In the Words of a Visionary
In ordinary times, I approach New Year’s celebrations focused on the seasonally consistent themes of renewal and redemption. Promises of fresh beginnings float buoyantly in the cold December air. Or maybe that is the fragrance of other New Year’s spirits clinging to the frigid December air.
Just Thinkin’
In ordinary times, I approach New Year’s celebrations focused on the seasonally consistent themes of renewal and redemption. Promises of fresh beginnings float buoyantly in the cold December air. Or maybe that is the fragrance of other New Year’s spirits clinging to the frigid December air.
I concede these past few years have not been ordinary times. At their best, these times have been disquieting. At their worst, a disagreeable disagreement has washed over us, clouding our judgments. It is at such frustrating times that I ask myself the Rodney King question. “Can’t we just get along?”
Recently, the answer has been, “No.” Then, something changed. During the week before Christmas, The President of the Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, came to visit our President and to speak to a joint session of our Congress. As I write this, I realize he came to speak to all of us, reds and blues and all other hues.
His country, after being invaded by Putin’s Russia, is locked in a battle for its very right to exist. The previous day and every other recent day, President Zelenskyy had been on a battlefield. On a battlefield. It strikes me that this man has seen death in a fashion that I cannot comprehend. The death of soldiers – the death of children, of women. Indiscriminate deaths in manners I cannot begin to emotionally grasp.
Yet there he stood, this one-time standup comedian, before the Congress of the United States as the respected wartime leader of his nation. A nation that on the battlefield for over 300 days has fought Russian’s vaunted military to standoff, often inflicting embarrassing defeats on the Red Army.
In a recent strategic change, Russian seemed to adopt a scorched earth approach, striking at civilian targets, leveling homes and hospitals, schools and churches, water and power stations. Leaving the Ukrainian citizenry to face the harsh Balkan winter exposed.
Against this backdrop, President Zelenskyy gave what I consider the most consequential speech to be delivered to our Congress by a foreign leader since Winston Churchill’s 1941 plead for assistance in managing the threat Adolf Hitler posed to Europe.
President Zelenskyy came as a leader expressing his appreciation to each and every American family for our nation’s supportive stance. For the weapons we have given them and for the weapons that are yet to come. Recognizing that one party without the other was impotent and ineffective, he astutely acknowledged both parties. In his simple and direct fashion, he was both convincing and credible.
President Zelenskyy compared this Christmas in the Ukraine to the Christmas of 1944 when the 101st Airborne, surrounded and outmanned, dug in and held the crossroads town of Bastogne. I don’t believe it requires a very large imagination to see imagines of Bastogne in the videos of Ukraine today.
From Valley Forge to Bastogne to Chosin Reservoir our nation, our young men and women, have faced frozen Hells. It troubles me to believe we might consider leaving the people of a young democracy unaided.
Just think about it. I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time. So that my children can live in peace. – Thomas Paine Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.
