National Disgrace

On December 21, 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Ten months into his nation’s stand against naked Russian aggression, Zelensky was humble but passionate, exceedingly grateful but determined. His words were those of a statesman wishing to reassure a principle ally that victory was not only possible but probable if it kept the faith with him, while still making sure to remind of the horrific price all the free world would pay if his nation’s heroic stand was not supported. 

Zelensky cast Ukraine’s struggle against the continuum of history, asserting it “will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.” To any isolationists who might question America’s stake in the conflict, Zelensky was clear… “the world is too interconnected and interdependent to allow someone to stay aside and at the same time to feel safe when such a battle continues.” 

Over and over the full chamber interrupted Zelensky with standing ovations. It got to the point where Zelensky was a bit frustrated by the constant interruptions. After all, he was focused on making sure the lawmakers understood the terrible price Ukraine was paying every hour.

“Last year — last year, 70,000 people lived here in Bakhmut, in this city, and now only few civilians stay. Every inch of that land is soaked in blood; roaring guns sound every hour. Trenches in the Donbas change hands several times a day in fierce combat, and even hand fighting. But the Ukrainian Donbas stands.”

While Ukraine’s fight carries global implications to be sure, its President was clear about the price his country was paying for “the restoration of the international legal order.”  Ukrainians would do the fighting and the dying, and that was ok, so long as “America’s leadership remains solid, bicameral and bipartisan.” Again the full chamber rose, with the petty exception of a few of MAGA’s worst at the time, and delivered yet another ovation. 

Just a bit more than two years later Zelensky’s speech might as well have been in a parallel universe. Were one to have been castaway on a Pacific Island the week after his address, and returned to civilization just in time for yesterday’s wretched White House spectacle, they surely would think they had entered the twilight zone. 

There Zelensky sat in the White House, alone, proud, steady as an oak while a pack of hyenas taunted him with nothing but the continuous lies that are the foundation of their rise to power. Trump is far too weak and insecure to do man-to-man with a global hero, so he had in tow his new toady, JD Vance, who replaced the old model, last seen running for his life from the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has his own sorry history of being the target of Trump’s bullying, slouched next to Vance, staring straight ahead as he steadily sunk further into the soft sofa, trying hard to disappear.

It was as if the Ukrainian President had been rounded up in one of ICE’s immigration raids and brought in for questioning. Trump was the bad cop, but Vance wanted to prove he was worse. Cruelly patronizing and inanely paternal, the despicable duo rained ignorance on Zelensky, who calmly refused to accept their premises, giving back as good as he received. Of course, this did not sit well with fascism’s most fragile snowflake. 

After less than six weeks in office, we have already reached the point in our second MAGA Presidency where repeating verbatim the vomit Trump constantly expectorates somehow only further normalizes the corrosion he personifies. Yet and still, one exchange captured everything ruinous about the whole affair. 

Zelensky opened the session by providing the history, dating back to 2014, of the Russian campaign to annex Ukraine. Vance, who couldn’t wait to jump in and make clear the real purpose of the whole ugly charade, began to admonish Zelensky with the lie “…you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.” The Fox/AM narrative has long rested on the notion Zelensky has become just another ungrateful welfare queen, and that tripe would begin and end virtually every paragraph the American leadership whined for the remainder of the abasement. 

Over and over Trump, then Vance, then Trump again, accused Zelensky of refusing to offer enough “words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.” A MAGA jackal from the assembled press corps, now overloaded with Fox/AM stenographers, couldn’t resist jumping in on the action and berated a wartime leader for not wearing a suit. Beginning to end, the theme was the same, Trump wanted Zelensky to bend both knees and beg for unworthy indulgence, just like a refugee heading to Guantanamo or a government worker fired for no more cause than this lawless regime’s disdain for basic decency. 

And that “solid bicameral and bipartisan” US leadership? Trump poodle Sen. Lindsey Graham provided an appropriately servile epitaph to those hopes after Zelensky was literally ordered to leave the White House. Obediently repeating the Trump Doctrine – that is, every ally must be as much of a eunuch as any Republican when it comes to public interactions with the Godfather – Graham threw Zelensky under a tank and gushed how “proud I am of President Trump.” That is now the GOP position A-Z. 

The multitude of gashes MAGA fascism is inflicting on America will surely continue unabated, but no episode should better galvanize the resolve of those who refuse to accept this fate for our beloved country. Like Zelensky, we now know beyond doubt where this regime intends to go, and how enthusiastically the Republican Party, whose members now conflate nihilist servility with principle, will follow. 

In February of 2020, this platform expressed certainty that, allowed another term to  fully consolidate power, MAGA Trumpism would “leave us reviled by the world, a pariah instead of a beacon, a crisis instead of a solution…. a soulless wretch among countries of this Earth.” I hate being right. We are all Zelensky now. BC