This is a Ukrainian American introspective very much based on current events and a bizarre reaction to them mostly by uneducated or poorly educated Ukrainian Americans.
However, it is necessary to speak out and reveal the danger within. I have never believed that any diaspora community is capable of speaking with one voice, but circumstances have become so extreme that the existence of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation is in some peril.
Most Ukrainians are cognizant of the dangers faced, but, not for the first time, and more expressively than in the past those outside the organized Ukrainian American community have become a peril.
I realize that recognizing them even as a peril lends some authenticity and emboldens them undeservedly.
However the Ukrainian American press while certainly not an accomplice has been feckless in this regard lest it lose subscribers, be deemed taking sides or at the very worst be exposed as Russia’s agents.
I am prepared to defend all my charges even in a court of law, although I am certain that I have not defamed anyone because as I learned in law school many years ago, truth is a defence.
I am not maligning, at least not here, the Ukrainian American fence sitters, those within the Ukrainian American community who are simply sitting out the war. These people resemble many in Ukraine’s often tragic history and they are simply reflective of the nature of a relatively large nation. We have always had our heroes, our saints but also our sinners and traitors.
Donald Trump has been very much against Ukraine and not only since his “perfect” telephone conversation with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky about getting incriminating evidence against Joe Biden and withholding aid to Ukraine as leverage.
In this run he has stressed that he could settle the Ukraine Russia war immediately if not sooner. Then he chose J.D. Vance as his running mate who insists to date that Ukraine does not matter. The message here is: give Putin what he wants and settle.
Sometime ago during his initial attempt in 2016 Trump stressed that he loves the “poorly educated’. Well perhaps because of his own lack of legitimate higher education he was right. (He ultimately received a B.S. in real estate from Wharton after being discharged from Fordham).
There is an amalgam of the Ukrainian American uneducated or poorly so who support Trump. Notice how offended Trump is when his education is questioned in interviews.
By way of example consider the following.
I am on a thread of email discourse initiated by poorly educated Ukrainian American Trump advocates. I neither joined that group nor agreed to. Frankly, I cannot get off. I have tried many times. I have filtered and yet they insist and somehow peresevere.
Frankly I am not surprised because the list of unfortunates like myself includes a Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church who has also requested freedom but to no avail.
The quintessential primitive I suspect who is one of the founders of this ill compiled list of email addresses, in one of her extraordinarily arrogant and, frankly, primitive missives, misaddressed the Metropolitan and suggested that he urge his flock to vote MAGA. I know her a long time and separation of Church and state is well beyond her comprehension.
She is not the only primitive. She has employed her children who have exhibited nothing more than complete ignorance on the issues as well as some of her personal friends while degrading those acquaintances that do not share her primitive views. She is MAGA through and through and as primitive as the redneck from South Carolina driving a pickup truck.
Frankly I may be lending this group some credence. That is my mistake. However there is a method to my madness. I believe that there is no real peril because this segment of the Ukrainian American community is a primitive aberration and ineffective in the long term.
However, those who are genuinely concerned with Ukraine and the Russian war need to step up. There is only one choice available for Ukrainian Americans in 2024 which will ensure support for Ukraine’s war effort and perhaps more, a removal of restrictions on use of American weapons and even provide a timeline for Ukraine’s NATO membership.
The Trump line is a death sentence for Ukraine. If you are a Ukrainian American and not sure of whom you should support consider the Trump Ukrainians and what in their lifetimes any of them have done for Ukraine. No emotions. Just ask them. The answer, if any, will be very short.
We are a nation and we include everything, including trash. I would submit to you that the Ukrainian American contingent of Trump supporters are trash. I challenge anyone to justify that trash aside from a retort that everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter howstupid.
Ukraine, Happy Birthday! August 24th is the birthday of the renewed Ukrainian state.
Primitives like Donald Trump or his Ukrainian American acolytes will never understand what that means because they cannot comprehend such concepts as ideals or the existence of a nation and its country. Ukraine is a former ideal which is now a reality. Let’s work to keep it real.
Main Image: Ukrainian Institute of America, By Gryffindor – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10611069
Click Here For More by Askold S. Lozynskyj
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