Mick Hartley

The latest on Ukraine, and Mike Johnson's (and Trump's) disastrous stalling, from historian Timothy Snyder – The apocalypse we choose:

In four months as Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson has given Russia a chance to win its war in Ukraine, and thereby turn the world towards tyranny. 

Johnson's term of office consists of stratagems to avoid funding Ukraine.  He and a minority of Trumpist Republicans have left Ukrainians without the means to defend themselves, and enabled Russian aggressors to retake Ukrainian territory.  As a result, troops are killed and disabled every day. […]

For most of this century, democracy has been in decline, and this decline has been accompanied by a discourse of passivity and a lack of resolve. Russia's attack on Ukraine — the rare event of an armed autocracy seeking to destroy a peaceful democracy by military force — was a turning point in this history. Which way we will all turn remains to be seen. By resisting on the battlefield, Ukraine has, for the time being anyway, preserved its own democracy, and given new hope to democracies in general. There is nothing automatic about democracy. People have to believe that they should rule. And this will always involve some risk. By taking great risks for the right values, Ukrainians can and do encourage others around the world. If Ukrainians are killed, maimed, and forced to retreat as a result of U.S. policy, everyone is demoralized — including us.

If Americans let Ukrainians down, it will be a blow, perhaps a fatal one, to the "spirit of freedom," as a Ukrainian veteran put it in a speech I heard at the Munich Security Council. We need that spirit, in part to oppose those who lack it. The people who block aid for Ukraine today wish our own democracy ill. In the last few days and weeks we have witnessed, again and again, the overlap between Russian influence in American politics, opposition to aid to Ukraine, and hostility toward the American constitutional system. Putin knows that his only route to Kyiv passes through Washington, D.C., and he has acted accordingly.

The people working to assure the destruction of democracy in Ukraine also oppose democracy in America. We have just experienced a bogus impeachment proceeding against President Biden, where the chief accusation (long ago discredited by Ukrainian and other journalists, incidentally) arose from a Russian agent. Mike Johnson is in a submission chain that passes through Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.