The party of McCarthy has become the party of Russia.
By Ray Scheel, M.Ed.
Senior Education Leader
Online Learning Strategist
Educational Project Management
The 2019 negotiated cease fire failed in large part because many in the global community wanted to treat it as just a political conflict while ignoring Putin having repeatedly indicated he had religious reasons for wanting Kyiv under Russian control and was intending to snuff out Ukranian culture. The Russian Orthodox church has declared the invasion of Ukraine a holy war.
Taking Crimea was always intended as a staging point from which to take Kyiv and re-impose the Soviet renaming of Ukrainian town to try to gloss over that the Russian Orthodox Church had split from the founding political heritage and episcopal seat in Kyiv when they try to present it the other way around. Putin won’t stick to any political deal that does not result in Russia having full physical control of the cathedral and episcopal seat in Kyiv and the ending of Ukraine as a separate culture so Putin can claim to have reunited those branches of Orthodoxy (by force). Then he will turn to any other branch of Orthodoxy that traces back to “Kiev” and forcibly disperse those people through Russia and forbid them from using the speech or traditions of where they were from, just as he has been doing with those who lived in the areas of Ukraine he has already seized (in a gross and willful violation of the Geneva Conventions). Background on the religious angle, the first citing and going through an article Putin wrote himself in 2021 claiming a spiritual right to forcibly absorb Ukraine.
Putin is continuing to make it clear by word and action that he will not respect a negotiated political peace or stop committing war crimes on the civilian population identifying as Ukranian because cultural eradication is his primary goal. Putin is actively dispersing the Ukranian citizens in the areas seized and has been carting the children off to learn to be proper Russians. Anyone who trying to stay Ukrainian in presentation in Russian occupied areas is disappearing. Putin has indicated that will continue even if he gets all of Ukraine, so appeasement amounts to the very thing those claiming appeasement will spare the Ukranian population from, and that past appeasement has done nothing to prevent.
Ignoring cultural eradication efforts because it is not (yet) *our* culture being targeted for extinction has little history of successful outcomes, but especially not when the sudden shift to calling for letting the dictator do what he wants after decades of opposition are coming from a source that seems to be wanting to let that aggressor act freely in their own sphere as well.
What we learned from trying to stop WW II was that continuing to try appeasement multiple times with the same aggressor made them much harder to stop when they rolled on anyway. We rolled over for Russia on Georgia, Crimea, and Syria. We were even willing to let some eastern Ukranian areas go if Russia would settle for that as they restarted hostilities. Where do we draw the line before enough is enough? Poland (which Putin has also made noises about)? Getting land access to the Indian Ocean via the Persian Gulf or maybe even enough of the Middle East to seize the Suez Canal?
I ask because another key lesson from WW II was that anyone who would not draw a line on how much failed appeasement to try before that becomes intolerable was effectively making their declaration as a sympathizer for the aggressor and continued to favor strategies that were unlikely to be successful until removed from influence.
I don’t want my kids or grandkids to be forced to learn Russian and get their choice of a single appointed candidate to vote for in each election, or even just having Russia take over most of Europe for now, even if that means Russia uses nukes sooner rather than later. I certainly do not want to simply give Putin the time and resources from looting Ukraine to upgrade their aging and poorly maintained nuclear arsenal and recover their readiness to inflict devastation when Putin decides to make the UN irrelevant.
Who would have thought the party of McCarthy would become the ones proposing we help prop up Russia to dominate the world when they are teetering on the verge of an internal collapse of their single party state.
Originally published by Brewminate, 03.02.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
