UKRAINE

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS

“We interrupt our regular scheduled blogging to bring you this special report.”

 

I’m writing because I feel the need to do more than just contextualize our travels during these unprecedented times.  Thank you for your indulgence.

 

I began this blog in 2014 after accepting retirement.  I wanted to travel for more than just work and to add meaning to our experiences.  As our blog header states, it is to document “Travel as a Political Act”.  

 

Initially, I received feedback from one reader claiming, perhaps enviously, that “travel was a luxury, not a political act”, clearly missing the point.  Of course, one needs resources to travel, but we do not stay at luxury resorts, sip mai tais on the beach, or take “If it's Tuesday it must be Venice” cruises.  I have no judgment for those that do, and understand the desire for comfort and low-stress exposure, especially as I get older. It’s just not our motivation. 

 

We seldom stay above three-star accommodations, I’ve even stayed in a village dirt floor grass-hut on the banks of the Mai Sai river in Asia’s golden triangle talking to the drug lords. 

Village along Mai Sai, in golden triangle  

In Bosnia we engaged Muslims with an entirely different take on their religion that is more wide-spread than known in our isolated western perspective.  In Cuba, during a brief normalization under Obama, our homestay lent us $800 (probably a month's income) with no collateral, only a promise to pay him through my sister’s upcoming visit, saying “if you don’t pay me back it’s your loss of integrity”.  We hired a young driver to take us around the island.  It ended up being Chevy Chase’s “Family Vacation” as we agreed that his wife could join us for a week together crammed in his 1949 Ford to see another side of their country.  That opportunity passed under the previous administration.  

Driver Roland and wife Myladi with Robin

Bill in front of 1949 Ford for a week

Roland and Myladi's concrete home outside Havana

We were invited impromptu off the street to lunch with an extended family celebrating a birthday in their home in Armenia, just because we engaged them.

Robin with three generations of Armenians celebrating a birthday

In Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and Georgia we’ve gone during, or after, recent armed conflict and got a first-hand understanding of the complexity and horror of the situation and impact on ordinary individuals and families. 

Legless Cambodian veterans introduced to us by our guide, and former general, Sok Som

Village on Military Highway between Georgia and Russia
near breakaway republic of South Ossetia supported by Russia

We prefer to be travelers rather than tourists.  While perhaps out of the ordinary, I’m sure there are those like today’s young, journalists, or the author Paul Theroux that would consider our travels pretty benign. It's not a competition.

 

My global travels since the 1980s didn’t start out with this motivation.  It just evolved opportunistically with positive reinforcement of that kind of engagement.  And we have no pretense that we are journalists or will change the world.  But by this engagement, it has changed us and how we communicate with others.

 

We are currently in a protected sanctuary at southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, in the same time zone as Ukraine.  Like all of you I’m sure, we’ve been listening to the news the past several months leading to the recent invasion of Ukraine.  In 2016 my long-time friend Thom and I traveled to Moscow, Russia; Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine; and other former Soviet Bloc cities in a “post-Soviet tour” as we called it.  We met a young woman who opened a hip bar right off Maiden Square in the first throes of individual entrepreneurship in that country.

Maidan Square, now Independence Square, Kyiv

Valerie, Bar Owner in Kyiv

We walked sniper alley leading to the square where only two years before young men fighting for freedom and democracy in their country were murdered in the Orange Revolution.  Family members lined the street with memorials of their lost sons, husbands and brothers. 

Personal Memorials a mile long on sniper alley

We toured the museum of WWII sacrifices and the hot war still being fought in eastern Ukraine from which the rest of the world moved on and forgot.  

Monument to WWII and museum to ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine

Burnt corpse of soldier defending his homeland

And we dined with a middle-class engineer in her apartment, pleased with her new freedom, though we’d consider her apartment quasi-public housing.

Dinner in Kiev with Thom, Guide and Family

Most humans are short-term myopic thinkers; responding emotionally out of fear or self-interest. Being a history fan, I’ve looked at every crisis during my adult lifetime and kept it in perspective by recounting, in twenty-year segments, past crises.  It’s an interesting exercise.  1900 – 1920: severe economic recession, WWI, Bolshevik revolution; 1920 – 1940:  Great Depression, Dust bowl, Germany’s rearmament, Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe; 1940 – 1960: WWII, Korean war, India Independence, China Revolution, Sputnik … you can play the game. Our lifetime of twenty year increments will play like Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the Fire”. For seventy years now most crises were relatively short-term with minimal world-wide realignment or personal disruption.  Few, except for the 1962 missile crisis were existential.  I believe we are at such a moment again as 1939 or 1962.  One can only hope it ends as the later, and not the former.

 

I also fervently hope in the current circumstances when finally, the majority of the GOP and Democrats have put aside the partisan divide to rally their support for the Ukrainian people fighting with their lives to keep democracy, we can also fight for democracy at home.  There are major forces at work trying to undermine it with claims of “Stop the Steal”, false electors, changing election laws, and literally championing Putin as a “Genius”, as our former president has recently done.  It is shocking that surveys show the far right would rather have a Putin than a Democrat in office.

 

Whatever culture wars divide us, whomever you voted for in the past, there should be none who support thugs who have no religious or ethical values, no concept of truth, and only desire for autocracy, revenge, and self enrichment.  There has to be a Bridge Too Far, and we are crossing it as a country.  Ukrainians are dying to maintain a democracy.  We should at least come together to hold onto ours. 

 

“Democracy dies in Darkness.”