"Dying, but fighting back"

"...she cried so high thermopylae

heard her and marathon

and all prehuman history

and finally The UN"

So wrote E.E. Cummings back in 1956, speaking of the cries to heaven of another embattled Eastern European nation that was putting up a courageous resistance to Russian (or, in that case, Soviet) aggression. Back then it was Hungary; but today, it seems that the cries of Ukraine have been at least as far-reaching, since just this afternoon the UN Security Council voted over three abstentions to hold an emergency session of the General Assembly in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine—only the 11th such meeting that has occurred in history. 

Thus, four days into Putin's war, I think it's safe to say that whatever the Russian president thinks he is achieving with all this, it is not a propaganda victory. Not only did he invade a sovereign and much smaller and weaker nation utterly without justice or provocation; he also didn't even do it particularly well. His forces have been stymied, at least for a time, by an unexpectedly fierce Ukrainian resistance, and as a result, even the moral numbskulls who only know how to worship power are now turning on him. "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek."

"We fear for the quo pro quid."

 For weeks people said Putin would never do it. Would-be clever people on Twitter got easy likes for posting eye-rolling emojis and sarcastic comments along the lines of: "Oh yeah, that invasion which is totally going to happen any day now." Think tank analysts whose hot takes seemed to align eerily closely with Russian strategic interests said that it was really "the blob" that was preparing for war (using the derisive term for the often-justly-derided U.S. foreign policy establishment), rather than Putin, and was ginning up the conflict through their excessive media alarmism. 

Sure, Putin was building up troops on Ukraine's border. Sure, he was issuing bellicose encyclicals on the subject of the alleged historic and spiritual unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. But it was all a stunt. An elaborate feint. A bluff to gain leverage. 

"Never to betray; never to condone"

 Well, it's happened. After teasing it for what felt like an eternity, Putin has finally gone ahead and declared the independence of two sections of eastern Ukraine, making this the second time in the last decade that the Russian autocrat has unilaterally hived off a portion of the sovereign territory of one of his largest contiguous neighbors. Whether targeted sanctions are the best that can be done about this is up for debate. Whether Ukraine could have de-escalated the conflict and effectively undermined Putin's propaganda efforts at an earlier stage by agreeing to grant further autonomy to the breakaway territories merits consideration (I have argued for that position myself). But we should not allow any of these questions of strategy to occlude the moral right-and-wrong of the matter. 

While Putin will continue to pursue his usual MO of constructing alternate realities, trying to relativize his own actions, and spinning kernels of truth into the dross of moral nihilism, the basic facts remain these: he unilaterally annexed the territory of a sovereign nation as recently as 2014; he armed separatist factions and deployed relentless propaganda to justify the seizure of still further territory in the country's east; he moved troops into formation with the apparent intent to invade that country while publishing manifestos declaring its historic unity with Russia; and now he has declared the independence of two territories that he had long since brought into his orbit, unilaterally redrawing the border of another sovereign state. Putin's in the wrong, and there should be no further debate about that. 

Cynicism

 In the sociological quest to understand why so many people are leaving their jobs this year—a phenomenon that has been dubbed "the Great Resignation"—it's easy enough to understand how pandemic-era burnout would be a factor. Harder though, is knowing at what stage one has the right to lay claim to experiencing it oneself. One can well imagine how health care workers, food service workers, warehouse and package delivery workers—and everyone else on the front lines of the crisis—would feel burned out (and then some). But what about those of us who work in relatively cushy office jobs? 

In many of the more tangible ways, after all,—especially if we don't have young children—our lives became easier after COVID hit. We work from home. We roll out of bed and are prepared for the day in the amount of time it takes to load Microsoft Teams and pour ourselves a cup of coffee. What possible claim could we have to feeling burned out? 

"The last poor plunder from a bleeding land"

 In the year-plus that Biden has been in power, there have been a number of key decisions he has made that could be described as disappointing, even devastating, policy betrayals... his decision to maintain Trump's anti-asylum Title 42 policy, for instance, or his failure to evacuate Afghan interpreters and other allies ahead of the military withdrawal from the country. Yet, his executive order unveiled yesterday seizing $7 billion in assets rightfully belonging to the people of Afghanistan—in the midst of an economic crisis—might be the most wicked and disgraceful thing yet. 

The enormity of this crime almost defies words; and one finds oneself even more at a loss to describe it because the substance of the policy has been occluded behind such mystifying rhetoric. What the order actually does is to forcibly expropriate the bulk of the reserves of Afghanistan's central bank, and place these assets under the control of the United States—all while Afghanistan's economy is collapsing and the country faces a hunger crisis. But what it claims to be doing, according to the administration's press release, is to "preserve certain Afghanistan Central Bank assets for the people of Afghanistan." 

Infinite Choice

 At some point in my fourteenth year, I had the mixed fortune to be touched—absolutely, incontrovertibly, and for all time—by a sense of vocation. I say it was mixed because it was both benison and curse: blessing, because I knew at last what I was. I was a writer. And not just any kind of writer. An essayist in a particular mid–twentieth century mode. Whatever George Orwell and Susan Sontag and Lionel Trilling were, that was me. But it was also a misfortune to discover this, as I say. Because the vocation that was thrust upon me was one that provided no necessary route whatsoever to making a living. 

I knew that this was the case. It was, to be sure, many years later that I would read Paul Auster's memoir of his struggles in early career, but I knew already by instinct the lesson he had to teach: "Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman," he writes in Hand to Mouth. One should not expect to make a living at writing alone, he says. It is not among those practical arts that Thomas Carlyle dubbed the "Bread-Studies." It may be compatible with any number of other means of subsistence; but in itself it does not tell one which to pursue.