If Ukraine falls or is forced to give up territory it’s going to set a terrible precedence that will be a green light for dictators to try taking more land through war. The end result is going to be an insurmountable amount of needless deaths and way more money spent than the cost of supporting Ukraine now. In fact even if we ignore other negative ripple effects caused by Ukraine loosing we still see that supporting Ukraine now is half the cost of letting Russia win (source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/65257 )
But you, yes you have the power help stop Russia’s evil war with just a few minutes of your time. They say that a grain of rice can tip a scale, the email you send or the phone call you make could be like putting the final grain of rice in the balance scale that tips the scale in Ukraine’s favor.
All you need to do is try contacting politicians in your country and asking that they do whatever they can to support Ukraine. Whether it’s sending aid, weapons, money or anything, it will help. For the US you can follow this guide here for how to contact them: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials. The process of contacting politicians in your country may vary but I would suspect it to be pretty straightforward, just dial a number, send them a letter or an email. Some politicians may even still have a fax machine if you’re into that. But no matter what I suspect you’ll find sending them a message easier than you thought.
In addition while you’re contacting them why not consider bringing up these topics that could also really help Ukraine:
-
Teach students how to recognize disinformation, rage-bait, foreign propaganda operations and cognitive warfare operations. From my research Finland is leading the way with this. This is a good short article about what Finland is doing about disinformation: https://finland.fi/life-society/educated-decisions-finnish-media-literacy-deters-disinformation/ I hope more schools can do something similar.
-
Increase in cybersecurity and crackdown on organized crime and corruption. Have you heard about a company being hacked with ransomware? If they pay where does the money go? The answer often time ends up being Russia and if not it’s still going to some other criminal group that for sure doesn’t deserve it. Organized and white collar crime can sometimes end up leading back to Russia so more emphasis on this can ultimately help stop money and sanctioned parts from making it back into Russia. It’s believed that some hackers are either part of the Russian government or have their backing so these ransom payments may be funding the war.
-
Faster transition to renewable energy. Russia’s big export is fossil fuels. They use the money to fund the war. The less demand for their products the better. Demand a fast as possible transition to renewable energy as possible. Also consider getting solar or installing a heat pump for your home especially if you plan to live there for a long time. Note that solar doesn’t have to be complicated. Some countries allow for balcony solar which is a great way to get started with solar.
I have always followed USA closely, both regarding culture business and politics. In the 70’s as a child/teen, I really admired USA and everything looked so promising. American heroes were the best heroes back then.
It’s very disappointing to me that it hasn’t turned out better, all the good ideals used to be there, and USA has so much culture.
Europeans that claim USA doesn’t have culture, seem to forget that USA is the biggest exporter by far of cultural content.
I thought that when Bush was elected the second time, it would be a lesson to the American population, so I kind of gave up hope for USA already first time Trump was elected, because he was so obviously way way worse than Bush. Of course Americans don’t have the luxury of just giving up, without having to live with the consequences and without hope.
But people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel and Bezos and of Course Trump need to go, and there needs to be a limit to how much money and power an individual or a family like can have, like how the Koch Brothers ruined so much. Also there must be a limit to how much power a single company can have. At least that’s my opinion.
Totally agree with you. Those ideals you mention have been systematically undermined by right-wing/conservative administrations in our government and even some mistakes made by Democrats. It goes back farther than George W. Bush and Trump. Just to name a few:
Richard Nixon - Vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act that would have given us what many other countries. Launched the war on drugs and mass incarceration. The Powell Memorandum and Roger Ailes were results of the Nixon administration that really ended up hurting our country far more than I think anyone would have expected. The goal was if another conservative president was corrupt they would not get booted out like Nixon was. Also Roger Stone who was involved in Nixon’s campaign was really involved especially in Trump’s first campaign.
Ronald Regan - Helped undermine the middle class and start transferring wealth to the rich. There are so many graphs where things start to decline under Ronald Regan. Not to mention he sold weapons to Iran to fund the Contra.
Bill Clinton - Sure he’s way better than Bush or Trump but he did pave the way towards media consolidation. We are seeing the effects of this today as the Ellisons buy up media companies for the purposes of turning the companies into right-wing propaganda machines.
Personally I see the victory of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter as the turning point, but you make good points about it already happening under Nixon. But at least Nixon was removed for Water Gate, while Reagan came out of the Iran Contra affair completely unscathed.
As I see it, Jimmy Carter may have been the best president USA ever had, he had the right foresight about sustainability symbolized by the solar panels he put up on the White House, and he warned about consumerism, and was 100% a decent human being.
When USA elected Ronald Reagan instead, they abandoned all those values, very much like they did when electing Trump. An obvious malignant narcissists, the most dangerous personal disorder that exist!
And yes the media is a huge part of the problem too, that was already extremely obvious under Bush, where in the beginning there were opposition to a war in Iraq based on false intelligence, that was decidedly contrary to what the UN observers reported. But the media turned 100% one sided to support it, and even questioning it became anti American!
American news media are generally pretty bad, an example of that was when John Stewart on his comedy show provided more accurate news than the actual news! Also like him or not, the firing of Keith Olbermann was a 100% political decision, and American media has systematically weeded out news sources they consider too anti Republican.
Where USA is now is a very sad turn to where we were headed in the 70’s. We do have a bit of the same problem in EU, but nearly as bad, but abandoning traditional values do happen under the guise of pragmatism. Even here in Social Democratic Denmark, the protection of the week is not nearly as strong as it used to be.