President Biden’s heroic trip to Kiev this week, and subsequent powerful speech in Warsaw, is the stuff of history books. Americans and freedom loving folk everywhere need to appreciate the profound import of what is transpiring on our globe among its human inhabitants right now.
At the rate things are going, I would venture that Joe Biden stands a shot at eclipsing the greatest presidents in our history, and only now are the optics of his more recent initiatives beginning to show that.
If the West, led by the U.S., succeeds in its current campaign to repel Putin’s ghastly offense against human lives and basic values in Ukraine, everything of the last 12 months, beginning with President Zelenskii’s tone-setting proclamation when the Russian invasion began that he did not want a ride out of there, but ammunition, will have taken on an epochal, “world historical” hue.
From here, it will take an extraordinary uprising of the Russian people, themselves, to finish off Putin’s criminal enterprise, much as it has been the brave will and activism of the American people to reject Trumpism in the last couple of years which has brought humanity back from the brink of destruction.
Imagine if Trump had won the 2020 election, or was able to remain in power one way or another. Putin would be halfway across Europe by now.
Putin is interested in far more than simply Ukraine. His messianic obsession is to take the Russian Empire to new heights of global dominance, and to that end, doing so with the blessing and full-throttled support of leading ruling class elements in the West.
They agree on the need to trounce democratic institutions and leaders of the interests of working people. Such was the case 100 years ago when the leaders of the capitalist class in the West readily crossed national boundaries, aided by the convenience of all being members of one ruling family (all present for the coronation of England’s King George in 1911), in a global assault on the rising working classes that took the form of what became the wholesale slaughter known as The Great War, or World War I.
It was not a war between rival nation states, it was a war against humanity itself, against the rising sentiment that ruling circles should not be allowed to subject the rest of humanity to arbitrary tyranny. By throwing millions of mostly young men into a meat grinder of a war, these rulers held onto power by means of a genocidal crushing of their potential adversaries.
These ruling class persons, made of the same stuff as those who have managed to monopolize the lion’s share of wealth and power in the U.S. today, utilized every means of shaping the public dialogue on issues to obfuscate the public’s perception of events and their significance, to bring forward those with dishonest and dissembling views on these events.
Their challenge, even as today, has been to confuse the public in a democracy that owes its founding to the achievements of the U.S. Founding Fathers. Enough Americans have been duped to buy into their version of history and events to allow these greed-obsessed degenerates to hold onto power.
Every time a leader has emerged who effectively defeats their plans, he has won the adoration of millions against the deceivers. Lincoln was such a man. FDR was such a man, and to lesser degrees others who have defined the West by a different set of values. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even JFK and RFK. We saw what our ruling class did to them.
But Joe Biden now clearly belongs on that list, too. His (and our) enemies are advancing the ploy that he’s too old to govern, and once again there are enough in his own party who don’t get it, and are as such repeating that mantra.
Leadership is the most important commodity we have in the defense of democracy. Zelenskii has demonstrated it in Ukraine, and now Biden has not only in the U.S. but in the West more broadly, and globally in defense of democracy.
Regulation, a.k.a the public’s protection, and taxation are tools, but none so important as an inspired and motivated voting public.
Editor’s Column: Biden in Kiev, the Brave Stuff of History
Nicholas F. Benton
President Biden’s heroic trip to Kiev this week, and subsequent powerful speech in Warsaw, is the stuff of history books. Americans and freedom loving folk everywhere need to appreciate the profound import of what is transpiring on our globe among its human inhabitants right now.
At the rate things are going, I would venture that Joe Biden stands a shot at eclipsing the greatest presidents in our history, and only now are the optics of his more recent initiatives beginning to show that.
If the West, led by the U.S., succeeds in its current campaign to repel Putin’s ghastly offense against human lives and basic values in Ukraine, everything of the last 12 months, beginning with President Zelenskii’s tone-setting proclamation when the Russian invasion began that he did not want a ride out of there, but ammunition, will have taken on an epochal, “world historical” hue.
From here, it will take an extraordinary uprising of the Russian people, themselves, to finish off Putin’s criminal enterprise, much as it has been the brave will and activism of the American people to reject Trumpism in the last couple of years which has brought humanity back from the brink of destruction.
Imagine if Trump had won the 2020 election, or was able to remain in power one way or another. Putin would be halfway across Europe by now.
Putin is interested in far more than simply Ukraine. His messianic obsession is to take the Russian Empire to new heights of global dominance, and to that end, doing so with the blessing and full-throttled support of leading ruling class elements in the West.
They agree on the need to trounce democratic institutions and leaders of the interests of working people. Such was the case 100 years ago when the leaders of the capitalist class in the West readily crossed national boundaries, aided by the convenience of all being members of one ruling family (all present for the coronation of England’s King George in 1911), in a global assault on the rising working classes that took the form of what became the wholesale slaughter known as The Great War, or World War I.
It was not a war between rival nation states, it was a war against humanity itself, against the rising sentiment that ruling circles should not be allowed to subject the rest of humanity to arbitrary tyranny. By throwing millions of mostly young men into a meat grinder of a war, these rulers held onto power by means of a genocidal crushing of their potential adversaries.
These ruling class persons, made of the same stuff as those who have managed to monopolize the lion’s share of wealth and power in the U.S. today, utilized every means of shaping the public dialogue on issues to obfuscate the public’s perception of events and their significance, to bring forward those with dishonest and dissembling views on these events.
Their challenge, even as today, has been to confuse the public in a democracy that owes its founding to the achievements of the U.S. Founding Fathers. Enough Americans have been duped to buy into their version of history and events to allow these greed-obsessed degenerates to hold onto power.
Every time a leader has emerged who effectively defeats their plans, he has won the adoration of millions against the deceivers. Lincoln was such a man. FDR was such a man, and to lesser degrees others who have defined the West by a different set of values. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even JFK and RFK. We saw what our ruling class did to them.
But Joe Biden now clearly belongs on that list, too. His (and our) enemies are advancing the ploy that he’s too old to govern, and once again there are enough in his own party who don’t get it, and are as such repeating that mantra.
Leadership is the most important commodity we have in the defense of democracy. Zelenskii has demonstrated it in Ukraine, and now Biden has not only in the U.S. but in the West more broadly, and globally in defense of democracy.
Regulation, a.k.a the public’s protection, and taxation are tools, but none so important as an inspired and motivated voting public.
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