Manipulated by the right

Kris Kristofferson once sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” This definition of freedom apparently includes losing one’s mind if Canada’s “freedom truckers” are any indication. Ninety of Canadians are vaccinated and truckers in general are vaccinated at a similar rate, yet these petulant crybabies, supported by right-wing Americans and assorted authoritarian creeps, feel compelled to scream “freedom! freedom! freedom!” while showing not a shred of appreciation for those who’ve taken personal responsibility for ending our public health crisis. This is just one more example of what happens when ignorant, fearful, insecure and gullible people are manipulated by right-wingers bent on chaos as a last resort, because those right-wingers realize majority-rule democracy is not on their side. Even as the US closes in on a million COVID deaths the idiocy continues here, because who can possibly argue against “freedom”? Aldo Leopold wrote, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing.” So much for ethics. Anti-social conduct from right-wing authoritarians, exemplified and encouraged by our former president Cheeto Benito threatens both the public health and our democracy. 

David A Sorensen
Duluth, Minnesota

Time to assist our Ukrainian friends

Ukraine sent 5,000 troops to our war in Iraq. Ukraine had the third largest coalition contingent in Iraq, 1,700 troops, from 2003 to 2005. 18 Ukrainian troops died in Iraq. Ukraine sent troops through the NATO mission that supported our war in Afghanistan. When we asked for help, Ukraine helped us. I served with Ukrainian troops at U.S. Central Command from 2004 to 2006. They were loyal allies of our nation.

Now Ukraine is being invaded by a despot, Vladimir Putin. Our friend, Ukraine, is calling for help.
Some in our nation have a very short memory. Not many years ago Ukraine and the other nations in Eastern Europe were occupied by Russia. Russian troops that invaded to defeat Hitler never left. Eastern Europe remained a prisoner of totalitarian Russia until the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s.

Putin’s success in Ukraine will lead to more invasions in Eastern Europe. Social media and nuclear weapons make the war in Ukraine a war next door for the United States.
Putin is the Stalin of our era. What will our nation do? Will we congratulate Putin as Donald Trump has done? Or will we assist Ukraine as Ukraine assisted us?

Jason Maloney
Washburn, Wisconsin

Repeating history

Because it happened in Germany in the mid to late 1930s, many people (other than historians,) might not know that Hitler and his crew had three specific roles for women. They were “kinder, kirche and kuche;” children, church and kitchen. These roles led to to the desired outcome of keeping women in their place, barefoot and pregnant. That’s how much the Nazi leaders feared the vulnerability that comes from caring about others, women in particular. In patriarchal male religious systems, these role expectations continue to this day. 

It’s been written there are two enemies to freedom: those who want to control everyone and everything around them, and those who don’t believe they need to control themselves at all. It’s no coincidence that both traits or tendencies are found in the same fear-based groups of people.
Hitler and his fellow Nazis were fear-based, patriarchal male control freaks, and you know how that ended. And here we are, 90 years later, repeating the past once again.

Practitioners of the patriarchal male system have one goal – control of others. If they win the abortion battle, what’s next? Separation of church and state? It won’t happen overnight, but they won’t stop until they control everyone else – except themselves, of course. Patriarchal personalities assume the fear and vulnerability will stop when control of others happens.  As long as they’re trying to control others, the fear and vulnerability will never stop.

Gary Burt
Marble, Minnesota

 Repeating history

Ukraine is the center of the original East Slavic people (Belarus, Russian and Ukrainian) state called Kievan Rus. named after its Viking founders in the 9th century AD. In the 10th century AD it received Greek-Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople; now in Turkey, by Vladimir the Great and his son Jaroslav, the Wise.  

In the 13th and 14th centuries, during the Mongol invasion, Ukraine was controlled by Luthuania  and Poland; 1654 it first entered the Russian empire. Later that century, Ukraine was divided as eastern region became part of Russia and the western part annexed by Poland. 

1917, when Russian empire  collapsed, Ukrainians demanded establishment of a Ukrainian People’s Republic, but within a few months Red Army troops occupied it. Not long after Vladimir Lenin died of injuries during the Revolution, another awful thing happened i.e. Dictator Stalin, a non Slavic Georgian, deported Leon Trosky, his co-competitor to Mexico where his agents killed him. 

Ukrainians strongly opposed Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization of agriculture which resulted in famine, deportation to Siberia and millions of deaths.

In 1986 a deadly nuclear power explosion at Chernobyl; Soviet attempts to covering it up - turned international attention to Ukraine. President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost helped and dissolved the Communist rule of 70 years, but President Vladimir Putin, whose hero is Stalin, has imposed another awful burden upon them!

Instead of joining the European Union and other international affairs to help the Russians and Ukrainians improve their economies for the people, he is waging political wars against his neighbors.

Russia is part of Europe even if it is still the largest country in the world geographically after losing 14 of the Soviet states. He is more concerned about how much territory Russia has than how well the people live. He is obsessed by the amount of land Russia gained during the Romanov Dynasty which included Peter the Great, Katarina the Great etc. when they went from Europe through Siberia and all the way to Alaska; plus the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as the Caucasian states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia all the way to Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

After World War II it gained some satellite countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria. East Germany, Moldavia, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia until 1949 when President Josip Broz “Tito” told Stalin “to fly a kite!"

Mike Jaros, a Bosnian Polak with partial Ukrainian family name
Duluth, Minnesota