In the name of light

The title of this blog post is in honor of a song by the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine. It’s an uplifting song, a hard-hitting song and a call to arms.

Along with Ben Shapiro, whose excellent interview with Zelensky is a good example of what journalism is actually about, these two men are voices of reason in the world gone crazy. Now, it doesn’t mean everyone must agree with everything Ben Shapiro or the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine stand for but, to me, they deserve praise for their work.

Most people, including me, didn’t expect much from Ben Shapiro. We were under the impression his interview with Zelensky was going to be another Tucker Carloson-esque grovel-job and Putin-pandering with Zelensky being bashed and belittled. Well, turns out, we were wrong. Ben Shapiro has done a great job. He asks tough questions, but does so without childish name-calling and jabs. He comes to logical conclusions about who’s who in this war.

There’s an intellectual chasm between him and Tucker Carlson.

But we must understand we’re living in a real Z-movie. Zombie movie. There are people who can’t be reached. You’re going to tell them just how evil Hamas is, and they are going to call you a genocidal Zionist. There’s nothing you can do, their minds are gone. Short of divine intervention, your efforts are better directed elsewhere.

It takes humility and self-confidence to admit one was wrong. Ben Shapiro was skeptical of Ukraine but after talking to Zelensky – his stance shifted. If only more people were capable of looking past their bubble and admitting they were wrong. Sadly, we’re surrounded by people stuck in belief bubbles and nothing we do or say is going to change that.

Can these people be ignored? Someone said they vote, too, and we ignore them at our peril. Well, what’s the alternative? You can’t get through to them. It’s hard for idealists to grasp. Idealists want to believe, no, they are convinced, anyone can be reached and reasoned with. Not so. Same with people who are apathetic. Too much is going on for them to process, so they are in their little world where things are predictable. Stable. It’s an illusion, of course, but don’t waste your time on them, either.

Invest your time and effort into trying to persuade people who can still be reasoned with. Identifying them, now, that’s tricky and takes a lot of what we’d call ”profiling.”

Just ask the hostages. They are in a much better position to opine on that than me.

Evil spreads. Just because my region of the world is peaceful today doesn’t mean it won’t be in turmoil tomorrow. October 7 has shown how volatile the world is and how quickly our fortunes can change, even when we think we’re prepared to face our worst fears, life can still surprise us and shock us.

We need voices of reason now more than ever. If we let evil, totalitarianism and madness spread, humanity as we kn(e)ow it is doomed. All manner of pestilence is crawling out of the Pandora’s box – I’m not sure if we’re not doomed already. Putin and other maniacs shouldn’t have opened that box. Their apettite for conquest and carnage knows no bounds.

We often forget that little ”ends of the world” happen all around us. In my Kyiv Post article, I write about how the ”grand chessboard” geopolitics at times tragically impact personal stories.

The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was signed secretly a week before the outbreak of the Second World War. The pact erased Poland off the map at the beginning of that war. The tragedy of the pact is exemplified by a story of a Polish intellectual and artist – Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) who was fleeing the Nazis invading Poland from the West. As he fled east, he learned on Sept. 17, 1939, that the Red Army had invaded Poland. Feeling like it was the end of the world, the Polish intellectual killed himself on Sept. 18, 1939, in what is today Velyki Ozera, a village in the Polissya region of Ukraine.

That’s what happens when the light is stifled by darkness.