The barbarism and brutality of Putin’s war in Ukraine have hit Western Democracies like a sledgehammer – only for him to find out that we are made of sterner stuff.
I want to pause at democracy for a moment:
Who is democracy?
It is the people first.
Then the structure.
Then those manning the structure.
Then it is accounting to the people.
Then the people decide.
I have reworked democracy, which I have studied both at university and in life, to make it simple for me and you. To cut to the essence of democracy. In the end it comes back and back to the people – hence posing the question, not WHAT is democracy, but rather WHO is democracy? We are witnessing in real time how the people of Ukraine ARE democracy, more than any structure.
Watching the Russians bombing Ukrainian cities to rubble, attacking & killing mothers and babies in a maternity ward and then claiming it was staged by an influencer posing as a pregnant woman, makes one shake your head in disbelief. Is this really happening in the 21st century?!
This barbarism made me google Pericles again. Here is the ruler of Athens who advanced democracy 500BC during its ‘Golden Age’ and whose legacy is associated with the freedom of expression and the aspirations of people to be free and to live with dignity.
Yet 2 500 years later a man by the name of Putin stands diametrically opposed to the values & aspirations of Pericles and his Athens. As a journalist remarked; “It’s the kind of vicious madness that you see from a spurned lover or in an ‘honour’ killing.”
The celebrated historian Francis Fukuyama predicts defeat for Putin’s Russia. ‘A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 [when communism literally collapsed on TV with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall] will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.’ And, may I add, the united resolve of Western Democracies.
It is indeed a whole New World. Twenty-two years into the 21st century wars are no longer the same and the future has a way of surprising Yesterday’s Heroes.
This is how the future gets made today – a true story:
In about the last two weeks, according to Airbnb, people from 165 countries have booked more than 430,000 nights at Ukrainian homes on Airbnb with no intention of using the rooms — but simply in order to donate money to these Ukrainian hosts, most of whom they had never even heard of. Instantly the people of the world connected, online, and Voila a massive war charity mushroomed.
So, I think it is apt that we celebrate US, the people – AND that we High Five our present-day Churchill, President Zelenskyy. I leave you with words from the Impossible Dream. Please send this to a friend or 7.
For The People
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
For President Zelenskyy
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star
Us humans are marvelous – let’s keep it that way. And let us collectively and ruthlessly attack and destroy the Putin tumor, using every network and platform that we can access.