Advocating for Ukraine in Washington DC, Part 1

 

Yesterday and Today I joined hundreds of advocates for Ukraine to advocate for funding to support the fight against the Russian invasion in 2022. I am part of the 30-member Pennsylvania delegation. Every state except Alabama, Hawaii and South Dakota had delegates here.     

The best meeting this trip and the last two was with Senator John Fetterman. He backs Ukraine loudly. He is also a master at trolling colleagues who supported Ukraine then backed away.  

Last time we met with Fetterman we had a group shot with him on the Capital steps.  

My fellow protestors Roz Holtzman joined the effort to support Ukraine. We protested together for six years in front of Senator Pat Toomey's office.  Roz was arrested in the Russell Senate Office Building in 2018 protesting Toomey.  That office was just down the hall from Fetterman's office. Fetterman replaced Toomey in 2023.

I wore this shirt for the Fetterman Group photo above. 

It says, "Russian Warship! Go Fuck Yourself!" When the Russian Black Sea flagship demanded their surrender, that is how the Ukrainian Marines replied.  Three months later, Ukraine sunk the Russian flagship.

Several more meetings this afternoon.  More updates later.

 

America First: Allies Last

 

Scene from The Blitz--the bombing of London by the Nazis

On September 4, 1940, American Nazis led by Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford formed the America First Committee.  Nazis had already held rallies--including a huge rally in Madison Square Garden.  But America First was formed specifically to abandon our ally the United Kingdom in the darkest hours of World War II.  

On the date the committee was formed, Nazi Germany had conquered Poland, France, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands and was rolling south through the Balkans and Greece.  The UK was surrounded, being bombed, and if the Republican Nazi sympathizers got their way, was going to be abandoned to the Nazis.  

In his book "The Plot Against America" Philip Roth imagines Lindbergh got the Republican nomination and beat FDR in the 1940 Presidential election.  America became a Nazi ally and Jewish persecution followed as soon as the Republicans took power. (The novel has a surprise ending.)

The Republicans had to back off their pro-Nazi stance after Pearl Harbor when Germany declared war on the US. But the isolation, pro-fascist Republicans remained committed to  America First through the war and ever since.  America First was implicit in the Republicans fight against the UN membership after WWII.  

With the ending of the Cold War in 1991, Pat Buchanan explicitly revived America First in his runs for the Presidency for more than a decade. Buchanan never got elected, but his ideas spread throughout the TEA Party Republican party and became the center of the Trump party.  

Trump threatened to take America out of NATO as soon as he took office 2017.  He sided with Putin against his own government in 2018. Later in the same year, he abandoned our allies the Kurds in Iraq and Syria after one phone call from Erdogan of Turkey. In his book The Empire and Five Kings Bernard-Henri Levy chronicles the betrayal of the Kurds in considerable detail. 

And now at Trump's whim, the Republican Party is blocking aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Republican's favorite dictator, Putin.  In a week I will be lobbying for aid to Ukraine in its fight against Putin. For that aid to be approved, it will have to go around all the Putin fan boys in the Republican party. 

In a week, I will be trying to convince some of those Republicans to stand with Ukraine.  I will be working against the America First trend chronicled so well in the new book America Last. 

Wish me luck.

 

America Last: A New Book About the Dictator-Loving Republican Party Including Love for Nazis

I have read very few books about Trump or Trumpism or about how the Republican Party came to be a Trump property.  

But I read this one.  Susan Glasser recommended this book on a New Yorker Political Scene podcast:  America Last: The Right's Century-Log Romance with Foreign Dictators documents a century of love for dictators and hatred of democracy in what was the right wing of the Republican Party.  That party is now devoted to America's own dictator wannabe.  

The current love objects for the Right are Putin in Russia, Xi in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Kim in North Korea, and the real fave of the Religious Right Viktor Orban of Hungary. 

The Republican's still worship the most loathsome dictators around the globe, but Jacob Heilbrunn shows this is now a Trump-related phenomenon.  Long before Trump dodged the draft for the first of five times, the Right was loving global strongmen.  

Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh got awards from Nazi Germany for their support and service for the Third Reich.  Dozens of members of House and Senate supported the Nazis, primarily by trying to keep America out of World War II and blocking support for the embattled UK. The pro-Nazi rhetoric was latent during WWII but roared back as soon as the war was over.  Pro-Nazi Republicans fought against the Nuremberg trials and said the war was a mistake. Predictably, they denied the Holocaust and made excuses for Nazi atrocities.

Although I remember Pat Buchanan's Presidential runs in the 90s and early 2000s, I did not remember that he was explicitly America First.  Buchanan heralded the end of the conservative Republican party and paved the way for Trump.  

If you are interested in the specifics of the on-going attack on democracy by the Right, this book has all the details.

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt

At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on the Constitution and the Courts.  

The two-day conference brought together people with expertise in the American Constitution and the history of constitutional law and government with historians and philosophers all in the context of Hannah Arendt's thoughts and writings.

My only expertise when I go to these conferences is that I have read all of the Hannah Arendt's major works and many of her essays.  For me each session opens a new aspect of Arendt's thoughts which often gives me a glimpse into a world I knew nothing of, or gives me a new perspective on a topic I have some familiarity with.  

At this conference, the Supreme Court was, in part, the subject of both panels on first day of the conference as well as the keynote lecture in the evening. Arendt's book "On Revolution" (my personal favorite of all her works) was mentioned a lot as was "Eichmann in Jerusalem". 

In "Eichmann" the question of "What is justice?" hovers over the whole story of the trial. In "On Revolution" the unique success of the American Revolution amid so many  revolutions that end in tyranny made a great perspective to exam the long-term effectiveness of the Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary the current lowering of its esteem.

Each of the Hannah Arendt Center Conferences has been enriching for me. Both the talks themselves and the discussions at meals and breaks.  

This conference was organized by the Nick Dunn, Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

Peace Group Says Pennsylvania and Texas at Risk of Political Violence

 

Last month I went to a meeting at an American Legion Post in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, organized by Search for Common Ground.  SFCG promotes peace and reconciliation around the world--from Afghanistan and Burundi to Venezuela and Yemen and many other countries in conflict and crisis.

Using metrics that predict political violence, they are now working in America--specifically in Pennsylvania and Texas, which they see as the two states most prone to political violence in the U.S.  

They brought together a groups of veterans as a place to begin the dialogue between people that disagree politically.  As veterans we have in common our oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.  Most of the veterans around the table were volunteers, although some of us served during the draft era.  

I sat between the veteran who invited me and a physicians assistant who served in Iraq at the same time I did, though in a different region.  The Physicians Assistant and I are democrats. She was the only woman in the group. Two other soldiers in the room I knew were conservative but against Trump.  The rest were clearly Trumpians.  

Importantly, several of the veterans said things that indicated they believed the 2020 election was stolen. Someone who seriously believes the election was stolen has a rationale (if not a reason) for political violence.  

At one point in the exchange of beliefs in the room (discussion implies exchange of ideas; the participants expressed their beliefs) a staffer from SFCG said, "The tension in the room is palpable." He was very right.  

At one point, I said to the room that I love expertise and brilliant people. I love modern medicine of all kinds. I especially love vaccines as one of the five greatest innovations in the history of medicine. I love journalism and journalists, and all of the regulations that protect us from greed and corruption.  

I saw dagger eyes around the room. The guy opposite me endorsed the movie "2000 Mules" with its Qanon-based ideas of how the 2020 election was stolen. A former state legislator leaned back in his chair and expressed regret about the unfair attacks on President Nixon and how Walter Cronkite ruined journalism.

Afterward, I spoke to a local organizer and found out he was a staffer for Senator Pat Toomey. Since I protested in front of Toomey's Philadelphia office every Tuesday for six years, I told him we could be an example of reconciliation if he was interested. I asked a couple of times. The response was crickets. or:

It has been two months since the meeting. I have heard from one staffer once, but no one else.  

In my view, the group showed the depth of the conflict, but maybe it also demonstrated that veterans are not the best place to start.  On the simplest level, our group illustrated the proverb, "Two of a trade can never agree."  Just as within families, the bitterest rivals in our lives are often those closest to us.  

I was not surprised to learn that veterans and even high-ranking soldiers like 2022-gubernatorial candidate Colonel Doug Mastriano were represented in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at twice our percentage in the population.  

Soldiers who believe the election was stolen hate soldiers who agree with the election results most of all.  I feel the same about them. Any veteran who participated in January 6 or supports Trump after the insurrection has violated or is going to violate our oath to support and defend the constitution.  

For me, civilians who support Trump after January 6 are vile and stupid, but not oath breakers.  

"The tension in the room was palpable...." It still is.

Bike Year Begins with a Great Week!

Times Square at Rush Hour

I love to ride.  This past week I had had the chance to ride in some of my favorite places--places that are almost completely opposite in terrain and character:

--An isolated hill in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

--Three boroughs and 30 miles in New York City: rain in the day and clear skies at night 

--Skyline Drive in northern New Jersey: 51 mph on the descent.

Last Sunday, I ended the week for the first time this year with more than 100 riding miles, 110 to be exact.  The ride that brought me to the three-digit distance was up the gentle three-mile climb of Snyder Hollow Road in southern Lancaster County.  This beautiful, narrow, winding road follows a stream most of the way up. Trees line the road from bottom to top.  In the summer it is several degrees cooler than any other road in the area.  

On Wednesday I rode from Woodside, Queens, NYC, to Manhattan then north almost 200 blocks to the Bronx. I started in mid afternoon. An hour into the ride in Harlem, the skies opened and the wind howled in my face out of the north. I went down into a subway station and rode the train 28 blocks from 135th to 163rd. When I emerged the rain let up so I rode the rest ofthe way in scattered showers. I had coffee at 239th Street, then rode back to Woodside, mostly in the dark.  

The lights are synchronized on avenues, so although I passed through more than 450 traffic lights, they were mostly green when my speed was good.  

The next day I rode from Woodside to Penn Station with a 25-pound pack. That was six slow miles.  I drove to Skyline Drive in Ringwood, New Jersey then rode up and down the steep 2.5-mile hill. I turned around at the top and rode the first mile of level or gentle hills before the steep drop the last mile and a half. Just as I went over the crest, a flat-bed truck went past carrying four gray Port-a-Potties. 

The descent is winding. He went far ahead, but at first hard-right bend he slowed and I caught up. On the straight section he sped away, but as the road bent left he braked and I was back to about 20 meters behind.  We were an accordion until the very bottom of the hill when he turned left and I continued straight.   

Strava told me I went 51mph (82.1kmh) in the middle of the hill. It was the Port-A-Potty draft for sure! 

Three hours later I turned off the PA Turnpike at Morgantown.I was going to ride up and down the 1.5-mile hill on Route 10.  But when I got halfway upthe hill there was a line of stopped vehicles. I rode up along the right shoulder to see an overturned truck halfway down. I turned around and drove home. 

Today I rode 15 miles and brought my miles for the week to 115.  

I rode as much in the last two weeks as in both January and February. So far in March I am close to 300 miles.  My bicycle year starts now. 

Exhibit of Contemporary Art from Ukraine and Talk by Vladislav Davidzon at Abington Arts

I went to "Affirmation of Life: Art in Today's Ukraine" at Abington Arts in Jenkintown, PA. The exhibit is on display through April 15.

Yesterday, Journalist and Author Vladislav Davidzon spoke at the exhibit about the history of Ukraine and the current state of the war.  The talk centered on the complex relationship of Jews in Ukraine before and during the war and the relations between Ukraine and Israel before and since the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022.  

He talked about the history of Jews in Ukraine and The Holocaust with clarity and historical detail. As with all Eastern European countries the tragedy was immense and complex. He also addressed the accusation by Russian of Nazis in Ukraine.  Davidzon gave numbers and background to show the (small) scope of Nazi organizations before the invasion, and how those groups joined the rest of the nation to fight the Russian invasion.  He also spoke with encyclopedic knowledge about the Nazi collaboration during World War II in Russia as well as Ukraine and other countries.

After the talk, I ordered Davidzon's book:  Jewish-Ukrainian Relations and the Birth of a Political Nation: Selected Writings 2013-2023 on Amazon. 

Next month when I return to Capital Hill with the American Coalition for Ukraine, I will be better informed to discuss why as an American Cold War veteran I support Ukraine and it's fight against Russian invasion and tyranny. 

The first paragraph of Davidzon's Wikipedia page showing more ofthe range of his work:

Vladislav Grigorievich Davidzon (born 7 March 1985) is an artist, writer, editor and publisher, film producer best known for his journalism and chronicling on post-Soviet politics with an emphasis on cultural affairs.^[1][2] Davidzon is the former publisher and editor-in-chief of The Odessa Review, an anglophone publication that focused on the cultural life of Odesa, Ukraine.^[3] Davidzon is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council at the Eurasia Center and is the author of From Odessa with Love, a novel about modern Odesa.^[4] He is known for his daily practice of keeping an artistic ^[5] daybook/diary^[6] and also for his work as a collage artist.^[7] In March 2022 he burned his Russian passport^[8] in front of the Russian embassy in Paris with former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves holding the lighter.^[9]

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Another lovely poster of the Affirmation of Life Exhibit: