On Time

Real-life being a relentless bitch, here I am writing on a Wednesday night instead of the traditional Thursday for the second time in what feels like a month but is probably way more than that. We're all experiencing weird time-bending around COVID, not made any easier by just having lived through the nonsense of set-the-clock-forward day, the closest we come in this country to an anti-holiday. I'm never more irrationally angry about almost nothing every year than I am during this post-time-change week. And I say that knowing the bullshit of Columbus Day is out there still, inexplicably, to be contemplated and endured again. But at least I get that day off, so I can be mad about it while also sleeping in.

I hear relief from the clock-swich is coming, but it's in the form of Congressional help, so I'm sure it will come at the cost of also recognizing Strom Thurmond's birthday in conjunction with Juneteenth or some other horrible "compromise."

It's neither surprising, novel nor interesting to note that I feel about an hour behind this week, even though I'm not really. The explanation for it is too obvious to even bother making a joke about, but suffice it to say I didn't want to forget to do this too, on top of everything else it only feels like I've forgotten to get to.

Like the way I also forgot to watch the speech to Congress by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. If I'm being honest, though I only sort of forgot. Really, in the back of my mind, I knew I didn't really want to watch a bunch of Congressfolks make a full ham-and-potatoes meal of the geopolitical tragedy of our age (and practically the first one of my lifetime not directly of American make). I experienced snippets of his speeches to other legislative bodies, the British and Canadian Houses of Commons, so I knew the experience was going to be a painful one: a man literally under siege, in fear for the lives of his family and all of his fellow citizens and in an existential fight--literally existential--versus a determined and numerically overwhelming enemy, pleading an undeniable case for practical aid and receiving a smiling, glistening-eyed nod of utterly useless emotional support and a nice standing ovation at the end instead.

It's confusing because the whole spectacle is a fait accompli, completely pointless as western aid is not going to increase to something the man actually needs, like a couple of slightly used airborne divisions or a few hundred modern fighter aircraft. He's not getting anything else, and he knows it. They're not going to give anything else, yet they invite him anyway. But the invitation should still be extended and it should still be accepted, if only we can see the face and hear the words and understand suffering and war as a thing that is happening to real humans and not just a voiceover atop pictures of smoking rubble on the BBC or CNN or whatever.

The whole thing is sickening as it feels like we really should do something. And at the same time, I know we absolutely shouldn't. Sure there might be more we can do, but on paper, as far as I can tell, the Biden Administration is doing all the right things. The horrible, unbearable, right things.  Trump would have talked for two weeks about how cool the explosions are and how much he admired the genius of Vladimir Putin, the man he thinks he sees when he looks in a mirror. Then everyone would have been mad about him sounding like such a simp for a dictator and suggested it made him look weak, which he would have overreacted to by probably sending some B-52s to bomb Chernobyl (the only thing in the region he will have heard of) or whatever and after a few subsequent and escalating missile exchanges, we'd all be irradiated.

I've lived through Afghanistan and Iraq (as an observer, admittedly). I also lived through the Balkans crises. Intervention never goes well. So all of this is right. In the meantime, President Zelenskyy will keep pleading his case and we'll keep agreeing with everything he has to say and having our hearts break over and over again and we will still wait and see (from a very safe, noncommittal distance) exactly how far actual heroism can actually get you.