I think it's long past time for us to discuss the elephant in the room. Ukraine aid is being blocked by a radical element of the Republican Party, a cult led by a man who is likely a Russian Asset, if not an agent. That radical element is loyal to that asset, and to the former KGB officer who is running Russia, not the United States. And until that problem is addressed once and for all, funding Ukraine will be an ongoing struggle.
I agree with you on who is blocking the funding. The mob boss, of the American Nazi party. When Trump first ran I would jokingly say at dinner to my husband and daughter that his wife was a deep cover Russian agent and her mission had been to marry someone and propel them into the White House so they could wreak havoc with our country. At times I would say Trump was a deep cover Russian spy and his mission was to become president so that he could wreak havoc with our country. They would tell me I was reading too many spy books. I had just read a book on the Stasi in East Germany and watched a series which illuminated some of what went on. It amazes me that most people that I know who have the tools to think about and understand this are so overwhelmed by what is going on politically that they avoid reading the news. Many claim their therapists have told them to stop. I understand that, and everyone needs to do what they can. Still, it is a shame that Trump has sunk many into a deep depression. He is not president, but he cannot let go. One can see how these maniacal strongmen end up taking over countries, because they are driven by their will power, which overpowers others. However, it is important not to get overwhelmed by that maniac and keep ours eyes on getting rid of him and his influence. Let's hope his deteriorating mental condition helps with that.
I think your theory makes perfect sense...and I don't read too many spy novels although I did grow up around a couple of CIA agents who were frat brothers of my father. As for Trump, he can't let go because that makes him a loser. And in his whole miserable life, nothing has been worse than to be a loser. That we who are not members of the cult know he is a loser really burns his ass. Heck, even Melania knows he's a loser, and with her job done, she is nowhere to be found.
I have read some interesting things about Putin too which makes it sound like he was playing both the KGB and the Stasi against each other to serve his purposes while living in Dresden. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46525543 I read a German file that had more details on what he did.
I don't get this sympathy for Melania. She is a Trump by choice. A nasty piece of work in her own right. (Remember her I don't really care jacket and profane Christmas tapes.) And got here on a Trump bought genius visa and brought her family over in a chain.
Melania was a call girle. Who else attends "model parties for millioonaires." Plain ans simple. And not even especially bright if she hasn't mastered English in more than 20 years... But men (not just Trump) think with the wrong organ around Stepford WIfe-types like her.
To be frank, I don't think Drumpf is INTELLIGENT enough to do this, or DISCIPLINED enough to carry out any subterfuge - however, as many have said he is easily manipulated to do things that have the same effect of carrying out Putin's wishes. What do they call it? "useful idiot" As for Melania, didn't she get an Einstein Visa to enter the US, thereby CLAIMING she has the "intelligence" to be an intelligence agent, but ultimately it is the narcissism of her husband that allows it to work, and the enablers/puppeteers around him that put it into effect because he is so incompetent on every level of life, the universe, and everything 🤷
And, what is most worrying to me, is that virtually all the "reasonable" R's left the party when it turned down this miserable road. Somehow, in a way most unfathomable to me, the conservative masses follow like sheep being led to their doom. It might help if reasonable republicans would speak out loudly. There are a few, e.g., Kinzinger, Cheney, Frum, who are doing so, but where are the rest?
Peter, the same line of thinking as yours struck me as I read, The Neighbor's House is on Fire'. Is it possible that the role of Trump & Party in the House of Representatives withholding aid to Ukraine did not occur to Timothy Snyder? As that seems impossible, for the first time Thinking about...appeared to hark back to Norman Rockwell's pictures. A very simple and clear responsibility to help a good neighbor has been denied. Professor Snyder drew a very clear picture of the US today, one without moral scruples and political wisdom. What are we to learn from this piece that we didn't already know?
I'm sure the idea occurred to the Professor, but unlike you and I, he can easily become a target for MAGA thugs like Elise Stefanik who put her considerable antisemitic weight behind the ouster of two university presidents.
There are several complicating factors, including the so-called invasion at the border -- something several countries are dealing with as Putin et al contrive anti-immigrant dilemmas for democracy. That would be parts 2 and 3 of this whole mess distracting from the Biden administration accomplishments.
In pushing Lend -Lease to Congress before we entered WWII, Roosevelt said: "Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire...I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it."... I don't want $15--I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. "
John, you ask the crucial question -- 'can this tide be turned around? Quite a number
of factors could turn the tide forward or back; scheduling of cases, in which Trump is criminally charged and he's convicted by the jury; Biden's team and Democrats create powerful and convincing campaigns about Democracy; Trump's danger to all Americans and Abortion; proof that the economy is working better for a vast majority of Americans starring regular folks; the stars of sports, music, comedy .... that Americans love join the campaign. LOUD, PROUD, INSIPATIONAL, DRAMATIC AND CONVINCING on every
If I may Fern, I would edit your phrase "Trump's danger to all Americans and Abortion ... to "Trump's danger to reproductive freedom."
I feel progressives have lost the personal freedom and liberty debate, because we have focussed on the operation (abortion). Rather, we are speaking about a woman's inherent liberty and freedom
The devil behind this is the allure of the strong man, fascism's promise of ease for the dominant -- Putin et al. Russians have had influencers across the world for decades, their work documented in various conflicts and uprisings, including Brexit. There must be some way to override the pro-Putin forces for being a threat to national security. We are the neighbors, We the People, we have the power with our vote and with our money, even with our physical presence in the streets or non-presence in stores and other businesses running with the pro-Putin crowd. If Ukraine can keep Russia at bay, even decimating its forces and resources, then we can mount some sort of action against our own Russian influencers.
Exactly. And remember this same guy only authorized actual emergency funds for actual fires and other natural disasters, to the states that voted for him. He decided to let half of our own house burn because he doesn't use those rooms.
Let's not forget how Trump and the Boy Blunder ignored COVID in the early days because it was only running rampant in NYC and blue states on the West Coast...
And later because it was hitting minority communities harder than "our people", and always because it was identified first in China, (never mind that the US has its very own contribution to world pandemics in the H1N1 outbreak of 1918. First identified in Kansas, but only the Spanish were honest about having it.)
Dr. Snyder's initial metaphor is closely akin to what FDR used as a reason for Lend Lease to Britain as they stood alone against Hitler's madness. The reasoning was sound then, and it's sound now.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least as long as practicality dictates. The aim of Lend Lease was to defeat Germany, and the Soviets were bearing the brunt of doing that.
A legitimate concern. This is my reasoning. In both cases the US was (and is) in a situation in which a foreign power intent on substantial and illegitimate conquest was ravaging parts of Europe. At the time of the initial Lend Lease program (as is also true now) the US was not directly involved in the fighting. Indeed, although FDR was almost certain that we'd have to get into the fighting at some point, he knew that without some substantial incident of aggression against us, he would not be able to get the US into it at that point. Joe Biden knows that getting us into a war with Russia, even if he wanted to and could, would likely be catastrophic. So in both cases, the US settled (and is settling) for doing what it could (and can) short of direct intervention to help stop that conquest. Once the Germans attacked Russia, the US extended its material help to the Russians who, despite Stalin's dictatorial rule and whatever the future potential of that kind of rule was, were in the initial stages of what would end in bleeding Germany white and did in the process bear the brunt of defeating Hitler's legions. In both cases the central issue was and is the wider implications of these two attempts at illegitimate conquest. If that is allowed to happen, the potential for disaster on a much wider scale is probable.
Except there was no NATO / EU for cover for FDR. Today, we are “part of” a large coalition. Lend Lease was a work around the isolationists in the US using the Southern congressional Democrats’ entrenched power in Congress. Today’s problem is dealing with a group that wants to extort to satisfy their goals. And, to them, the principle of aiding Ukraine is almost irrelevant. And Biden is the victim; as is Ukraine.
Yet we are still dealing with a form of isolationism. As to NATO, it is, in a way, the modern equivalent of the Atlantic Charter cemented by Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay. As you note, the extremist wing of the Republican House is using this issue in an attempt to extort Biden, but that doesn't change the facts for the Ukrainians. They need our help to hold off the Russians as Britain and later Russia needed our help to hold off, and finally defeat the Germans. Current politics aside, this to me is the central issue, and the reason for our aid.
Yes, the two monsters should have been left to duke it out and destroy each other. Stalin, like every russian leader since the 15th century, just took advantege of the situation and never paid anything back. And we're still stuck with the monster more than 70 years later.
They paid back with 27 million casualties. They had essentially won the war in 1943 before D Day. Britain argued not repaying the US loan (WW I) because of their great number of casualties. And Russia is still stuck with the NATO monster.
Who's the "they" you refer to? 1943 is two years before D-Day. Who had won the war by then? If your sympathies are with russia, consider a move there...
I was referring to lend-lease. It enabled Stalin to ramp up his forces and drive Germany out. What a different world it would be today if they had simply exhausted themselves to death... two evils gone.
You'll forgive me if I note that this seems a rather callous attitude toward the millions of Russians who fought and died defending their country. They were not all Stalin. One could, I suppose, apply a somewhat different attitude toward the German dead since they were the aggressors.
Those millions died because Stalin (1) killed off most of his generals before the war started, (2) poorly armed, clothed and fed his army (most were in felt boots in the dead of winter with guns that often didn't work), and (3) had the NKVD walk behind the troops to make sure no one retreated.
Just an FYI, they weren't "russians" defending their country, they were all kinds of nationalities, including a large proportion of Ukrainians, defending the soviet version of the rapacious russian empiee, and since the front went back and forth across Ukrainian territory, Ukraine's civillian losses were horrific.
In other words, the number of dead would not have been much different, but the outcome would have been, including for those who fought on both sides and survived.
And , even worse, the House Republicans have refused to change or negotiate the immigration reform they are extorting for funding Ukraine’s efforts. They have a comprehensive Trumpist bill and won’t budge on it. So Ukraine— and our international credibility are held hostage. Disgusting.
The failure of New York Democrats to get the vote out in 2022 is also a factor - had they done so and had the Democrats maintained their majority in the House, this wouldn't be happening, along with the rest of the crazy. Regaining the majority in November is going to be way too late.
However, the Menendez Corruption case tells us as much as the Santos farce that self-interest is a huge motivating factor in politics (in life) cutting across the political spectrum and can subvert and distort voter intent.
Professor Snyder I, and many of your subscribers, agree that the US and others MUST support Ukraine against Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
As an authority on Ukraine, I would appreciate your more detailed assessment of the complex Ukraine/US/Western and Eastern Europe situation. Why did Slovakia jump off the Ukrainian bandwagon? What about the US and other once-stalwart Western supporters?
"Slovakia and Hungary quietly bolster Ukraine’s defenses despite political rhetoric - Business overrides politics in Slovakia and Hungary as both nations’ defense firms expand production and cooperation with Ukraine despite claims of not supplying weapons "
Roxanna Thanks for the informative article, which was not reflected in our media. Especially with Slovakia, it’s fascinating how the new prime minister’s well-publicized statements ignore that ‘current military contracts associated with Ukraine will be fulfilled, because this provides essential local employment.’
I am reminded of how JPMorgan sought to bolster the Italian government of Mussolini in the 1930s, while the US strongly opposed Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.
Money rules. Media across the world is business like any other with its share of cronies and also exemplars. Just like citizens. Is money overriding national policies across the world -- like in Brexit? Money and violence give power to those who have no morals, and being without morals is being free of a troubled conscience. Many made the mistake of thinking that the end of the Cold War was 'the end of history' -- capitalism cooperation would prevail and diplomacy was relegated to making contracts. The devil didn't die, however. Hell awaits, as ever. It's up to the rest of us to exert ourselves.
Mary Pat I guess that, like me, you didn’t have a yacht built for $450 million. The ferry from Greenport to Shelter Island—about $12 including the car—ranges among the height of my capitalist expenditures.
P. S. I didn’t see Musk or Bezos in Dollar General or Costco.
This is how Tim Snyder answered your question last night on CNN. Of course, he did not predict exactly what would happen, but he lays out the factors and the potential outcomes. I think you will find it useful, Keith.
Of course, I understand Keith, I know that he gets busy sometimes and doesn't have a chance to answer every question. I don't watch TV either but a friend told me about this and maybe the link will work on your computer or phone. It is really very good.
Unfortunately large numbers of US citizens aren’t even passably familiar with European history or geography, so for some of the folks in the US who tend to not pay attention to global issues, I think the putting out the fire metaphor might actually resonate and at least prompt them to look into what’s happening on this issue. For the US citizens who see everything through the eyes of economics, Dr. Snyder’s explanation of the truly minuscule impact we have, can and should commit to Ukraine should be eye opening in its stark contrast to the monetary concerns espoused by many media outlets. Therefore, if we want to further this discussion, it behooves us to learn the source of our neighbors, friends, family members objections to fully supporting Ukraine and use the arguments Dr. Snyder has given us to further the discussions.
Carole, the word "scream" occurred to me as well before reading your comment. Since this essay screams so effectively, you are right to suggest that any efforts to share it broadly are worthwhile.
It is so frustrating. The GOP owns this and it is disgusting. The Ukrainians and Zelenskyy have been heroic at a different level these past years. To be failed by small minded politicians is truly terrible. Biden can’t do this alone, and the media carping on about his age rather than his accomplishments doesn’t help. Thank you for your efforts.
Not only is our neighbor's house on fire and we are watching it burn, we have an arsonist in our family who helped light the flame and now turned off the water to our fire hose all in an effort to get a lollipop for doing so.
There is only one party to blame for allowing the House of Democracy and stability of the Post War era to burn: Republicans.
President Biden and Democrats must do all they can to open another available temporary spigot to support our neighbor, friend and ally, (i.e. seize Russian assets) until we can vote the Republican insurrectionists/seditionists/traitors out of office.
Punchbowl News has been covering the Ukraine aid situation in the House and Senate almost daily for weeks. The reporters are exceptionally well sourced and exceptionally accurate. Punchbowl's morning newsletter is available for free, with easy sign-up on the website.
The news this morning is grim. Mike Johnson and House Republicans have already rejected any product of the Senate-White House negotiations on the supplemental foreign aid package. During their border stunt yesterday, Johnson and the Rs moved past their demand for H.R.2 in toto and linked border closure to approval of funding to avoid a government shutdown. "Freedom" Caucus members now say their first choice is for Biden to declare a state of emergency to shut the border immediately. Their second choice is H.R.2. One might say the Rs are aiming for their Reichstag moment before rather than after the election.
The House representative of my district is hard-core maga and impervious to constituent input (although I still call and email when he crosses lines). Instead, I email representatives in other districts to support Ukraine. It can be done. Find a city in the district. Find a public library. Find the library's zip+four. Make up a name. Go to the contact page on the representative's website. I consider this tactic fair, as Kevin McCarthy removed the contact page from the House Speaker website, and of course Johnson hasn't restored it.
The House wants to impeach Biden, why not have him loan Ukraine weapons a la lend lease? That way Biden can stand up to MAGA proPutin GOP extremist wing.
I donate monthly and consider it my duty to do whatever I can to support Ukraine. What the republicans are doing is bordering on treason in my opinion. They support Putin and are aiding him by stopping support for Ukraine.
Barbara Georgia and I are assisting a Ukrainian family that is trying to reestablish in northern Long Island. It’s difficult despite strong community support.
Looking back, it was never likely we would stay the course. We appeased Putin for years, in Georgia, Chechnya. We encouraged Ukraine to stand fast in the Maidan events but then when an outraged Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbas, we stood by and carried on taking his oil and gas. In 2022, Germany seemed about to become a moral and military leader in Europe, but then didn't. We carefully delayed and delayed giving Ukraine the weapons it needed, while they bled to death. Germany took lead only in sanctions busting - and the EU looked the other way. The USA is a basket case, seeing the wider world only as an extension of its internal slow civil war. Austria, Hungary, Slovakia like Putin, many in Germany and France want to turn their backs on the war.The UK, Nordics, Balts, Poles stand firm but it's not enough. The Chinese, Russians, all the tyrants can see how unreliable the West is, we'll always roll over, in the end, or just get bored. What's on the other channel?
Ukraine, to me, represented the best in us. It represented the possibility of renewed hope for the West, for our values, for our ability to stand up, stand together , for what matters. In betraying Ukraine, we've betrayed ourselves.
I don't follow the news of the war any more, because I know the ending, and it's hideously sad. I can't bear it any more.
Julian, don’t lose hope. We owe it to Ukraine not to allow ourselves to become doom-laden. It is indeed unbearable and easy then to assume we know what the end will be. I am certainly not immune to that. The difficult thing is to remember that we don’t know how it will end - we don’t know what contingencies might occur. There was a piece in the Guardian recently by Lea Ypi where she addresses this very thing. She makes the point that losing hope is a luxury people in dire circumstances don’t have. We, in relative safety, can indulge in that luxury and sink into apathy. Hope, unlike optimism, pursues actions because we feel that they are worth doing even though we cannot guarantee the outcome. It is a moral imperative. It sustains our support and solidarity. It’s a constituent of what Vaclav Havel would have called ‘living in truth’. It helps us to everywhere possible not betray ourselves and to distinguish between ourselves as individuals and our governments which we feel continually let us down /betray us and work out what we can do about it, no matter how small our actions may seem.
On the contrary, unfounded doom & gloom can cause us to MISS making important & necessary decisions. We can't win if we don't fight - and we have something major & existential to fight FOR as well as against. The Ukrainians have so far done so much with so little & innovated the heck out of what little they have. If they continue to hope & fight it is not anyone else's place to tell them it is futile while they seek to have their kidnapped children returned, their political prisoners returned, their sovereign land returned, their farmers continue to feed the world with their grain exports, plus to protect their citizens from bombings (including a maternity hospital) , kidnap, rape, execution, and all the unspeakable war crimes that Russia has one & will continue to do.
Well we're not disagreeing much. Sometimes one should fight in regardless of the odds, sometimes better to accept reality and compromise. I'm certainly not saying Ukraine should give in now. But the time may come when it has to accept a compromise peace, if the US denies it arms and aid, as under Trump it surely will do.
Julian, I entirely understand your reservation but I am not talking about unfounded hope which I would think is better called (false) optimism. I’m talking about a sense that something is morally right and although I cannot predict that it will win through I cannot live myself if I renege on it and act according to what people are apt to call realism and the cold light of day - if I don’t take the risk. Where there is resistance to oppression there have always been people who have made a decision to risk their lives rather than accept subjugation. And they have made a difference. They made a difference in the Armenian Genocide and many were saved as a result. They made a difference at a certain point on the Maidan in January/February 2014. Maybe as allies we have find our own version of that. Personally I don’t think things are at that point of doom and in any case I see it as for the Ukrainians to make those decisions. My concern is that if we move into doom mode in the name of ‘realism’ we drain their energy and resolve. And that is dangerously close to appeasement. They are not idealistic about the situation. They know it could go either way but they are not prepared to succumb. With my Ukrainian friends what they value is that we can be quite clear about how dire they/ and I feel the situation to be but we go on because life under occupation and oppression, neutrality that leaves them totally vulnerable - this would be a life robbed of all meaning and human beings cannot bear such a thing. You may well continue to disagree but I have been glad of the conversation.
I still follow the war, but it has become increasingly hard for me to bear it, too. I used to read between 500-800 pages per month. Now I'm doing well to get through 200-300. And I can't escape the war by reading because I read mostly central, eastern, and southeastern European history + the Ottoman Empire, all of which brings me right back to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine: Tsar Nicholas I and the near destruction of the Ottoman Empire in 1828-29; the crushing of the November Uprising in Congress Poland in 1831; and the Crimean War and the destruction of Concert Europe. It's not that Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire weren't partially to blame, though France to a lesser degree because after the 1851 coup, France had decreased the size of its military so as not to scare the bejabbers out of Britain; everyone involved was within living memory of the Napoleonic Wars. Henry Palmerston's pro-Ottoman position, aided by British newspapers' whipping the British middle class into a war frenzy, did make matters worse. But the danger lay in Nicholas I's desire to partition the Ottoman Empire between himself and Britain and France, if he could talk them into it (He couldn't). In other words, a land-grab with religious overtones--to unite Orthodoxy, including in the Balkan Peninsula (thus threatening the Habsburg Empire's interests in the Balkans), and to crush not just Islam, but Roman Catholicism (the Poles in Russian Poland, for example). There was also talk of returning Constantinople to its pre-1453 status as the center of Orthodoxy. Russia's defeat of France in 1812 had given Nicholas the confidence to convince himself that he could not lose the war. But he did.
Americans tend not to read history and for that reason are unable to put the present into a context, which means they can't know what is possible. To understand history is to understand what is possible. There is no greater gift one can give to oneself than to read history.
As you say, most Americans just "get bored. What's on the other channel?"
Rose I was a history professor from age 58 to 80. I am amazed by what most people don’t know about history—even what they have personally experienced IT.
From my students [who HAD TAKEN 2 years of high school American history]:
1) The Japanese dropped atomic bombs on Pearl Harbor;
2) WW II began when Russia invaded the Soviet Union.
Reminds me of that old TV show: IT PAYS TO BE IGNORANT.
Oh, dear. I'm not surprised, though. For the most part I found history boring in grade school, with the exception of one teacher who taught a course in European history, I think in 11th grade. I can't remember her name, but do remember that she was young, physically beautiful, and wore heavy eye makeup. She always became animated when she taught. She never used notes, and walked around the room using sweeping gestures with her arms as she grew increasingly excited. In those days, coaches usually taught history because history was considered a not very important subject. She was an exception. We seem not to have improved much since then.
How do we teach history in grade school? Well first we have to get the facts straight. How do we convey the complexities of history to young people? Can most of them even cope with it? At what age do we expose them to things like Pitești Prison in Romania, 1949-51? Blimey, I can barely cope with that myself.
The US has a long history of anti-intellectualism. I don't know where to start.
Your 11th grade history teacher sounds like a gem. As my friend David McCullough would tell me, history is an exciting story. His books focused on character and courage.
Too often folks teach history as dates and presidents. UGH! My favorite gollege history teacher was Lewis Perry Curtis—with two Scotties, Elton and Harrow. He would get standing ovations at least half the time for his lectures on English civilization.
When I was history/economics professor, I would absorb the material and then conduct class without notes and responding to THINK questions. Often I would end with 5 minutes of Quirky History, which were historic tidbits that added spice to the story.
A history teacher without passion for the subject is dull, dull, dull. People make history.
Simply read McCullough’s marvelous Great Companions, brief bios on 17 fascinating folks.
I just found her name and picture. I graduated in 1972, and have yearbooks for both '71 and '72. Janet Ogletree, and it was a world history course that she taught. If she's still alive, she's probably now in her early 80s.
Rose As a history professor I also taught ‘world history’ from 1992 to 2013. The text books were dreadful. I created my own bibliography.` Topics. Included SOCIETAL DISCRIMINATION: WHAT VS. WHO FROM PATRIARCHY TO THE PRESENT, FROM FEUDALISM TO THE PRESENT, and SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BEWTEEN EARLY JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM.
Correction: David’s marvelous biographies is entitled BRAVE COMPANIONS.
Great analogy! The problem in the US is one party is bought and paid for by Putin and anything Biden does they will reject. The other problem is Jake Sullivan and the de-escalation crowd who somehow think this will just go away and thinking they can control events that are clearly beyond their control
Been trying to think of a solution: Can the President take executive action to "lend" Ukraine (our allies) weapons, arms for defense of "NATO" countries with the awareness that, should Ukraine fall, the rest of NATO is not safe from Putin? (Channeling FDR's "lend/lease" to England: was that through Congress or executive order?)
I think they are trying to accomplish an end-run by using seized Russian assets to help Ukraine (not sure how it works but selling assets, releasing $$$ to purchase weapons etc.?) Also if you notice, a lot of NATO/European countries are doing under the radar support for Ukraine such as Denmark training Ukraine pilots on F16's & Norway sending them more planes so they can increase this training, in addition to undertaking sending planes themselves to Ukraine. Earlier the US approved supplying Denmark with more F16s, so US>Denmark>Ukraine. One thing I will say for the Biden admin - he has, and many of his "team" has, years and years of experience in international diplomacy at every level, so... as the saying goes "there is more than one way to skin a cat..." However, it is also vital for the US to approve & supply "official" weapons & other aid, both practically to enable Ukraine to prevail as quickly as possible, but also for being effective at convincing other countries to keep doing the same by leading by example.
Probably he can't; but in answer to the question, Lend-Lease was an executive action, arguably of doubtful legality, based on an emergency that Respectable People surely thought was overblown.
I think it's long past time for us to discuss the elephant in the room. Ukraine aid is being blocked by a radical element of the Republican Party, a cult led by a man who is likely a Russian Asset, if not an agent. That radical element is loyal to that asset, and to the former KGB officer who is running Russia, not the United States. And until that problem is addressed once and for all, funding Ukraine will be an ongoing struggle.
I agree with you on who is blocking the funding. The mob boss, of the American Nazi party. When Trump first ran I would jokingly say at dinner to my husband and daughter that his wife was a deep cover Russian agent and her mission had been to marry someone and propel them into the White House so they could wreak havoc with our country. At times I would say Trump was a deep cover Russian spy and his mission was to become president so that he could wreak havoc with our country. They would tell me I was reading too many spy books. I had just read a book on the Stasi in East Germany and watched a series which illuminated some of what went on. It amazes me that most people that I know who have the tools to think about and understand this are so overwhelmed by what is going on politically that they avoid reading the news. Many claim their therapists have told them to stop. I understand that, and everyone needs to do what they can. Still, it is a shame that Trump has sunk many into a deep depression. He is not president, but he cannot let go. One can see how these maniacal strongmen end up taking over countries, because they are driven by their will power, which overpowers others. However, it is important not to get overwhelmed by that maniac and keep ours eyes on getting rid of him and his influence. Let's hope his deteriorating mental condition helps with that.
I think your theory makes perfect sense...and I don't read too many spy novels although I did grow up around a couple of CIA agents who were frat brothers of my father. As for Trump, he can't let go because that makes him a loser. And in his whole miserable life, nothing has been worse than to be a loser. That we who are not members of the cult know he is a loser really burns his ass. Heck, even Melania knows he's a loser, and with her job done, she is nowhere to be found.
Amen! In fact, it generally goes without much notice that he has LOST the popular vote twice. It is hard to understand why people stand for it.
I have read some interesting things about Putin too which makes it sound like he was playing both the KGB and the Stasi against each other to serve his purposes while living in Dresden. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46525543 I read a German file that had more details on what he did.
https://www.rferl.org/a/showdown-in-dresden-the-stasi-occupation-and-the-putin-myth/30302831.html
Once a spy always a spy.
She's an immigrant. Already in hiding.
I don't get this sympathy for Melania. She is a Trump by choice. A nasty piece of work in her own right. (Remember her I don't really care jacket and profane Christmas tapes.) And got here on a Trump bought genius visa and brought her family over in a chain.
Melania was a call girle. Who else attends "model parties for millioonaires." Plain ans simple. And not even especially bright if she hasn't mastered English in more than 20 years... But men (not just Trump) think with the wrong organ around Stepford WIfe-types like her.
To be frank, I don't think Drumpf is INTELLIGENT enough to do this, or DISCIPLINED enough to carry out any subterfuge - however, as many have said he is easily manipulated to do things that have the same effect of carrying out Putin's wishes. What do they call it? "useful idiot" As for Melania, didn't she get an Einstein Visa to enter the US, thereby CLAIMING she has the "intelligence" to be an intelligence agent, but ultimately it is the narcissism of her husband that allows it to work, and the enablers/puppeteers around him that put it into effect because he is so incompetent on every level of life, the universe, and everything 🤷
Agree, but the "radical element" is pretty much the entire Republican party, not just a few.
Agreed! The sheep in Republicans clothing, or are they wolves. The Nazi party supported by our oligarchs. We are the country with the most oligarchs according to article. https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/oligarchs-inside-the-minds-of-the-wealthiest-americans/#:~:text=They're%20private%20citizens%20who,any%20other%20country%20on%20earth.
And, what is most worrying to me, is that virtually all the "reasonable" R's left the party when it turned down this miserable road. Somehow, in a way most unfathomable to me, the conservative masses follow like sheep being led to their doom. It might help if reasonable republicans would speak out loudly. There are a few, e.g., Kinzinger, Cheney, Frum, who are doing so, but where are the rest?
Peter, the same line of thinking as yours struck me as I read, The Neighbor's House is on Fire'. Is it possible that the role of Trump & Party in the House of Representatives withholding aid to Ukraine did not occur to Timothy Snyder? As that seems impossible, for the first time Thinking about...appeared to hark back to Norman Rockwell's pictures. A very simple and clear responsibility to help a good neighbor has been denied. Professor Snyder drew a very clear picture of the US today, one without moral scruples and political wisdom. What are we to learn from this piece that we didn't already know?
I'm sure the idea occurred to the Professor, but unlike you and I, he can easily become a target for MAGA thugs like Elise Stefanik who put her considerable antisemitic weight behind the ouster of two university presidents.
There are several complicating factors, including the so-called invasion at the border -- something several countries are dealing with as Putin et al contrive anti-immigrant dilemmas for democracy. That would be parts 2 and 3 of this whole mess distracting from the Biden administration accomplishments.
In pushing Lend -Lease to Congress before we entered WWII, Roosevelt said: "Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire...I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it."... I don't want $15--I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. "
In case anyone wants to read more about that FDR quote:
Franklin Roosevelt's Press Conference
December 17, 1940
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odllpc2.html
Thanks Kathy, that was a great snippet of history. a real conversation and a real President.
I’m going to use it for a blog post. Maybe tomorrow. Thanks! I don’t think I learned about “Lend Lease” in history class(es).
so sad, Fern, but that is how it seems to be operating ... Can this awful tide be turned?
John, you ask the crucial question -- 'can this tide be turned around? Quite a number
of factors could turn the tide forward or back; scheduling of cases, in which Trump is criminally charged and he's convicted by the jury; Biden's team and Democrats create powerful and convincing campaigns about Democracy; Trump's danger to all Americans and Abortion; proof that the economy is working better for a vast majority of Americans starring regular folks; the stars of sports, music, comedy .... that Americans love join the campaign. LOUD, PROUD, INSIPATIONAL, DRAMATIC AND CONVINCING on every
media outlet that people pay attention to.
If I may Fern, I would edit your phrase "Trump's danger to all Americans and Abortion ... to "Trump's danger to reproductive freedom."
I feel progressives have lost the personal freedom and liberty debate, because we have focussed on the operation (abortion). Rather, we are speaking about a woman's inherent liberty and freedom
The devil behind this is the allure of the strong man, fascism's promise of ease for the dominant -- Putin et al. Russians have had influencers across the world for decades, their work documented in various conflicts and uprisings, including Brexit. There must be some way to override the pro-Putin forces for being a threat to national security. We are the neighbors, We the People, we have the power with our vote and with our money, even with our physical presence in the streets or non-presence in stores and other businesses running with the pro-Putin crowd. If Ukraine can keep Russia at bay, even decimating its forces and resources, then we can mount some sort of action against our own Russian influencers.
No one ever said the Russians can only have compromat on one US politician.
They did hack the RNC in 2016 as well. You can be sure they have lots of goodies that they re using to keep Republicans in line.
Exactly. And remember this same guy only authorized actual emergency funds for actual fires and other natural disasters, to the states that voted for him. He decided to let half of our own house burn because he doesn't use those rooms.
Let's not forget how Trump and the Boy Blunder ignored COVID in the early days because it was only running rampant in NYC and blue states on the West Coast...
And later because it was hitting minority communities harder than "our people", and always because it was identified first in China, (never mind that the US has its very own contribution to world pandemics in the H1N1 outbreak of 1918. First identified in Kansas, but only the Spanish were honest about having it.)
Dr. Snyder's initial metaphor is closely akin to what FDR used as a reason for Lend Lease to Britain as they stood alone against Hitler's madness. The reasoning was sound then, and it's sound now.
Pretty different , IMO.
The Soviets got Lend Lease too after June 1941.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least as long as practicality dictates. The aim of Lend Lease was to defeat Germany, and the Soviets were bearing the brunt of doing that.
I don’t see the analogy to Ukraine I guess.
A legitimate concern. This is my reasoning. In both cases the US was (and is) in a situation in which a foreign power intent on substantial and illegitimate conquest was ravaging parts of Europe. At the time of the initial Lend Lease program (as is also true now) the US was not directly involved in the fighting. Indeed, although FDR was almost certain that we'd have to get into the fighting at some point, he knew that without some substantial incident of aggression against us, he would not be able to get the US into it at that point. Joe Biden knows that getting us into a war with Russia, even if he wanted to and could, would likely be catastrophic. So in both cases, the US settled (and is settling) for doing what it could (and can) short of direct intervention to help stop that conquest. Once the Germans attacked Russia, the US extended its material help to the Russians who, despite Stalin's dictatorial rule and whatever the future potential of that kind of rule was, were in the initial stages of what would end in bleeding Germany white and did in the process bear the brunt of defeating Hitler's legions. In both cases the central issue was and is the wider implications of these two attempts at illegitimate conquest. If that is allowed to happen, the potential for disaster on a much wider scale is probable.
Except there was no NATO / EU for cover for FDR. Today, we are “part of” a large coalition. Lend Lease was a work around the isolationists in the US using the Southern congressional Democrats’ entrenched power in Congress. Today’s problem is dealing with a group that wants to extort to satisfy their goals. And, to them, the principle of aiding Ukraine is almost irrelevant. And Biden is the victim; as is Ukraine.
Yet we are still dealing with a form of isolationism. As to NATO, it is, in a way, the modern equivalent of the Atlantic Charter cemented by Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay. As you note, the extremist wing of the Republican House is using this issue in an attempt to extort Biden, but that doesn't change the facts for the Ukrainians. They need our help to hold off the Russians as Britain and later Russia needed our help to hold off, and finally defeat the Germans. Current politics aside, this to me is the central issue, and the reason for our aid.
Yes, the two monsters should have been left to duke it out and destroy each other. Stalin, like every russian leader since the 15th century, just took advantege of the situation and never paid anything back. And we're still stuck with the monster more than 70 years later.
They paid back with 27 million casualties. They had essentially won the war in 1943 before D Day. Britain argued not repaying the US loan (WW I) because of their great number of casualties. And Russia is still stuck with the NATO monster.
Who's the "they" you refer to? 1943 is two years before D-Day. Who had won the war by then? If your sympathies are with russia, consider a move there...
Not sure how we could have left Germany alone given her conquests in Europe prior to the invasion of Russia.
I was referring to lend-lease. It enabled Stalin to ramp up his forces and drive Germany out. What a different world it would be today if they had simply exhausted themselves to death... two evils gone.
You'll forgive me if I note that this seems a rather callous attitude toward the millions of Russians who fought and died defending their country. They were not all Stalin. One could, I suppose, apply a somewhat different attitude toward the German dead since they were the aggressors.
Those millions died because Stalin (1) killed off most of his generals before the war started, (2) poorly armed, clothed and fed his army (most were in felt boots in the dead of winter with guns that often didn't work), and (3) had the NKVD walk behind the troops to make sure no one retreated.
Just an FYI, they weren't "russians" defending their country, they were all kinds of nationalities, including a large proportion of Ukrainians, defending the soviet version of the rapacious russian empiee, and since the front went back and forth across Ukrainian territory, Ukraine's civillian losses were horrific.
In other words, the number of dead would not have been much different, but the outcome would have been, including for those who fought on both sides and survived.
And , even worse, the House Republicans have refused to change or negotiate the immigration reform they are extorting for funding Ukraine’s efforts. They have a comprehensive Trumpist bill and won’t budge on it. So Ukraine— and our international credibility are held hostage. Disgusting.
Republicans want the immigration issue. They don’t want to solve or address it in any way.
Not helping Ukraine will be the greatest mistake the United States has ever made.
The election of the Orange Lizard is our greatest error.
The failure of New York Democrats to get the vote out in 2022 is also a factor - had they done so and had the Democrats maintained their majority in the House, this wouldn't be happening, along with the rest of the crazy. Regaining the majority in November is going to be way too late.
I agree about the ridiculous failures of 2022.
However, the Menendez Corruption case tells us as much as the Santos farce that self-interest is a huge motivating factor in politics (in life) cutting across the political spectrum and can subvert and distort voter intent.
Stuart Stevens 📕 The Conspiracy To End America. - Five ways my old party is driving our democracy to autocracy.
NYT Bestselling author of it was ‘All A Lie’.
Amanda, let’s say it ranks as one of the greatest mistakes we’ve ever made
Amanda Ukraine is in the finals with Hush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Iraq 2003.
Professor Snyder I, and many of your subscribers, agree that the US and others MUST support Ukraine against Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
As an authority on Ukraine, I would appreciate your more detailed assessment of the complex Ukraine/US/Western and Eastern Europe situation. Why did Slovakia jump off the Ukrainian bandwagon? What about the US and other once-stalwart Western supporters?
What do you foresee 6-to-12 months hence?
"Slovakia and Hungary quietly bolster Ukraine’s defenses despite political rhetoric - Business overrides politics in Slovakia and Hungary as both nations’ defense firms expand production and cooperation with Ukraine despite claims of not supplying weapons "
https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/01/04/slovakia-and-hungary-quietly-bolster-ukraines-defenses-despite-political-rhetoric/
Roxanna Thanks for the informative article, which was not reflected in our media. Especially with Slovakia, it’s fascinating how the new prime minister’s well-publicized statements ignore that ‘current military contracts associated with Ukraine will be fulfilled, because this provides essential local employment.’
I am reminded of how JPMorgan sought to bolster the Italian government of Mussolini in the 1930s, while the US strongly opposed Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.
The dollar trumps national policy?
Money rules. Media across the world is business like any other with its share of cronies and also exemplars. Just like citizens. Is money overriding national policies across the world -- like in Brexit? Money and violence give power to those who have no morals, and being without morals is being free of a troubled conscience. Many made the mistake of thinking that the end of the Cold War was 'the end of history' -- capitalism cooperation would prevail and diplomacy was relegated to making contracts. The devil didn't die, however. Hell awaits, as ever. It's up to the rest of us to exert ourselves.
Of course, the greedy always put the dollar above the interests of the family, neighbors and friends. That’s capitalism run amok!
Mary Pat I guess that, like me, you didn’t have a yacht built for $450 million. The ferry from Greenport to Shelter Island—about $12 including the car—ranges among the height of my capitalist expenditures.
P. S. I didn’t see Musk or Bezos in Dollar General or Costco.
This is how Tim Snyder answered your question last night on CNN. Of course, he did not predict exactly what would happen, but he lays out the factors and the potential outcomes. I think you will find it useful, Keith.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/01/04/intv-amanpour-timothy-snyder-2024-lookahead.cnn
Laura I do not watch TV. As a paid subscriber to Snyder’s Substack, I think it appropriate that he include such commentaries for his paid subscribers.
Of course, I understand Keith, I know that he gets busy sometimes and doesn't have a chance to answer every question. I don't watch TV either but a friend told me about this and maybe the link will work on your computer or phone. It is really very good.
Unfortunately large numbers of US citizens aren’t even passably familiar with European history or geography, so for some of the folks in the US who tend to not pay attention to global issues, I think the putting out the fire metaphor might actually resonate and at least prompt them to look into what’s happening on this issue. For the US citizens who see everything through the eyes of economics, Dr. Snyder’s explanation of the truly minuscule impact we have, can and should commit to Ukraine should be eye opening in its stark contrast to the monetary concerns espoused by many media outlets. Therefore, if we want to further this discussion, it behooves us to learn the source of our neighbors, friends, family members objections to fully supporting Ukraine and use the arguments Dr. Snyder has given us to further the discussions.
SCREAM. Listen up USA. This matters. Put this where all will read it somehow. Argh and argh.
Carole, the word "scream" occurred to me as well before reading your comment. Since this essay screams so effectively, you are right to suggest that any efforts to share it broadly are worthwhile.
It is so frustrating. The GOP owns this and it is disgusting. The Ukrainians and Zelenskyy have been heroic at a different level these past years. To be failed by small minded politicians is truly terrible. Biden can’t do this alone, and the media carping on about his age rather than his accomplishments doesn’t help. Thank you for your efforts.
Not only is our neighbor's house on fire and we are watching it burn, we have an arsonist in our family who helped light the flame and now turned off the water to our fire hose all in an effort to get a lollipop for doing so.
There is only one party to blame for allowing the House of Democracy and stability of the Post War era to burn: Republicans.
President Biden and Democrats must do all they can to open another available temporary spigot to support our neighbor, friend and ally, (i.e. seize Russian assets) until we can vote the Republican insurrectionists/seditionists/traitors out of office.
I agree. We must find a way around the American party of Putin and their evil agenda.
Punchbowl News has been covering the Ukraine aid situation in the House and Senate almost daily for weeks. The reporters are exceptionally well sourced and exceptionally accurate. Punchbowl's morning newsletter is available for free, with easy sign-up on the website.
The news this morning is grim. Mike Johnson and House Republicans have already rejected any product of the Senate-White House negotiations on the supplemental foreign aid package. During their border stunt yesterday, Johnson and the Rs moved past their demand for H.R.2 in toto and linked border closure to approval of funding to avoid a government shutdown. "Freedom" Caucus members now say their first choice is for Biden to declare a state of emergency to shut the border immediately. Their second choice is H.R.2. One might say the Rs are aiming for their Reichstag moment before rather than after the election.
The House representative of my district is hard-core maga and impervious to constituent input (although I still call and email when he crosses lines). Instead, I email representatives in other districts to support Ukraine. It can be done. Find a city in the district. Find a public library. Find the library's zip+four. Make up a name. Go to the contact page on the representative's website. I consider this tactic fair, as Kevin McCarthy removed the contact page from the House Speaker website, and of course Johnson hasn't restored it.
The House wants to impeach Biden, why not have him loan Ukraine weapons a la lend lease? That way Biden can stand up to MAGA proPutin GOP extremist wing.
Americans are sleepwalking through this crisis. The GOP are Russian government assets. And everyone is letting it happen.
Consider a contribution to Prof. Snyder's Safe Skies fundraiser on United 24:
https://u24.gov.ua/safeskies
I donate monthly and consider it my duty to do whatever I can to support Ukraine. What the republicans are doing is bordering on treason in my opinion. They support Putin and are aiding him by stopping support for Ukraine.
Barbara Georgia and I are assisting a Ukrainian family that is trying to reestablish in northern Long Island. It’s difficult despite strong community support.
Amen. Dr Snyder. I’m listening to your extended audible on the subject of Ukraine brilliant history! Thank you.
Looking back, it was never likely we would stay the course. We appeased Putin for years, in Georgia, Chechnya. We encouraged Ukraine to stand fast in the Maidan events but then when an outraged Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbas, we stood by and carried on taking his oil and gas. In 2022, Germany seemed about to become a moral and military leader in Europe, but then didn't. We carefully delayed and delayed giving Ukraine the weapons it needed, while they bled to death. Germany took lead only in sanctions busting - and the EU looked the other way. The USA is a basket case, seeing the wider world only as an extension of its internal slow civil war. Austria, Hungary, Slovakia like Putin, many in Germany and France want to turn their backs on the war.The UK, Nordics, Balts, Poles stand firm but it's not enough. The Chinese, Russians, all the tyrants can see how unreliable the West is, we'll always roll over, in the end, or just get bored. What's on the other channel?
Ukraine, to me, represented the best in us. It represented the possibility of renewed hope for the West, for our values, for our ability to stand up, stand together , for what matters. In betraying Ukraine, we've betrayed ourselves.
I don't follow the news of the war any more, because I know the ending, and it's hideously sad. I can't bear it any more.
Ruth Windle
Julian, don’t lose hope. We owe it to Ukraine not to allow ourselves to become doom-laden. It is indeed unbearable and easy then to assume we know what the end will be. I am certainly not immune to that. The difficult thing is to remember that we don’t know how it will end - we don’t know what contingencies might occur. There was a piece in the Guardian recently by Lea Ypi where she addresses this very thing. She makes the point that losing hope is a luxury people in dire circumstances don’t have. We, in relative safety, can indulge in that luxury and sink into apathy. Hope, unlike optimism, pursues actions because we feel that they are worth doing even though we cannot guarantee the outcome. It is a moral imperative. It sustains our support and solidarity. It’s a constituent of what Vaclav Havel would have called ‘living in truth’. It helps us to everywhere possible not betray ourselves and to distinguish between ourselves as individuals and our governments which we feel continually let us down /betray us and work out what we can do about it, no matter how small our actions may seem.
Mm. Not sure. Unfounded hope can be a delusion, leading us away from harsh but necessary decisions.
On the contrary, unfounded doom & gloom can cause us to MISS making important & necessary decisions. We can't win if we don't fight - and we have something major & existential to fight FOR as well as against. The Ukrainians have so far done so much with so little & innovated the heck out of what little they have. If they continue to hope & fight it is not anyone else's place to tell them it is futile while they seek to have their kidnapped children returned, their political prisoners returned, their sovereign land returned, their farmers continue to feed the world with their grain exports, plus to protect their citizens from bombings (including a maternity hospital) , kidnap, rape, execution, and all the unspeakable war crimes that Russia has one & will continue to do.
Well we're not disagreeing much. Sometimes one should fight in regardless of the odds, sometimes better to accept reality and compromise. I'm certainly not saying Ukraine should give in now. But the time may come when it has to accept a compromise peace, if the US denies it arms and aid, as under Trump it surely will do.
Ruth Windle.
Julian, I entirely understand your reservation but I am not talking about unfounded hope which I would think is better called (false) optimism. I’m talking about a sense that something is morally right and although I cannot predict that it will win through I cannot live myself if I renege on it and act according to what people are apt to call realism and the cold light of day - if I don’t take the risk. Where there is resistance to oppression there have always been people who have made a decision to risk their lives rather than accept subjugation. And they have made a difference. They made a difference in the Armenian Genocide and many were saved as a result. They made a difference at a certain point on the Maidan in January/February 2014. Maybe as allies we have find our own version of that. Personally I don’t think things are at that point of doom and in any case I see it as for the Ukrainians to make those decisions. My concern is that if we move into doom mode in the name of ‘realism’ we drain their energy and resolve. And that is dangerously close to appeasement. They are not idealistic about the situation. They know it could go either way but they are not prepared to succumb. With my Ukrainian friends what they value is that we can be quite clear about how dire they/ and I feel the situation to be but we go on because life under occupation and oppression, neutrality that leaves them totally vulnerable - this would be a life robbed of all meaning and human beings cannot bear such a thing. You may well continue to disagree but I have been glad of the conversation.
I still follow the war, but it has become increasingly hard for me to bear it, too. I used to read between 500-800 pages per month. Now I'm doing well to get through 200-300. And I can't escape the war by reading because I read mostly central, eastern, and southeastern European history + the Ottoman Empire, all of which brings me right back to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine: Tsar Nicholas I and the near destruction of the Ottoman Empire in 1828-29; the crushing of the November Uprising in Congress Poland in 1831; and the Crimean War and the destruction of Concert Europe. It's not that Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire weren't partially to blame, though France to a lesser degree because after the 1851 coup, France had decreased the size of its military so as not to scare the bejabbers out of Britain; everyone involved was within living memory of the Napoleonic Wars. Henry Palmerston's pro-Ottoman position, aided by British newspapers' whipping the British middle class into a war frenzy, did make matters worse. But the danger lay in Nicholas I's desire to partition the Ottoman Empire between himself and Britain and France, if he could talk them into it (He couldn't). In other words, a land-grab with religious overtones--to unite Orthodoxy, including in the Balkan Peninsula (thus threatening the Habsburg Empire's interests in the Balkans), and to crush not just Islam, but Roman Catholicism (the Poles in Russian Poland, for example). There was also talk of returning Constantinople to its pre-1453 status as the center of Orthodoxy. Russia's defeat of France in 1812 had given Nicholas the confidence to convince himself that he could not lose the war. But he did.
Americans tend not to read history and for that reason are unable to put the present into a context, which means they can't know what is possible. To understand history is to understand what is possible. There is no greater gift one can give to oneself than to read history.
As you say, most Americans just "get bored. What's on the other channel?"
Rose I was a history professor from age 58 to 80. I am amazed by what most people don’t know about history—even what they have personally experienced IT.
From my students [who HAD TAKEN 2 years of high school American history]:
1) The Japanese dropped atomic bombs on Pearl Harbor;
2) WW II began when Russia invaded the Soviet Union.
Reminds me of that old TV show: IT PAYS TO BE IGNORANT.
Oh, dear. I'm not surprised, though. For the most part I found history boring in grade school, with the exception of one teacher who taught a course in European history, I think in 11th grade. I can't remember her name, but do remember that she was young, physically beautiful, and wore heavy eye makeup. She always became animated when she taught. She never used notes, and walked around the room using sweeping gestures with her arms as she grew increasingly excited. In those days, coaches usually taught history because history was considered a not very important subject. She was an exception. We seem not to have improved much since then.
How do we teach history in grade school? Well first we have to get the facts straight. How do we convey the complexities of history to young people? Can most of them even cope with it? At what age do we expose them to things like Pitești Prison in Romania, 1949-51? Blimey, I can barely cope with that myself.
The US has a long history of anti-intellectualism. I don't know where to start.
Rose
Your 11th grade history teacher sounds like a gem. As my friend David McCullough would tell me, history is an exciting story. His books focused on character and courage.
Too often folks teach history as dates and presidents. UGH! My favorite gollege history teacher was Lewis Perry Curtis—with two Scotties, Elton and Harrow. He would get standing ovations at least half the time for his lectures on English civilization.
When I was history/economics professor, I would absorb the material and then conduct class without notes and responding to THINK questions. Often I would end with 5 minutes of Quirky History, which were historic tidbits that added spice to the story.
A history teacher without passion for the subject is dull, dull, dull. People make history.
Simply read McCullough’s marvelous Great Companions, brief bios on 17 fascinating folks.
I just found her name and picture. I graduated in 1972, and have yearbooks for both '71 and '72. Janet Ogletree, and it was a world history course that she taught. If she's still alive, she's probably now in her early 80s.
Rose As a history professor I also taught ‘world history’ from 1992 to 2013. The text books were dreadful. I created my own bibliography.` Topics. Included SOCIETAL DISCRIMINATION: WHAT VS. WHO FROM PATRIARCHY TO THE PRESENT, FROM FEUDALISM TO THE PRESENT, and SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BEWTEEN EARLY JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM.
Correction: David’s marvelous biographies is entitled BRAVE COMPANIONS.
Telling it just like it is. In simple terms. Deplorable/unconscionable/dangerous that our Congress won't act appropriately/responsibly! What to do?
They'll offer thoughts and prayers -- and then say, "Never again" for the next 75 years....
Great analogy! The problem in the US is one party is bought and paid for by Putin and anything Biden does they will reject. The other problem is Jake Sullivan and the de-escalation crowd who somehow think this will just go away and thinking they can control events that are clearly beyond their control
Been trying to think of a solution: Can the President take executive action to "lend" Ukraine (our allies) weapons, arms for defense of "NATO" countries with the awareness that, should Ukraine fall, the rest of NATO is not safe from Putin? (Channeling FDR's "lend/lease" to England: was that through Congress or executive order?)
I think they are trying to accomplish an end-run by using seized Russian assets to help Ukraine (not sure how it works but selling assets, releasing $$$ to purchase weapons etc.?) Also if you notice, a lot of NATO/European countries are doing under the radar support for Ukraine such as Denmark training Ukraine pilots on F16's & Norway sending them more planes so they can increase this training, in addition to undertaking sending planes themselves to Ukraine. Earlier the US approved supplying Denmark with more F16s, so US>Denmark>Ukraine. One thing I will say for the Biden admin - he has, and many of his "team" has, years and years of experience in international diplomacy at every level, so... as the saying goes "there is more than one way to skin a cat..." However, it is also vital for the US to approve & supply "official" weapons & other aid, both practically to enable Ukraine to prevail as quickly as possible, but also for being effective at convincing other countries to keep doing the same by leading by example.
Probably he can't; but in answer to the question, Lend-Lease was an executive action, arguably of doubtful legality, based on an emergency that Respectable People surely thought was overblown.