The president of Ukraine is pretty good about making daily videos. He is a good social media man. He is a very social man and he likes having many many connections. This is a very good thing. There was a time in my life when I thought being good to everybody was the right thing to do. In fact, I had a lot of success in a lot of places simply by being friendly. My father was a salesman. He taught me how to be socially astute. All in all, being good to people is a good strategy.
Here is his latest video effort. It pretty much follows the same as all of his daily reports. Bombs are falling. People are dying. Rescuers are doing their best. The resilience of the Ukrainian people is there for all to see. The Russian occupiers are the personification of evil. And of course, there is a great need for more and more and more weapons. This one is in English so you don’t have to fiddle with the translator.
I do not really agree with this strategy. I don’t really agree that making friends with all of the European countries and with the United States is the most important thing right now. It is especially so when all of these friend making efforts come along with a price tag. The basic premise is that Ukraine doesn’t really have the wealth to simply buy really hot weapons. I imagine they have gone completely in debt to acquire these weapons. I don’t know what the world is like outside of here because I’ve been here for as long as I have but, anyone who has ever gotten a call from a salesman at home knows what it feels like to be bothered for money. I myself I’m so allergic to people coming to me for money that I find it hard to even be nice anymore. If a strange number appears on my phone and some woman tells me her name and starts talking, I will interrupt her and ask her if she is a salesman. I will try to give a polite sentence but often they will turn nasty or just keep talking and then I can just go click and they are gone. I don’t like to be bothered for money by anyone ever and certainly not from people from whom I am never going to get this money back.
Okay. I’m shortsighted. Of course Europe and America will get something back. Joe Biden and his oil deal is there. Tourism is there if we can just wrestle Crimea away from the Russians. And then there are also the good people of Ukraine who I’m sure are more than willing to be kind and generous to outsiders. Remember all the weapons? Of course we say yes.
I was fascinated with fireworks when I was a kid but immediately realized that it was an incredibly expensive game. The fireworks holiday in America is July 4th and my friends were big at going to the fireworks stands to buy all kinds of screamers and bombs and whatever. You have to forgive me. My parents might have had money but none of it trickled down to me. I have never had throwaway money ever. Even when I was making my best efforts to play baseball, I had a crappy mitt that had to be padded to keep my bones from breaking. Really, I have owned one or two nice suits and I had a new car once but really, I have never been a money guy. Maybe this was part of the problem but I just never had money to throw away.
So as far as fireworks go, I saw that my best value was in firecrackers and an occasional m80. M80s make really big booms and firecrackers make little booms. But this was not a lot of money to spend and there was a little boom to it. Later in life, I much preferred to hang out with other people who liked to spend their money on fireworks. I could say ooh and ah and it was enough. And it didn’t cost me a month’s money just to watch something go boom for about 8 seconds. The city puts together one or two fireworks shows a year here. I’m sure they still do. That was worth the trip. It was free. Ooh and ah.
That is the thing about fireworks. They go boom and then it’s over. If we are talking about Big boy toys, the stuff that weapons manufacturers put together for giant country level contracts, there’s really not that much difference except in the destructive power. You can stain someone’s underwear with an m80. You could probably even knock a finger or two off or make them go deaf if you really screwed up. But they are really not strong enough to bring down a hospital or a school or a power station. They don’t really put massive craters in things. They don’t cause mass deaths and horrible dismemberments and give reason to first responders to pull people or just parts of people out of the rubble. They are toys for little children and not big children.
The economics however is the same. You pay all this money, even millions of dollars for a single weapon, it goes boom, you can say ooh and ah if you are not restricted by YouTube rules about how much violence you can actually show. And there are the deaths and dismemberments. But it’s gone. It’s gone just like all the money is gone. And in the case of going into debt just to buy fireworks, I’m not really sure this is a good business model. It’s not sustainable. It doesn’t really bring anybody any happiness. As far as I can see, it doesn’t really change the situation anywhere. All that’s happening is massive human and ecological damage, and unbelievable amount of money and other resources wasted or otherwise destroyed and then there is the obsequious smiling, hand shaking and begging for new friendships that come along with new weapons. I am not buying this business model.
It also occurs to me that dealing with friendly EU or American functionaries is an endless game of self-congratulation. Everyone gets to participate in a ceremony. Everyone gets to stand up and wave at the crowd. It’s just like my neighbors begging for attention to justify whatever evil they have done. As long as you have someone agreeing with you, you don’t feel so bad about any mistakes you’ve made. And this is of course always the truth about war. Countries do this because they are inept at running infrastructures well. You create a living situation where people are either becoming too successful or too miserable and the time comes to tear it down and start all over again. Nobody wants anyone advancing or getting better. Status quo is status quo and it is to be maintained no matter what. You can ask my neighbors about that as well. Nobody wants a junkie rising out of their station.
And if you didn’t know this, even these bloody ceremonies cost money. How much money are we spending on all of these ceremonies? How much does an award plaque cost? And who’s paying for this? And don’t even talk to me about all that airplane flying and all of those first class meals and all of those hotel rooms. Please, seriously, please.
If anyone asked me my strategy to fight the war with Russia, firstly it would come with a public vote. The thing about allocating funds is that we seem to demand representatives be elected who then have unilateral right to make use of our funds. I’m not sure this is an appropriate model either. I don’t really mind paying taxes. I don’t mind participating in a community. I wouldn’t mind being in a community if there was actually a community to participate in. But what I don’t really like is having people reach into my pocket, take my money and then do whatever they want with it without ever telling me. You can talk to quite a few people about that around here. People here are absolutely sure that I should be paying money for people who I have absolutely no relationship to whatsoever and who never ever tell me about themselves or even explain what the money is for. And that includes some real nostalgia type people so you know him serious here.
I would ask people to vote whether we wish to support Russia or not. I understand the model here is that we are supporting Ukraine but that’s not really what’s happening. We may be giving weapons to Ukraine, or leasing them as the United States likes to do, but we are still supporting the Russians. We are still using their oil and gas. Sure, we make embargos and we make rules but the pipeline still sends material and people are still buying it.
I think this is where I’m getting a little sick of the ceremony and self-congratulation. You get kind of used to anything. I’m sure Mr Zelinsky loves being the center of attention and having people agree that he’s a fine speaker, a really good looking guy and that people feel good by supporting Ukraine. For a while there, you couldn’t go to a music concert without someone waving a Ukrainian flag. It really was all the rage on Instagram.
But Russia keeps bombing them. Russia never stops bombing them. How is it possible that Russia never runs out of resources? How is it possible that they can continue doing this horrendous thing day after day after day and yet no one ever does anything to stop them? Sure, they have missiles so we can give them anti-missals. Wonderful. How about not giving them money for the original missiles? And really, why is this so hard? I like Ukraine, I am against Russian terrorism, I guess I’ll take my bicycle to work. How’s that for a big fat boom! How much money do you save by selling your car and investing in a bicycle and public transportation? How much does it cost to build a really bitching home office and just not going into work anymore? How well off are you If you start taking your meetings by face to face over the internet instead of flying your fat ass over there to shake hands and participate in a big ceremony? Do you really need the handshake? Do you really really need the plaque of appreciation?
I really do think Zielinsky is a good guy. I think he’d be an awesome president and I think given a chance to actually be a peacetime leader that there might actually be some kind of golden age for Ukrainians. Certainly they deserve it. This is a bitch of a divorce. Alcoholic syphilis never stops coming even though the papers were served a million years ago. It’s a shame to waste a man’s life and talent making him fight a war that should never have needed to be fought and beg for money to buy unnecessary things that go boom. It’s a shame we never get to find out how cool of a president the guy actually could be. I guess that’s the whole point.
It is of course hypocrisy. I really wish the Russians would get out of Ukraine. I really wish the Russians would just go back to Russia. I wish Putin would just stop being and perhaps everyone took a deep breath. I’m really tired of antisemitism. I’m really tired of seeing the face of the American Nazi party. I’m really sick of listening to Nazis speak in English. I’m really tired of all of this because it is and is only anti-Semitism to me. It is the essence of Christianity. Human misery. Tearing people down to make them join a group. Forced conversion. Does anyone actually believe anything else is going on here? Does anyone else actually believe that Vladimir Putin is doing anything but practicing anti-Semitism? Why are we supporting it? Why do we support hate?
So I’m going to continue supporting my position. I have spent a lot of money lately but I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve improved my watering system. Absolutely necessary if I want anything to grow in my garden. I have put back my computer into pretty good working order so that I have access to entertainment and information and have the ability to produce texts. I put a new battery in my phone. Same phone, new battery, slightly better.
And what else do I have to do? I don’t drive a car. I don’t really use so much gas or any gasoline. I don’t get upset and start spending money spastically. I don’t get upset by anything anymore even when everything I look at just seems so incredibly stupid has to be painful to my mind. I just don’t understand why we have to support something that should never have been supported in the first place. And if you can see what’s going on, if you’re not too ballistic to handle information, maybe more spending is not the answer. Maybe less spending is the answer. Less human movement. Less excitement. Less fireworks. Less hatred. And please, a lot less ceremony. I don’t need any more handshakes. I’m sick enough from the people around me already. I don’t need to press flesh anymore with anyone.
