Interesting times

You know that Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times!"

Who would have thought just a short time ago that people would be greeting each other with "Slava Ukraini!" - "Glory to Ukraine" in Ukrainian?  Or that people would be wearing blue and yellow ribbons, the colors of Ukraine, in their lapels, like the red ones we wore during the AIDS crisis. Or that interpreters would be breaking down, like a German interpreter did this morning, or choking up, like the English interpreter did during the EU session this morning, both overcome by the words of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Or that Sweden and Finland would be talking openly of joining NATO and the European Union. And Switzerland!  Listen to Stephen Colbert go on and on (minute 3 onwards): "Switzerland! Switzerland! Switzerland! Switzerland! Switzerland! (Yes, five times) Switzerland has a knife out for Russia!... This is like the Dalai Lama grabbin' a buck knife and an AK and screaming, 'Let the Buddha sort'em out.'"

The horror facing us includes the possibility that Putin will succeed in subduing Ukraine, maybe even killing their new hero, Zelenskyy. If he does, though, I think he will only strengthen the resolve of the world to try him as a war criminal. Despite Russia's savvy at using the instruments of the new computer age, I'm convinced Putin missed the boat in not realizing the significance of a war carried live, minute by minute. The whole world is watching Ukrainian men taking their children to the Polish border to become refugees and then returning to fight against the Russian invasion. Doctors are in tears trying in vain to save the lives of Ukrainian children mowed down by rockets in the street, all being carried live for all the world to see.

Zelenskyy, in addressing the United Nations by satellite - or the European Union - gets a standing ovation. Russian foreign minister Lavrov addresses the same groups and the ambassadors stand up and walk out. I can't remember a time when the entire world was this united in agreement: Putin is a war criminal and he's casting Russia down into a hole which it may take another generation for them to dig themselves out of.

Putin has one ally, his puppet Lukashenko in Belarus. He is likely to fall as Putin falls. China is trying to play it cool, by urging everybody to seek a diplomatic solution, something few have any faith in anymore. We know they are watching closely. If Putin gets away with snatching Ukraine back into the Russian fold, China will be encouraged to do the same in Taiwan.

I don't know how many people around the world are glued to their computer or television screens. I imagine it is no small number.

Gil Scott-Heron, one of the originators of hip hop, once rapped The Revolution Will Not be Televised back in the 70s. What he meant by that was that the revolution would not be fiction, like you see on television; it would be real. We now live in a post-television era. It's still true that what we see on the internet is not fiction. But if you, like me, use your television set as a computer monitor, the revolution is being televised. It's real, and it's happening all over the world right up in your face.

Interesting times.