Ukraine on Fire

Watching the news, watching Russia invade Ukraine, I just kept thinking, "There should be a way to show support for Ukraine beyond the inevitable Facebook Frame." So I went onto the Walmart website and typed "Ukraine" into the search box. Lots of things came up. Ukrainian Easter eggs. Ukrainian tablecloths. Ukrainian books. Ukrainian t-shirts. And then on page 5, a dvd entitled Ukraine on Fire, with the face of Oliver Stone prominent on the cover. So of course I clicked on that. The little information blip made it sound interesting, but I didn't want to pay $17.99 (marked down from $29.95) for it, so I typed the title into Google to see what I could see. A picture of the cast came up, one of whom was the very attractive Angelina Samchyk--

--which I must admit made me even more determined to find and watch this movie. 

And fortunately there was a Watch Movie list of possible viewing platforms, the last of which,  tubi , is a free thing. So I downloaded the app and got busy.

I soon forgot all about the beauteous Angeline Samchyk. 

Watching this documentary made thinking about the news on Ukraine seem like trying to eat a bowl of soup that someone had put thumbtacks into. You can still eat the soup...but you'd better be pretty damned careful, or you're going to swallow some stuff that will hurt you.

A few days ago I was talking to my #1🌞 about the Ukraine situation, and he said, "I wonder what Noam Chomsky has to say about this?) * He Googled and came up with something on Truthout.org under the title, "Chomsky: US Push to “Reign Supreme” Stokes the Ukraine Conflict." Despite my extreme love for Dr. Chomsky, I kind of twitched at this, thinking, "Are we really going to blame this situation on the United States?" 

Watching this movie made me slide right back into Noam Chomsky's arms. It seems pretty obvious that we fucked Ukraine and made this Putin invasion inevitable. I'm still reading, still trying to keep open to other points of view, but you know, the whole, "He's doing it because he's crazy" thing is probably never the truth. Even Trump, who I consider to be the maddest of hatters, didn't do things because he was crazy or evil. He did crazy and evil things because they advanced his own self-interests. 

Or, as the once great philosopher Brucius Springsteenus said, "Sooner or later it all comes down to money."

At any rate, although Ukraine on Fire isn't "up to date" with respect to the current tragedy (it was released in 2016), watching it will bring a lot of things that now seem senseless into clarity. So yes, highly recommended. And very sad.

* One of the joys of my life is that I've been able to inflict a love of Noam Chomsky on several people in my sphere.