Right now my husband and I are on a much-delayed honeymoon and while abroad a fellow traveler asked us, as Americans, what we thought about the Ukraine situation. He was from Manchester and said he wasn’t trying to put us on the spot (while very clearly putting us on the spot as his girlfriend begged him not to). He was just a very free thinker like Joe Rogan. I find it funny that people take Joe Rogan seriously because I was familiarized with him encouraging people to jump out of helicopters, guzzle liters of animal blood and semen, and be covered with cockroaches (Fear Factor, if you are not familiar with Americas’ very own non-metaphorical Squid Games). Not exactly encouraging free-thinking IMO.
Here was my answer to the open-minded Brexiter who asked that question (yes he was a Brexiter and told us so proudly and of course, I guessed as much when he said ‘free thinker’ and Joe Rogan in the same sentence because dog whistles still whistle). It comes with a story:
In 2016 my sister and I were on spring break backpacking through Europe. Trump was still widely seen as a fluke that was only driving the media circus by being a clown and Hillary Clinton former US Secretary of State was being promoted as the heir apparent to the US Presidency.
While walking to the train after seeing the remnants of the Berlin Wall a man walked up to us and asked, “Are you American?”
We said “Yes!” eager and surprised because as light-skinned black people we were rarely ever recognized as Americans, especially without speaking.
“I could see it in your eyes. Fuck America, Fuck Obama, Fuck Bush and Fuck you”
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
He went on to tell us he was from Ukraine and that he hated the US and that US imperialism was ruining the world. We didn’t know very much about US imperialism (I was 18 at the time) but we knew enough to know about the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes that had taken the US to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars that had been going on for the majority of our lives. We could agree Yes, Fuck Bush and Fuck Obama too for killing Gaddafi and sending drones across the world to make even more business for the American war machine. We were so nice to him that he eventually said “Fuck the US, not the people but the government, the military, and the elite”
But we are talking about 2022, what had happened by 2016 that we would be cursed out for having an American look in our eye?
In 2014, The US backed a coup in Ukraine, the same way the US backs coups all over the world. The US armed extremist groups (in this case Neo-Nazis) who stormed the capital and forced the President to flee. If you have forgotten you can read more about it here. This is how the US gets away with causing war without literally invading a country. It happens all the time. If you remember the invasion or secession of the Crimean Peninsula, this is what instigated it.
The conflict in Ukraine did not emerge from nothing in early 2022, the US and Russia have been fighting a hot extension of the cold war for decades now. This happens through proxy wars (backing opposing sides of a civil war like how Russia backed Assad in the Syrian civil war and the US backed the opposition.) The media loves to use the cold war threat of nuclear war but does not want to give even a passing glance to history or why Russia may constantly be at odds with a nation that exports civil war (not Ukraine, but the US)
The people of Ukraine are obviously suffering from this, but it is not just at the hands of Putin but of every government that puts the value of trade organizations over that of human life and it is a lot more complicated than the newsfeed is letting on. Fuck the US too because backing a coup is just as wrong as an invasion, it is only more efficient.
This is only a conversational level of understanding of the subject and I have forgotten more about trade organizations than I remember at this point. I only write this because since it is the first opinion that has been asked of us abroad apparently some people are curious what I had to say about it (if you weren’t interested feel free not to comment on it, I really am too busy to argue while traveling).
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Tina Hartung on Unsplash
