By Dr. Christina J. Johns

I am livid.  Absolutely livid.

Sitting in Publix, waiting for my prescriptions (one of which is supposed to keep me from being livid) I run across a post on BlueSky by Alexander Vindman.  It seems that Pete Hegseth has announced in Brussels that Ukraine does not belong in NATO.  Hegseth then lectured Ukraine’s allies that returning to pre-2014 borders was an “unrealistic objective,” an “illusionary goal” that would only “prolong the war and cause more suffering.”  Then, to top it all off, Hegseth, pretending to be the sober, decent, competent human being he is not, said: “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”

I am hopping up and down in the fake leather seat, sputtering and looking around for someone with whom I can share this new outrage.  But, they are all occupied with baby food or cosmetics, or their iphones.

It’s not that I had illusions about the Trump administration’s support for Ukraine, but the arrogance of the pronouncement, the haughtiness, the sense of superiority, the imperiousness, just takes my breath away.  This moronic former TV personality casually, contemptuously announcing the betrayal of people in Ukraine who have fought valiantly for years for just a chance at democracy, makes me rabid.

But the people in the Trump administration are incapable of seeing valiant behavior, honor, struggle, morality, virtuousness.  Russia wants Ukraine.  It’s as simple as that.  Ukraine has nothing to give Trump.  It’s as simple as that.  Russians have  been funneling money into Trump properties for decades, bailing the Trump family out of self-created economic disasters for more than decades, promising Trump enormous Trump tower hotels in the heart of Moscow (what a sacrilege) for at least a decade.  Russia has devoted funds to place their friend and ally in the White House and then the funds to keep him there.  Trump as done nothing for the US except what would fit in like a piece in a puzzle for Putin’s benefit.  So, the smartest thing Trump can do is give Ukraine to Russia and extract what Trump repeatedly calls “rare earth” on the way out.

What he is talking about are rare earth minerals that he wants access to as a payback for funding Ukrane’s almost unbelievable struggle to defend democracy.  Trump’s a mob boss who sees every opportunity as one of extracting favors or “protection money.”  Trump and the people surrounding him have turned the United States into cheap debt collectors.    

I am furious.  And hearing this news though Alexander Vindman is heartbreaking.

In 2019, Alexander Vindman was putting on his uniform, preparing to testify against the president of the United States in what would turn out to be the first of two Trump impeachment hearings. Vindman’s father, Simon, was worried that by testifying, Alexander would ruin his career and perhaps risk losing his life.  Simon Vindman moved his three little boys to the US in 1979, when Alexander was three. They arrived as refugees from Ukraine with nothing.  Mr. Vindman was familiar with what happened to people who opposed power.

“Do not worry,” Vindman told his father.  “I will be fine for telling the truth.”  And then, almost as a throwaway line, Alexander said to his father: “Here, right matters.” 

Vindman testified against Donald Trump for attempting to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by threatening to withhold government funding unless Zelensky created false and incriminating information about Joe Biden.  Trump was planning on using taxpayer funds to blackmail Zelensky, forcing Zelensky himself to commit a criminal act.  Vindman had been part of monitoring the conversation for national security reasons.  At the end of Vindman’s testimony about the phone call, he told the story about his father’s concerns for him.  Looking out at the members of Congress with touching confidence, Vindman finished with the sentence:  “Here right matters.”

The sentence stuck in my craw, as we say in the South.  It stuck tight, uncomfortable, unwelcome and sure to cause trouble.  I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  And then, Vindman wrote a book using ”Here, Right Matters” as his title.  So, I heard the statement – bald, confident, righteous – repeated over and over again.

“Here, right matters.”

Every time I heard it, I felt a little nauseous, a little queasy with the nagging fear that no matter how much I wanted it to be true, it just wasn’t.  Not since Donald Trump and the Republicans and the Federalist Society and the Religious Right had taken over.

“Here, right matters.”  It sounded so easy.  It sounded like the way I was raised; it sounded like the way all the kids around me were raised.  It sounded like something most people believed without even thinking about it all their lives.     

But, I am 74 years old and cynical as they come.  I was marching in protests against the Vietnan war before I was out of high school and a member of SDS by the time I was in college.  I guess I knew better, but I wanted it to be true.  “Here, right matters.” 

Hearing it hurt.  It hurt because deep down inside me, I knew that it was like so many things the people in this country have repeated, nodded their heads in response to, told their children and taken for granted. 

Alexander Vindman, a child clinging to his refugee father, penniless, being drawn forward toward the promise of this country, believed it.  Almost forty years later, he still believed it.  You could see it in his eyes.  You could see it on every surface of his face as he was testifying.  And he was not afraid.  He was proud; proud of himself, proud of the country; proud of saying it, proud he could say it.  He had his heart on his sleeve that day when he told that story in front of the men and women in Congress; men and women who had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. 

And because Alexander Vindman still believed in the honesty, the decency, the integrity, the incorruptibility of the country, I wanted to believe in it too.  I wanted to believe it for me, for you, for everybody, but I especially wanted to believe it for Alexander Vindman.

Here was a man who had traveled halfway across the world when he was a child, carried along by the belief in a dream.  And you couldn’t come up with a better example of how that dream had at one time worked.  Vindman, his two brothers and his father had $200 when they landed in this country.

Years later, Vindman retired as an Army lieutenant colonel, Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council.  He had a Purple Heart, a master’s degree from Harvard, and a doctorate in international affairs.

I could not bear the thought of seeing Alexander Vindman’s trust and pride and conviction and faith in the country shattered when he learned that nah, right didn’t matter here.  Not anymore.  For the Trumpers, right was a fool’s game.  There was no “city on the hill.”  There was no Marshall Plan to ensure economic recovery for war-torn Europe.  There was no USAID assistance anymore to help the people in Ukraine and the rest of the world .  There was no more food, medicine, water, grain trailers, generators, or textbooks, to help Ukrainians and others survive.  It was the world’s richest country turning its back on the poorest people on the planet.

In this new world,  America was out for itself, Trump and the Republicans had even announced it.  America First.  Trump and the Republicans and the Federalist Society and the Religious Right were always out for themselves.  We were just too deluded to see it.  We are, for the most part, still too deluded to see it.

A friend of mine lives south of Kyiv, she makes handmade jewelry to support herself and her two children.  They are bombed almost every night.  The other day she posted that her two children could now sleep through a night of bombing. 

           Would you want that for your children?  No.  But she’s not American.  Why help her?  Who cares about her?  We need money at home.  Internet service is getting expensive.   Gaming, the Daytona 500, getting nails done, plastic surgery, designer clothes, guns, spa services.  This is what is important to us?  People seem to think that now that we are not sending so much money to Ukraine, the government us going to cut them a check.  That’s how people see it because that’s how the right talks about it.  My friend Olga is not going to live off us while she’s trying to survive in the middle of a war.  Who does she think she is?

That’s what we have become.  That’s the tone used by the President of the United States and the slime he has surrounded himself with.  We are not sending condoms to prevent an AIDS epidemic in Africa.  We’re not sending then and we are going to smirk about how funny it is.  We’re not funding people to dress themselves in hazmat suits and try to stop another Ebola outbreak.  It’s not here.  Probably will never be here.  Who cares?  We have other priorities.  We’re making money.  We’re buying Trump bitcoin and golden tennis shoes.  All the rest of you whiny bitches get out of the way, the United States of America doesn’t give a fuck about you unless we can make money off you. 

           Is that what you want this country to be?  Is that what you will tell your children about the country?  Not that we live in a country where truth matters, where compassion matters, where caring matters, where nobody is above the law, where cheating and lying are not honorable.  Where right matters?

Or will you tell them the truth?  Tell them that this is a country where we go out and get what we want.  Lie, cheat, steal, humiliate, abuse if you have to but make money and laugh at the dumbasses you make it off. 

I have found in 74 years that there are two types of people in the world.  Just two.  There are people who see vulnerability and rush to protect it and there are people who see vulnerability and can’t wait to take advantage of it.   The question is which one are you?  Which one do you want your children to be?  Which one do you want your country to be?