“You don’t have to be very bright to carry a handbarrow. So the squad leader gave such work to people who’d been in positions of authority.” ― Solzhenitsyn, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
It must have been when I was 14 years old that my parents took us to see the film One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I could hardly process what I was seeing. How could humans do such horrible things to each other?
But that was the sort of thing my parents did. They never hid harsh reality from us.
The film is based on Solzhenitsyn’s book of the same title and tells the story of one day in Ivan’s life in a Soviet-Siberian prison camp. Through all the mind-numbing, body-breaking brutality, through the stench that I could almost smell and taste, the film shows the nearly impossible-to-understand truth of how it is only through hardship that we learn to overcome the worst of ourselves—or give in to it. As Solzhenitsyn wrote:
“Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul.”
Suffering will come to the United States, and when it does, perhaps at last, people will wake up. Perhaps at last we will come together to fight against the Vast Machine that steals our souls. Perhaps. Because it’s discouraging how easily the people of Europe have forgotten the wars that overran their countries and the Nazism that encouraged it, and that now threatens to become the face of the New World Order.
We’ve put up with a lot of obscene actions by our leaders lately. It seems as if we’ve become so powerless that all we can do is watch from the sidelines as the horrorfest unfolds. Most people don’t even think of it like that. Most people are completely onboard, so sedated by technology and drugs that they cannot see beyond the diet of conflicting information and empty entertainment they are constantly being fed.
I forced myself to watch President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy’s, speech on December 21, 2022, to the US Congress. It made me sick to my stomach. Watching Kamala Harris (where has she even been for the past 2 years?) and Nancy Pelosi take that flag and hold it up in front of the American flag, well, I really wanted to vomit. Maybe others don’t, but I remember how these two women repeatedly stood up for the abusers rather than the women being abused.
How Kamala Harris’ met with Jacob Blake’s family in Wisconsin during those riot days that we were supposed to call protests. She praised their courage, calling them “incredible.” Yet she did not visit Blake’s victim, the mother of his child who had been repeatedly terrorized by him over the years in ways I do not wish to write here. The media played mind games and the people joined in, eager to be swayed by emotion rather than reason.
And now, to see these two women beaming down on this Nazi supporter, along with our entire government, gave me a serious case of PTSD and I was back in Dachau again where, at the age of ten, I walked through the concentration camp and saw what the Nazis had done to millions of Jews and millions of others who they identified as beneath them.
People can come back at me and say but what about Russia, so you’re a “Putin lover?” No, I am not a Putin lover. What does that have to do with anything? I’m not talking about Russia because the United States doesn’t support it. The EU doesn’t support it. I’m talking about Ukraine because the United State, the entire EU, supports Ukraine. By doing so, we are supporting the reawakening of Nazism across Europe, even as we claim it is the number one threat in our own country. A complete and utter contradiction that makes absolutely no sense.
Dmitry Belik, a member of the Russian State Duma International Affairs Committee, made this remark in response to Zelensky’s visit:
“All the allies of the United States ended up very badly, being on the sidelines, or rather, in the dustbin of history.”
“This has been going on for hundreds of years,” the deputy continued. “The Americans have only one ally—it is themselves, and all the rest are secondary figures that should ensure their prosperity and who, if something happens, can be betrayed.”
I must agree. The United States is a greedy taskmaster who entices leaders of poorer nations with promises of power and wealth, convincing them to sell out their own people for improved roads, power grids, transportation systems—whatever the US “Economic Hitmen” have determined that particular nation will be willing to sell itself for. Of course, what comes with it is the added benefit of increased wealth and power for the prostituted leaders. Leaders like Zelensky.
To all the members of Congress who sat there and listened to Zelensky’s performance and then stood up and clapped. you are weak and perverse. You are in so deep with the blackmailers that there is no way for you to get out. You have seen what happens to people who slip up. People like Sam Bankman-Fried. Or Harvey Weinstein. Or Jeffrey Epstein.
To those who say, but Zelensky is Jewish, how dare you! Let me explain something. Israel’s leaders sold their own people to Pfizer. How can Israel do this when the country was populated by people whose skin was tattooed with numbers and whose children and grandchildren still remember the stories they were told of those days. All of this is incomprehensible. As if an evil spell has fallen upon humanity, and no one can think or see clearly any longer.
And one more thing. We all realize that a person can be Italian and not be Catholic. Zelensky can be Jewish and not practice Judaism. His wife is not Jewish, and his children were reportedly baptized in the Greek Orthodox tradition.
Just like Hitler and Stalin graced the cover of Time magazine and were lauded as the best sort of leaders before they brought holocausts to their nations, Zelensky is being lauded today. How easy it must be for him to justify to himself that, no, he doesn’t support Nazism. It’s all for the greater good. His greater good and the greater good of his masters. $100 billion dollars of taxpayer money funneled into Ukraine, and we can be sure it isn’t going to benefit the people. Zelensky craves fame. He craves fortune. He craves status. To this end, he takes his cut of the blood money and allows Nazism to fester and grow and uses these extremists to solidify his power. Ukrainian Nazis have a history of exterminating not just Jews, but Polish and Russians. The new Nazis, or Neo-Nazis, seek an ethnic cleansing of Russians from Ukraine.
In High School, I watched a play about Anne Frank. So much evil in the world! I will never understand it. Anne said in her journal:
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
How could she have still thought that? What must it have been like for her, after all those months of hiding, to be caught at last and then to lay dying from typhus? Did she still think that? I bet she did. Incredibly.
It is those who have nothing to lose except their lives who so often speak the truth. It behooves us to listen to their voices. They recenter and redirect us to the right path. This wondrous young girl who died in obscurity, lived on because of her words.
How do we find our voices the way Anne Frank did? This is what I struggle with when I sit down to write these essays. How is it possible when it seems the prison doors are closing tighter and tighter and we will never find a way out?
Anne Frank tells us:
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be….”
It’s so simple and yet so true. Remember it this holiday season, this Christmas, this Hanukah. Go outside, enjoy this beautiful world.
