I’d rather be vaporized than linger in nuclear winter.

Backing up from that unsolicited slice of sunshine, I’d rather not be thinking in those terms at all. But it seems this is where we are now, thanks to Vladimir Putin and his willingness to go there. Whether or not we readily admit or acknowledge, we are currently living our days under the threat of nuclear catastrophe. The end of life as we’ve known it. And I don’t see how that’s hyperbole.

This must be a piece of what Putin was hinting at after the opening salvos when he talked about anyone who got in his way seeing things they’d never seen before, or somethng like that. We are dealing with a cornered rat now, a madman with a chip on his shoulder. One might be thinking that things are developing just as he planned.

We can only hope that there are cooler heads, humbled by and cognizant of the gravity of this moment, and willing to be heroic in the face of a command, should it ever come, to let the missiles fly. To say “no” to that.

In the meantime, I will count each day I awaken to relative peace and warmth and lights that still work as more of a blessing than usual.

This is where we are now. And Donald Trump thinks Putin’s moves have been “genius.”

Putin is really going to go rogue now. The US and its allies have decided to enforce sanctions against him and Lavrov personally, which apparently is another way of saying, “we’ve given up trying to talk to you.”

It’s gut wrenching to watch and hear about what’s happening in Ukraine. It hurts to think that everything familiar for the people there has been upended or destroyed. Now there will be thousands more refugees driven from their homes and into the cold, and for what? There is no good answer to that question, other than it is one little man’s nagging grievance and the remarkable fact that he can command an army to do his dirty work. Such pain and suffering, such cold calculation. I hope the resistance to this that we’re seeing from the Russians, Georgians,  Kazakhs, and others is real, and that it eventually helps tip the scales with a sentiment that cannot be ignored.

How can people like Putin keep coming along? He’s not a leader. He’s a devious, self-involved, twisted romantic pining for the way things used to be, decades ago. He has no heart for the people he leads. In fact, it seems if it was actually up to the people, he would have been gone a long time ago.

We in this country should be watching all this with great interest. Putin’s #1 ass-kissing fan wants to be POTUS again. This just can’t happen.

So the invasion has started. What now? Is Ukraine Putin’s Poland?

We should absolutely know better. Grown men motivated by such elemental things. Maybe they still have some growing to do. There have to be a couple screws loose.

So it turns out Putin is just the next guy with a burning grievance, an old grudge. Wonder what he has in store. It can’t be good. He’s had a lot of time to prepare. Is he just the latest megalomaniac with designs on world domination, or does he want a place at the table? Seems there are better ways of going about that.

And of course leaders in this country will counter with the typical American bravado– no appeasement, zero tolerance and all that. But this time they may be wise to take time to weigh their words and respect the threats Putin is making. Oceans can’t protect us anymore. The distance between us is really no distance at all. Putin can bring the world to its knees by cutting a few cables and hacking our internet lifelines. Or is he even threatening nuclear weapons?

The citizens of Ukraine are pawns now, fish in a barrel. Such horror, an actual living nightmare.

The media in this country better get their act together—try to keep calm instead of fanning the flames and creating panic. But they probably won’t. They’ll go quickly to worst case scenarios, tripping over each other in their desire to be the first ones to break the latest bad news.

Freedom, or any belief system, incurs a cost. What, exactly, is that cost? Can we agree on a number?

I know, I know… ultimately the price is paid in sacrifice and blood and lives cut tragically short, yada, yada, yada, all because we humans can’t trust each other, and we have a propensity for wanting to wield power and get our way.

Seers and sages and rightwing wackadoodles speak of the human cost as that which comes with the territory, a duty, as if we all must be willing to buy a lie and buy into whatever twisted vision someone might be selling. This doesn’t work for me. I wasn’t born into this world to be a discarded pawn in someone’s chess match, or to do the dirty work of some detached billionaire in a suit or a backwater ignoramus convinced that people of a certain political stripe eat babies.

Maybe we as a species will never turn the corner. Evolution is slow in rendering an abhorrence of war and its vile offensiveness, its monstrous waste of human life. We should be aghast at what is about to unfold in Ukraine. We should treat it as an assault on all of us.

So any way one looks at it, there will be a cost– either the cost of playing along, or the cost of saying enough is enough.

Here we go again. Where are we headed, as a nation and a world on the brink of war? Again.

It’s way beyond sad.

As we sat at a corner table in a little back room of a farmhouse restaurant, enjoying a fine breakfast, the news of Russia’s entry into Ukraine popped up on my phone. I couldn’t help wondering if such peace and joy, such a simple pleasure as enjoying breakfast on a quiet Tuesday morning, will once again feel like stolen time, spoiled by the knowledge of what else is going on in the world, somehow tainted by the cursed lust for power possessed by a pesty weasel of a man.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

We are hungry for heroes. I am, anyway. For as long as I can remember, mine has been Abraham Lincoln. The latest documentary currently running on the History Channel is just adding more fuel to that fire.

While no one is a true saint, Lincoln still exists, for me, in rarified air. He was the right person for the job during the years of the Civil War. His mental strength and acuity, the emotional roller coaster he rode, alongside the ability to keep everything in check and continue to find ways to act rationally and thoughtfully in the midst of personal loss and a monumental national crisis—it’s all astounding to me.

I suppose if one were to compare, FDR might give him a run for his money. But to me, Lincoln is the one who stands above all the others before and since. And not just because he was six feet four. He learned from his mistakes and, political expediency aside, came to know that “states’ rights” was a cliched excuse, a weak argument, and slavery was an abomination.

He also had a knack for zeroing in on the right words.

The possible summit between Biden and Putin doesn’t give me much hope. I have little faith in anyone out-maneuvering Putin or managing to hold his ground against the little big man.

There will likely be no walking away from such a meeting with any sense of accomplishment. It’s all for show, maybe a hedge against stock markets plummeting any further. One last Hail Mary before the shtf.

I get the impression that there is no talking to Putin. He’ll always be two steps ahead and not giving up much in the end. Besides, Biden to me has always been more bluster than substance. No match for the Kremlin guy. Still, I hold out hope that Putin can temper his own impulses enough to keep from plunging the region into chaos and bloodshed and grotesquely needless suffering.

Call off the troops, Vlad. Give peace a chance.

Seems like news reports are nothing but sound bite factories anymore– trying to fit as much information as possible in a ridiculously breathless manner ahead of the next commercial break.

I wonder if these reporters even know what they’re saying. They spew and regurgitate, then the host moves on to the next thing. Everybody’s in a hurry. It’s exhausting and hard to watch, hardly edifying.

What’s up with the President’s provocative statements about Putin being ready to start the attack? Is this some sort of strategy? It seems to be running counter to the attitudes of the Ukrainian people themselves, though I guess they’re starting to take it seriously.

It seems between Biden and the media, the two of them want things to deteriorate. And of course it would give Richard Engel and others yet another opportunity to shine, turn it into a macabre spectator sport. Diplomatic efforts are under way, but the subtext is that they will ultimately be futile.

This is mad, and maddening. The lack of concern over the human cost is sickening, and unforgiveable. Yet again we spiral downward into this ugliness, this bitter pill that we obviously have not evolved beyond needing to swallow. Little learned from the past, except to never trust anyone and spend shameful amounts of money arming oneself to the teeth just in case there’s a next time.

It’s the seeming inevitability of it, the almost sadistic desire willing it to fruition, diplomacy and cooler heads just manifestations of wishful thinking, hapless poster children.

I guess all that’s left is to drum up the cheap, synthesized, simplistic, melodramatic theme music. Yes, and we must call it something, give it a title. So people can tune in and watch the insanity in real time, assuming our lights are still on.

The Freedom Convoy? This is bandwagon stuff, mob mentality, excessive drama. Over-playing their hand. What’s their end game? What do they really want? Unhappy people unhappy for a lot of reasons. Who’s really behind this, or is it an organic reaction to perceived “oppression?”

I don’t know why this bothers me so much.

What’s gonna happen if another pandemic, perhaps more virulent and deadly for a larger cross-section of the population than this one, looms on the horizon? Will any of us have learned anything, or are we just gonna run around like idiots with our hair on fire, again?

There will be tools at our disposal, and they will be ignored, again. Because freedom.