love who I am and seek to make myself better in any way possible. We should do the same for our country, instead of initiating a nation-wide suicide of our beliefs and principles. We must buck personal pride, for national unity. Unrelenting pride is silly, especially when we can never hold onto anything forever.
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud!
Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave –
He passes from life to his rest in the grave...The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think,
From the death we are shrinking from they too would shrink,
To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling –
But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.They loved – but their story we cannot unfold;
They scorned – but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved – but no wail from their slumbers may come;
They joyed – but the voice of their gladness is dumb.They died – ay, they died! and we, things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.Yea, hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together like sunshine and rain:
And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other like surge upon surge.‘Tis the twink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud –
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud!– “Mortality” by William Knox, Scottish Poet, born 1789. See references below for full poem.
Part Three: Later in the Week, I reflect deeper about race and humanity.
Ukrainians still defend their homeland, but “peace talks” are reported to be taking place, soon. Ukrainian president, Zelensky, was assured by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, close ally to Russia, that “all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return.”
As war rages, I can’t help but think about race and division in the country I inhabit.
Both, in the new land I reside in (North Carolina), and the one I once resided (California), I have been asked: “are you related to Cesar Chavez?” By both black and white alike. I can’t help but feel ashamed to not be a “true” Latino in the fact that I can’t speak Spanish. But I also feel hatred in my heart, when hearing this question come out of their mouths. However, I do not challenge them as racists, and politely decline their obvious desire to put me into some sort of box. Or, lousy attempt of a “joke.”
I hold back the tears, remembering how my father thwarted back the good ole boys who kept him from being a principal, and only know the man I am, and conquer their downtrodden comment by being a man of honor and success. I see my mother, who delivered babies into the world, when treated, both, shitty and with joy, without distaste for the fathers and mothers of that child. I see humans, not a predetermined race. I have both given two shits about race; and cared deeply about its inclinations.
As an American, it is hard to escape these realities. I have been implicitly told to hate myself; there’s nothing to see here; told to shut up; told to believe that I shouldn’t worry; and said my concerns have been heard. But have they? Does anyone truly see me as an American? Mexican? Latino? What?
What I haven’t been asked, is: how do you feel about being an American? I have only been TOLD. In many people’s eyes, I have been Mexican/not a “real” Mexican. I have tried not to care, but all racial backgrounds have said these things... It has been universal to cast me out/in to certain camps. But at the end of the day, I have always felt to be American.
But as I write this now, I still have no clue what that means. I can only feel it in my heart. The terrors and prejudice before and in front of me, attempt to shred that ideal from me. It is a choice to be an American, even when that choice is surrounded by a mysterious force of doubt and beliefs counteracted and shoved to the side. I do not pretend to know where America is headed... but from viewing at the past, I feel hope – though I can’t see it. This type of thought often makes me believe that everything is mushed into a single truth, but separated into different fragments by people pulling it apart for their own benefit. Most of our “differences” are culturally and regionally contrived. This is true for all human machinations: religion, politics, economics, and architecture. But because they’re all human made, created by the same universal elements, nuggets of similarity exist in all things. With this belief, I seek unity and solidarity. There is no need to think otherwise. To do so, is to be playing God.