Updated May 30, 2022
Rarely do I wake from a dream realizing that in the dream I knew I was dreaming.
I recently dreamed that I was lost in the woods, exhausted, when I found a cave just before dark. I reclined on a sloped rock with my head on my fanny pack and fell asleep. That’s when I dreamed that I knew I was dreaming, making it hard to separate reality from the dream. Even when I woke up I didn’t know if I was only dreaming that I did.
Watch this 97-minute Netflix documentary now released for free viewing in YouTube (or catch it on Netflix if you have it), “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.” It is about the 2014 Maidan (or The Maidan Revolution) by fearless, relentless, unstoppable, unarmed, non-violent protesters against ruthless militarized police forces and brutal mercenaries in Kyiv, Ukraine when the president sold out to Putin instead of signing an agreement with the European Union as promised to a People yearning to build upon the freedom they claimed when they declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 (is this still a sentence?).
This is a story that we can learn from, if we are to defend our freedom when our time comes, and it seems to be coming sooner than I ever believed it could. Democracy in the United States is at greater risk than ever. I know people don’t get it, don’t think so, can’t believe it. They just don’t know, because, like Putin’s duped citizens, they can’t. Some others may have to die because of it, if we are to succeed.
Watch this documentary and see what the dead can do when they know the truth and fight for it, when their courage inspires victory for the living, when they find out just how fragile democracy can be, and how precious, and give their lives for it.
Don’t waste your brain energy calling me pessimistic. It doesn’t matter anymore. Whether I am pessimistic or not, the warning must go out. Whether my efforts are pessimistic or not, I must continue, especially because so many others will not prepare for the trouble we so likely face. The Autocracy Party has just about all the guns, and the willingness to use them for delusional reasons. Are you ready for that?
I am preparing for the fall of democracy in the United States. You should, too. You have nothing to lose by being prepared, and a free nation to gain.
My truly optimistic take on it says that with preparation and dedication to protecting our civilization, we can succeed. Otherwise, we go into something like a Dark Age. An optimist looks ahead and sees ways to succeed, not ways to act in the future, or to hope to do, but ways to act now for the sake of the future. Preparation is optimistic. It says there is a way, so take it. Optimism is not merely about hoping for the best. In fact, that’s just stupid in many instances. Hope can be stupid. I am preparing, not hoping.
Now, in 2022, Putin wants to take away from Ukraine what they earned in the past, what death bought for them in 2014. Watching this documentary, you’ll see why they will NEVER let him take it from them, and they will continue fighting from the grave that they do not fear.
Me neither. My grave is not something to fear, except by our enemies.
Slava Ukraini! Glory to Ukraine! Learn from them to never give up!
Long live the dead.
Olena was wounded on February 24, 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. She and over forty-four million Ukrainians and other residents there need our help. Helping them helps us. It may even save us from ourselves.
Wounded Olena Kurilo in Kharkiv Feb 24, 2022. (Color pencil derived from photo.)
Sometimes just saying something does make it so. Sorta. For example: The Declaration of Independence. I have another declaration to suggest we use, as individuals. It throws the user into an immersive encounter with principles of being an American.
Rus VanWestervelt is an educator and writer in Baltimore (and distinctly, proudly of Baltimore). You can meet him at thebaltimorewriter.org.
He is also a compassionate, contemplative philosopher (in my view), things he would not say on his resume or business card. He has good taste in meditative music, too (so sez me). He put six minutes of Deuter on his Samadhi Sanctuary page.
Yesterday, the Fourth of July, I had the pleasure of reading his beautiful article, A Declaration, where he reflects on patriotism in a personal way from childhood to adulthood, learning along the way that the nation does not always live up to its principles. In his continued commitment to those principles, he reminds readers of the Emma Lazarus words at the Statue of Liberty …
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
… and he takes it much farther by doing something I don’t recall ever seeing done in school or in any public celebration or at home: he presents the complete text of the Declaration of Independence, and asks us to “Please read every word. Every single word.” (copy below)
Then he writes, “On this day of independence, on this day that we celebrate everything that America stands for, I offer a Declaration that is a little less of the grandiose and a little more of the introspective contemplation of what it means to be ‘American.'”
With his permission, I share it here, and embrace it.
The Balsamean 